State of the Union

To me, a State of the Union address ought to be honest and fair, identifying both strengths and weaknesses to be clear about the work that has to be done. Forget it. Trump’s speech was filled with every possible rah-rah-America patriotic cliché. The silliness of Congressmen standing and applauding every other sentence just dragged things out and created partisanship during a speech supposedly about cooperation.

I’m glad those deserving individuals were acknowledged and applauded, but I can’t help feeling that they also being used as part of the pageantry. With the cameras running and millions watching, gestures, clothing , seat groupings, constant scanning of the camera to see who is clapping or not is all part of the opportunity to make a political statement.

While I do applaud some of Trump’s initiatives, it is hard to take seriously all these promises and platitudes that are coming from the same mouth we’ve been listening to for 2 years. They seem ingenuous, even absurd. He takes credit for results on the economy and the military that were initiated long before he came into office. He goes on about anti-Semitism without a word about racism. He fails to touch the vast problems with American education and poverty. He identifies the illegal alien who commits murder with no attention to the larger number of killings and gun deaths of Americans by Americans. Drug dealers would be out of business if Americans would only stop using drugs, but drug dealers are the total story.

I watched, but I didn’t like that this was the image of American democracy. And, of course, his election was the single factor that prevented a war with North Korea.