No, I didn’t watch Our Glorious Leader deliver the State of the Union speech last night. I watched some of the Minnesota-Colorado hockey game on OLN instead. It wasn’t much of a choice: cheap political grandstanding, or hockey? A no-brainer, really. Besides, anyone want to read the text of the SotU speech could have gone here even before the Prevaricator in Chief took the podium. Yep, the same old, tired Republispeak writ large. Yawn….
I find myself growing tired of feeling like a lonely voice in the wilderness. It’s not so much that I want to give up, but I do wonder what purpose all of this unfocused ranting serves. After all, if you piss into the wind, the only thing that’s guaranteed is that you’ll end wet and smelling terrible. Yes, I could have watched Our Glorious Leader prattle on about the necessity of Congress giving him the power to use a line-item veto or whatever else he wanted, but I really didn’t want to watch another formulaic speech from the worst President ever. “The state of the Union is strong”…isn’t that the same crap we hear every year?
There was a time when I was legitimately interested in what a President had to say. Over the years, though, SotU has degraded into little more than bad political theater. Words…applause…words…applause…yadayadayada…and then the endless and mindless post-speech analogy. Ultimately, though, what will change? What will REALLY change? Or was Our Glorious Leader’s 47-minute homily just so much propaganda spewed from his bully pulpit? Don’t get me started on that one…besides, I didn’t watch it, remember?
As I watch what is happening around me in the country I love, I find it increasingly difficult to remain optimistic about what the future holds for us. I am not by nature a pessimist, but what I see happening in this country does not inspire confidence.
We live in a country increasingly divided between polarized tribal extremes- Republicans and Democrats, Liberals and Conservatives, Christians and non-Christians, etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseum- with those whose star is ascendant feeling perfectly justified in rolling over the hopes, dreams, and beliefs of those on the lower end of the bell curve.
We live in a country where fundamentalist Christians feel it is their right and duty to impose their narrow belief system on those of us who happen not to believe as they do. In doing so, the concept of Christian charity has been made almost superfluous, and hate has become a family value. What Would Jesus Do? Well, he’d make certain that only Christians are allowed in public life…and he’d sure as hell make certain that women mind their place.
We live in a country where taking a stand can result in you being persecuted. Free speech and expression? Not in post-9.11 America. Questioning the direction in which our country is headed can easily end up with you being branded as both un-patriotic and un-American. After all, if you’re not supporting Our Glorious Leader, you’re supporting the terrorists…and we know what to do with people like you, don’t we??
We live in a country where the simple act of engaging in the silent protest of wearing a t-shirt can get you arrested. Standing up for your beliefs and making your opinion known, even silently, is no longer a cherished value in post-9.11 America. Lock-step ideological conformity is. This is NOT the America I learned about in school.
We live in a country where it’s fashionable to decry the “Liberal media”, while we completely ignore the fact that most mainstream media outlets are owned by large (and heavily Republican) corporations. If the media is so “Liberal”, why aren’t we hearing cries for the impeachment of Our Glorious Leader?
No one seems to mind the fact the the GOP has it’s own de facto cable channel in the Fox News Channel. FNC can peddle it’s own version of Republican Reality, complete with waving American flags and patriotic background music, but if a media outlet were to lean to the Left editorially, the hue and cry would be heard far and wide.
We live in a country where a Democratic President can be impeached for having his helmet polished by a zaftig intern, but a Republican President who lies his way into an immoral war of occupation, killing more than 2,000 young Americans is hailed as a hero. What’s more, no one in the mainstream media bothers to mention, much less examine this hypocrisy.
So, if you’re wondering why I didn’t watch the State of the Union address…well, why would I have wasted my time listening to a confirmed liar preaching to the choir?
