| Stephen, are you yelling at your TV right now?Watching another Trump State of the Union can be infuriating, exhausting, so many things – we get it. After three years of attacks against our democracy, we know the state of our union: We’re in the fight of our lives, and with activists like you we’re stronger than ever. |
I feel exhausted, too exhausted to yell at the TV screen. Instead, I am coming apart on the inside and getting to the point that I think responding to what is going on in this country cannot matter because there is not real reasoned argument going on, instead, a bunch of people with power who are either rotten to the core but, for a great number are hero’s (Rush), and another bunch that is inept at pointing out what is truly rotten about such people. Pelosi tonight displayed disrespect for the president, in my mind a good baby step toward fighting the fight that must be fought. Yes, in the houses of government, what should have happened long ago is discussion in open of the danger to good government, humane government, the creation of the right wing media was and, impolitely, it should have been called what it was, a force based in lies that was distorting the meaning of truth.
Instead, the opposition to it was rather gentle, recognized as reflecting how some in this country understood the truth of things, as another version of truth that was rarely pointed out to be a lie. Outside of the halls where the decision makers we elect deliberate, there were a good many who recognized the magnitude of the problem. It should not have been left to them to offer up the political truth that was so obvious that to not speak of it showed a fear of honesty. And this may be because the radio and TV right was not really an anomaly but the tradition, the way things actually worked in America, too often by lies and the hiding of truths. For our elected officials to scream lies would have brought too much scrutiny of the lying culture for those with power to allow.
Yes, a lying culture. A culture in which the truth is not so important as the sale and, really, everyone in this culture who is successful, truly understood to be successful is selling something. Come on! Hedge fund managers running for the presidency, successful business person a qualification for office, billionaire-hood not so bad if the billionaire will use a little of his or her billions to support a good cause or, more importantly, offer money to candidates so they can be more effective in getting their sales pitch, often terribly disingenuous out to more people than the plain old teller of the plain old truth could ever afford to do.
So, the state of the union was disturbing, not because it was filled with threats of terrible things to come–there were some of these–but because it probably sold to a whole lot of people a whole lot of lies that were the kind of lies that make people like them happy, this despite the fact that the truth on the other side of those lies causes them considerable suffering. Hell, if one believes that drinking Bud or driving a Ford are proper signs that they are living the good life, then Trump should be able, master manipulator of the easily manipulated that he is–consider what that shitty most popular TV program of his was about, selling rottenness as something good–to succeed with lies covering up ugly truths to win election again, no matter what those speaking the truth about what might be better have to say.
Tonight I want to be apart from not a part of any of it. I have great fear that the alternatives to the lying to success will not only fall on deaf ears, but receive scorn, be made out to be laughable. And, as bad, those who are in opposition to Trump will not have heard in what he said a truth about the quality of many people’s lives, that their lives were not improved much by democratic administration or election of officials of the democratic party.
Anyone else hear him saying that he had or was about to offer up solutions to the problems those who are chronically hurting, that his actions and his proposals for new policies have done and will do more than democratic administrations have done. He may get way with this because those administrations didn’t, by a long shot, do enough. They may come to trust a lier who is doing a better job of addressing what they want than the opposition. A house of cards may look inviting to those with no homes at all?
