signalmankenneth
Verified User
In most ways, it was the same old shit: Trump boasting, Trump whining, Trump lying. A smorgasbord of his crap cooked up to satisfy the tastes of his bottom feeders and fellow hate mongers.
What followed was pretty much the same old shit, too. Depending on your favorite flavor of news, the commentators you most often listened to reviewed Trump’s performance, told you what you had seen or chose not to see, a bunch of pre-set views damn near as predictable as the speech itself had been.
In the spirit of self-protection, many of my friends on the left vowed not to watch it. They knew they’d get the take on it from their favorite reporters and friends. And I get that. But they lost the opportunity to form their own take on what took place, what was said, the harm it would do, and the consequences likely to come in the wake of Trump’s loose talk. Some of the elected Democrats boycotted the SOTU as a demonstration of disdain for most anything Trump was likely to say. John Fetterman, a DINO now, showed up and enthusiastically shook Trump’s hand as he was about to take the stage. I get that, too. Fetterman is a scumbag.
But there were things people on Team Left or Team Sane might have missed, though they told themselves that they’d pick up the highlights without having to sit through the actual torture—the sight of the POTUS, the toxins that came with his words and the very sound of his voice.
They might also have missed picking up a bit more determination to up their resistance to Trumpism at this late stage. They might have missed filling up on rage against the Trump machine that had been drained off after experiencing so many outrages for so damn long.
But what those of us who watched the shit show got from it was a vivid portrait of a country in crisis, a great country transformed into a grim dystopia, a nightmare of power abused, corruption embedded, and lies interchangeable with what is true. A national madhouse.
When Trump demonized the Somali people of Minnesota, however, his reckless irresponsibility signed a death warrant for people who have yet to die but surely will. He unleashed the mad dogs of the American right on people with little or no power, tarring them all with the same blood-soaked brush, ascribing to them crimes few if any of them would ever commit. He could just as well have been talking about the Jews as demonized by Hitler in the 1930s. It was a tactic torn from a very old book, rallying the storm troopers with hate and fear.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-o-neill/116330/sotu-a-post-mortem-more-will-surely-die
What followed was pretty much the same old shit, too. Depending on your favorite flavor of news, the commentators you most often listened to reviewed Trump’s performance, told you what you had seen or chose not to see, a bunch of pre-set views damn near as predictable as the speech itself had been.
In the spirit of self-protection, many of my friends on the left vowed not to watch it. They knew they’d get the take on it from their favorite reporters and friends. And I get that. But they lost the opportunity to form their own take on what took place, what was said, the harm it would do, and the consequences likely to come in the wake of Trump’s loose talk. Some of the elected Democrats boycotted the SOTU as a demonstration of disdain for most anything Trump was likely to say. John Fetterman, a DINO now, showed up and enthusiastically shook Trump’s hand as he was about to take the stage. I get that, too. Fetterman is a scumbag.
But there were things people on Team Left or Team Sane might have missed, though they told themselves that they’d pick up the highlights without having to sit through the actual torture—the sight of the POTUS, the toxins that came with his words and the very sound of his voice.
They might also have missed picking up a bit more determination to up their resistance to Trumpism at this late stage. They might have missed filling up on rage against the Trump machine that had been drained off after experiencing so many outrages for so damn long.
But what those of us who watched the shit show got from it was a vivid portrait of a country in crisis, a great country transformed into a grim dystopia, a nightmare of power abused, corruption embedded, and lies interchangeable with what is true. A national madhouse.
When Trump demonized the Somali people of Minnesota, however, his reckless irresponsibility signed a death warrant for people who have yet to die but surely will. He unleashed the mad dogs of the American right on people with little or no power, tarring them all with the same blood-soaked brush, ascribing to them crimes few if any of them would ever commit. He could just as well have been talking about the Jews as demonized by Hitler in the 1930s. It was a tactic torn from a very old book, rallying the storm troopers with hate and fear.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-o-neill/116330/sotu-a-post-mortem-more-will-surely-die
