The State Of The Union Is Continuing Chaos
Biden's Upcoming SOTU Is Likely To Be Long On Bragging, Platitudes, and False Optimism, While The Country Becomes More Polarized
Photo by Saad Alfozan on Unsplash
On February 7th, as mandated by the Constitution, a joint session of Congress will be convened, and President Joe Biden will fulfill his duty to address the nation on the State of The Union.
It wasn’t always a choreographed, teleprompter-driven snooze fest of oratorical pablum that it has become known for in modern times.
In fact, President Thomas Jefferson, full of distrust for the British monarchy, and afraid a public address was too similar to the King addressing the opening session of the British Parliament, expressed his displeasure hundreds of years ago.
Jefferson effectively called it a “waste of time:”
“Federalists Washington and Adams had personally addressed the Congress, but Jefferson stopped that practice. Some believe he thought the practice of appearing before the representatives of the people was too similar to the British monarch's practice of addressing each new Parliament. Jefferson suggested the process was a waste of time. Some believe Jefferson just was not comfortable with public oratory.”
Until 1912, State Of The Union messages were like quarterly reports to stockholders exclusively in written form. Since that time, they have become bipartisan pep rallies with bragging rights, empty rhetoric with little basis in reality, and a completely imagined version of the state of American society under a particular President’s leadership.
Based on the history of prior SOTU speeches, it becomes fairly easy to prognosticate what is likely to happen:
Breathless “preview” coverage of the SOTU by corporate media will begin hours, if not some days before.
No doubt during the speech, with Biden pausing for his mandated applause lines, squinting and grimacing under the hot lights and scrutiny, the television cameras will cut away for visual variety, restlessly prowling the aisles and seats for “reaction shots” from Democratic and Republican apparatchiks. At the perfectly timed moment, perhaps after emphasizing a phrase like “Ukrainian freedom”, or “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future than I am in this moment,” they will leap to their feet, clapping like trained seals for even the tritest of platitudes and euphemisms, which you can be sure will pepper the text.
The proxy war in Ukraine will be oratorically transformed into the eternal fight for democracy and freedom, and the profligate flow of weapons and money, lavished on a corrupt country and government, will become the price we must pay to subjugate and vanquish evil. Putin, the eternal villain, 2023’s version of GW Bush’s “Axis Of Evil” will be excoriated, his soulless campaign of war blamed for the hardships now faced in America and the EU. Most certainly, those hardships will only be mentioned in passing, if at all. NATO countries, and the organization, are stronger than ever, Biden will claim, and in no small part due to his leadership. As if NATO's strength had ANY effect on the daily life of the average American. The formerly anti-war squad will leap to their feet, wildly clapping.
We’ve seen this all before, haven’t we?
The disastrous prioritizing of commerce over public health, declaring COVID over, and watching the real-time effects of early heart attacks and unprecedented death among young people will become a new, glorious time when COVID no longer controls our lives. Biden’s unfulfilled, broken promise of protecting public health will be relegated to the inconsequential. As a fist bump to his donors in the pharmaceutical industry, some bragging about vaccine distribution “under his watch” may be in order. The reality of his failure will be glossed over.
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We will not hear specifics about increasing numbers of the houseless, the broader nationwide homeless emergency, or the spike in rental prices, which are putting unprecedented economic pressure on the average American. We will likely hear about the “Renters Bill Of Rights”, a Biden administration proposal long on generalities, and, as of now, short on specifics. Biden has yet to publicly acknowledge that affordable housing is even an issue. “The Renters Bill Of Rights” is, as with all Biden proposals and general political “solutions,” nonbinding. The appearance of action and beneficial social policy without any real, tangible, positive effect.
Uncomfortable, lingering shots of the Republican leadership, along with sullen rank-and-file members, some not even standing up on cue, some possibly shouting out or glaring ahead into empty space, will likely occur. The interminable, excruciating, cable talking head’s “post-speech analysis” (like American sports channel’s post-game wrap-ups) will consist largely of calling out the worst, most unsportsmanlike player on Team America. This is, after all, in a culture fixated on distraction and entertainment, and the cable news outlets are acutely aware of their declining ratings. So the ugly, stupid rhetorical battles will be given ample air time.
The party in power will claim to be shocked, SHOCKED, the cable news pundits will say, that “tradition” and “decorum” have been trashed. Even in a time when the subtext of the low IQ riots of January 6th, as an event, stated the obvious: To hell with tradition and respect. It’s time for the fascist cavemen to come out and play.
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Unique to this particular SOTU address will be the presence of the parents of Tyre Nichols, who suffered torture, and beating, and tragically, was killed on a “routine” traffic stop by five police officers in Memphis, Tennessee.
As I write this, it appears there will be 2 more officers, and additional Fire and Rescue personnel that will be fired, suspended, or otherwise relieved from duty. The corporate media tout mandatory bodycams as a “shift” in public awareness and police responsibility. I’m not so sure, in the wake of so many unwarranted deaths of black people over the past years, that this is any comfort at all.
