I found myself wondering many things last night as I listened to the State of the Union address.
I wondered if this is what our founders had in mind. An hour or more of partisan rhetoric and a laundry list of ways to spend our money, along with an attack on the Supreme Court, and well over 100 references to self instead of country doesn't seem like what they had in mind with, "He [the President] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Of course, the Congress--supposedly the recipient of the report--is now just a prop as the president plays to the camera and talks to the American people.
I found myself wondering what it would feel like to be able--inwardly--to stand up and lie in front of millions of people. Multiple times. And to obfuscate, blur, overstate, understate, and--did I mention--lie? To parse a phrase so that it might be technically, possibly, not absolutely false, but also certainly not true? The AP covers the most obvious today, but in many ways the tone and message of the speech was one sustained lie.
I wondered how much of what he was saying he believed. And then I saw when the passion kicked in. He found his passion when he was blaming, talking down to, or excoriating others.
I found myself wondering whether the president, with his vaunted Ivy League education, has read any economics or history.
I found myself wondering whether he is really as out of touch with average Americans as he appears, or if he is too stubborn, or as some have posited, narcissistic, to believe that anyone--let alone tens of millions--can disagree with him.
And I wondered once again, how on earth we got to this point, and if we will come out of it with our country intact.
3 comments:
On Fox a day or two ago Charles Krauthammer described Obama as being in "clinical denial"--one of the psychological stages of grief. I guess that would be a kinder way of looking at it than that he's lying, but no less scary. The more I see of this president the more I think he's a psychopath.
I admit that I didn't listen to the speech. We don't have TV any more and I didn't make the time to listen to it on the radio. This is significant because I don't believe I've missed a SOTU address since elementary school. But later at night the radio kept replaying the same parts of his speech over and over. I thought maybe it was because I was just hearing the small parts of his speech that I had some of the same thoughts as you. My first thought when I heard these was that he was trying too hard to be friends with his audience in front of him-instead of the respect that naturally came from other presidental State of the Union addresses. My second thought was that he was using this address to start campaigning for office again-really sad that he has to do that already-instead of working hard the next 3 years and proving to us that he should be our next president that way.
Cheryl, that's REALLY interesting.
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