I DID NOT Watch "The Speech"

And I'm So Much Better For It

Donald Trump is President of the United States. That makes him powerful and ubiquitous. It does not give him the power to make me waste nearly two hours of my life to watch an old nitwit lie through his teeth. I’ve seen plenty of that.

Instead, I watched The Martian with my kids. Directed by Ridley Scott, and starring Matt Damon (just one member of an incredible cast,) it is a great movie. Not a film. But a great MOVIE.

We spent two hours watching a story of discovery, adventure, self-reliance, perseverance, teamwork, bravery, mission-above-self, humor, poignancy, all wrapped up in a happy ending. Sitting in the living room, eating takeout, the dogs at our feet, we felt good when it was over. It was about the best way I could spend time, any time, that I can think of.

None of that was on display in the House chamber at the Capitol last night.

In a past life I advanced a State of the Union address. It was exciting to be there on the House floor (a place I hadn’t set foot since I was a House Page in 1993,) seeing the various committees and watching the strap-hangers (“people searching for relevance” in Bush parlance) scurry around.

Alas…

Like the hundreds of millions of other Americans who didn’t watch, I caught up on the coverage briefly (90 seconds each) on MSNBC and CNN. Neither panel had much to say, and what could they, given most of them are still doing color commentary for a game that ended 10 years ago. One note: CNN’s Scott Jennings (read more about him here) is now addicted to both Ozempic and Trump as I watched him aping Trump’s arm movements in the few moments I wasted on him.

Clocking in at 100 minutes, Trump is moving into his Stalin cum Saddam Hussein phase in this older, addelpated iteration. Next year, the purity police will stand on the Republican side of the aisle watching for the first person to sit down after 26 straight minutes of applause.

No, no Democrats, you don’t get off so easy.

Watching a few clips, my algorithm fed me a clip of Sean Hannity (thanks, Zuck) excoriating the minority party for not standing and applauding a 13 year old girl who survived cancer and who Trump made an honorary Secret Service agent.

A friend of mine asked me what I thought, to which I said: By tomorrow MAGA will be saying, “Remember the people who want to turn your son into your daughter? They’re the same people who don’t clap for a teenage cancer survivor.”

See how this works?

I won’t dignify the paddles with anything more than an exasperated “WTF??”

The Democratic side of the House looked like the reviewing stand of the 1984 Moscow May Day parade. Even Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko were shaking their heads from the great mausoleum in the sky.

Politics is, in fact, a spectator sport. Even if you are a died-in-the-wool Yellow Dog Democrat, Progressive, Red Diaper Baby, what you saw last night must have been depressing. If were born in the 1930s, it’s time to retire! If you were born in the 1940s, it’s time to retire! If your house growing up had a party line or required speaking with an operator to make a call, it’s time to retire! Be the wise sages from the sidelines, providing and proffering advice and counsel.

Call me ageist, whatever. The future is that way ——>

And don’t send me a DM saying, “Trump is old, too!” I know he is. He’s also nuts. That doesn’t excuse the opposition party from having too many leaders who refuse to let go because they’ve earned their ‘seniority.’

More charitably, perhaps what the Democrats showed us last night may simply be a reflection of American democracy itself. We’ve ignored our birthright and it withered. Too many people worried too much about their narrow-aperture concerns while the majority screamed at us to open our eyes.

Now the house is on fire and we have one side throwing gasoline on it while the other is waiting for the fire department to arrive.

The state of the union is not good.

Tomorrow, though, we’ll get up again and go back to work.

News and Notes:

Please do NOT miss my interview with Kara Swisher. She ably dismantles Elon Musk and the broligarchs while explaining why Trump is happy having the richest man in the world on his leash.