Personally, knowing Biden’s record, his oft-repeated dubious claims, and frankly, flat-out lies about his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, I find this to be the equivalent of putting nitroglycerine and a keg of dynamite in the hands of a six-year-old.
There is a possibility if Biden says the wrong thing, that exploiting this horrible tragedy could blow up in his face.
How else, besides as an exercise in exploitation, can you define it? The speechwriters want to turn Biden into a combination of FDR and Martin Luther King, against all odds, as well as objective facts to the contrary. Biden has been as enthusiastic a cheerleader for more police funding and militarization as he was, and is, for military spending and perpetuating global war. I wouldn’t want to be in the boiler room as a speechwriter, walking the delicate balance, writing a speech for a compromised politician who has to walk the line between keeping America “safe” and acknowledging simultaneously that for people of color, there is no “safety” from the police. I’m not sure it can be done.
This will be an event that will highlight triumph and tragedy, a weird juxtaposition of alleged American “greatness” with sparse mentions of things that desperately need to be improved upon. Going from global war to racial injustice, while ignoring COVID and homelessness, won’t exactly result in a “feel-good” moment for America, except among the warmongers and party loyalists who believe, fool-heartedly, that the American empire is on the rise instead of descending into chaos.
As Chris Hedges so eloquently has noted in numerous articles, The Democrats are now, proudly, the party of war, and they want you along for the ride, even if that will result in the end of empire:
“The Democrats, especially with the presidency of Bill Clinton, became shills not only for corporate America but for the weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon. No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big, including the $858 billion in military spending allocated for the current fiscal year, an increase of $45 billion above what the Biden administration requested.
The historian Arnold Toynbee cited unchecked militarism as the fatal disease of empires, arguing that they ultimately commit suicide.
There once was a wing of the Democratic Party that questioned and stood up to the war industry: Senators J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Mike Gravel, William Proxmire and House member Dennis Kucinich. But that opposition evaporated along with the antiwar movement. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Biden to negotiate with Putin, they were forced by the party leadership and a warmongering media to back down and rescind their letter. Not that any of them, with the exception of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have voted against the billions of dollars in weaponry sent to Ukraine or the bloated military budget. Rashida Tlaib voted present.”
For many Americans, life has been a sort of nightmarish stumble through the breakdown of the economy during COVID, and a return to “post-COVID life”, a forced ramping up of commerce while ignoring the effects of Long Covid, suffered by untold thousands, and not even merited as a topic for discussion.
If there is anything that is obvious to people who have been subjected to the endless stream of self-congratulatory propaganda on the taxpayer-funded, expertly managed social media accounts of the Biden administration, multiple voices all repeating the same messaging to make sure the point is hammered home, it’s the obsession with numbers. Quantification is everything, quality of life, time spent away from work simply resting with family, or in pursuit of knowledge or appreciation of art or music, is nothing.
There is no crisis that Biden hasn’t exploited to spin positive reviews for himself. In the climate crisis, he thinks of jobs. Without mentioning the derogatory effects of lithium mining, he touts an all-EV future. If you didn’t know he was the President of The United States you would think he was the President of your local Ford dealership. There is little to distinguish him from a smiling, oily used car salesman.
In the tragedy of war, he sees economic opportunity and prosperity. He is constantly forging a myth that he is “building an economy from the bottom up and middle out”. He doesn’t mention, of course, his role in actively exploiting rail workers by denying them sick days, and the right to strike for better working conditions and quality of life. It’s the ghost of Herbert Hoover declaring that prosperity is right around the corner as inevitable depression looms, while workers in a declining economy give up because they are trying to survive.
There is no doubt that Biden will, at some point in the SOTU, tout the miraculous job growth he engineered, and pretend the gutted infrastructure legislation of “Build Back Better” is a huge investment in the American future. It is a minor fraction of the money disappearing into the Ukrainian war effort. He is even reviving the completely fabricated story of his time as a humble commuter on Amtrak, riding the train for 33 years as a career politician from Wilmington, Delaware to Washington D.C. where “an Amtrak conductor congratulated him for racking up one million miles on the train commuting between Wilmington, Delaware and Washington, D.C.”
After decades, we all know the SOTU, especially in modern times, is as much a political advertisement and has strayed so far from the original intent, a written, objective, fact-based report that leans toward statistical accuracy as to be laughable. Even with the predictably negative response granted to the “opposition” party, we won’t find a lot of truth.
THE SOTU has become a lot like the Superbowl halftime show, a sort of parallel American tradition where you get the appearance of a real performance, but in actuality, you get a pre-recorded facsimile: musical backing sourced from a computer hard drive decorated with plenty of pyrotechnic explosions, dancing, and lip-synching.
It looks good but contains zero calories.