When President Donald Trump undulated up to the lectern in front of the Congress, his cabinet, and a few Supreme Court justices, along with guests and media, to give his first State of the Union address, the question wasn't so much what he would say but how he would say it. Would he point out Democrats and say, "Hey, Pocahantas! Howyadoin, Cryin' Chuck!" or would he turn around and tell Pence and Ryan to smell his fingers and say, "Yeah, who's got two tiny thumbs and has been grabbin' pussies? This guy"? Or would it be the presidential president who shows he can president just like any president by pretending for a short while that he isn't completely barking mad and can read a teleprompter without gagging on his dentures?
What we got was 90 minutes of tedium, self-aggrandizement, and the vision of a nation that is one Trump away from teetering into murder and rape and war and anarchy, where gangs of "illegal immigrants" roam the streets and kill and rob at will, where North Korea is an existential threat and must be stopped no matter what the cost, where the only good that government can do is to stop taking money and to completely gut social programs, and where loyalty to the president is more important than loyalty to the country. Trump might have made pretty noises about the good of the "people," but their goodness or greatness is only measured relative to what they do to make real Trump's fantasy vision of a racially purer citizenry with a uniform ideology of American capitalism above everything except race.
How fucking racist was the speech? Trump spent more time talking about evil Latino immigrant criminals and the MS-13 gang than he did about the ongoing disaster in Puerto Rico, which he mentioned once in passing. He savagely exploited the mourning of two sets of parents whose teenage children were killed by gang members, describing how "These two precious girls were brutally murdered while walking together in their hometown" as their parents sobbed in the gallery. It was gruesome and cruel, even if the parents came their of their own volition. It's gruesome and cruel whenever any president trots out the people in pain as props.
Trump pushed the buttons that have made white supremacists thrilled at the speech, calling the killers "illegal, unaccompanied alien minors." It's a little like saying that Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein were both "white people from Wisconsin." That might be true, but it ain't why they were into carving people up. And, to completely shit all over immigrants brought here as children, he exclaimed that "Americans are dreamers, too." No shit. And when you name a fucking bill after them, it'd be appropriate to say that. It couldn't have been clearer at that moment that for Trump, for the mindlessly cheering Republican teat-suckers, "American" means "white."
The savage racism didn't end there. Democrats actually audibly jeered when Trump said of immigration, "Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives," using the term "chain migration" instead of "family reunification."
First off, it's a complete fucking lie. Second, Trump's goddamn mother came to this country at age 19 after her sisters were already here. The only reason it wasn't "chain migration" that brought her here is that it didn't exist in the early 20th century for people from Scotland. It gets worse. Trump said, "The United States is a compassionate nation. We are proud that we do more than any other country anywhere in the world to help the needy, the struggling, and the underprivileged all over the world" before saying, essentially, "But fuck all that noise. We gotta care about our poors." Putting aside that the United States doesn't come close to doing more than any country for refugees and others, let's go back to Mama Trump. She arrived from Scotland in May 1930, when the fuckin' Great Depression was dream-raping America. Mama Trump came here because the economy of Scotland was fucked and there was no work. And what did Mama Trump do when she got here? Did she say, "Oh, no, please, hire Americans before me"? Fuck no. She got jobs as a maid and a nanny.
In other words, Donald Trump's mother was an immigrant who literally took jobs from poor citizens. But I'm sure it's okay because she was from a white shithole country and not a dark one.
On it went, with Trump deliberately tossing applause bombs for the Republicans that he knew the Democrats would stay seated for, things like explaining "why we proudly stand for the National Anthem," or that black unemployment is at a low. You can see the ads where Nancy Pelosi won't stand when Trump mentions the flag or some such shit.
On it went, with Trump hoping to undermine the civil service protections of government employees and make them apparatchiks to the whims of the administration: "I call on Congress to empower every Cabinet Secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people." Somewhere in Hell, Mussolini called across the shit-and-razor pool to Hitler and said, "Get a load of this motherfucker." Stalin, getting burnt to a crisp in the flame-thrower tanning booth, gave a shaky thumbs up.
On it went, and it was like the goddamn thing would never end, with Trump lying about the auto industry, lying about coal mining, lying about trade deals, lying about funding infrastructure, lying about regulations holding back businesses, lying, lying, lying. George W. Bush was a lying son of a bitch, but at least the lies were mixed in with truth. With Trump, it's lies to support other lies, lies as the foundation and lies as the decoration, the extravagant dispersal of lies for the sake of just fucking lying, just for shits and giggles, just because no one who matters to these evil pricks and cunts would ever call them out for lying, and, if they do, well, they can be lied about, too.
On it went, with Trump parading out Ji Seong-ho, the Korean man who lost his limbs doing torturous work in North Korea, eventually escaping from there. Trump used him as an example of the cruelty of that nation and as an example of someone who converted to Christianity. Which was all fine, except for the fact that Ji is a fierce advocate for the rights of the disabled, something that Trump completely ignored, possibly because his assault on the Affordable Care Act will harm many disabled people. Oh, and also, Trump and, indeed, the United States had not a goddamn thing to do with Ji's escape and later successful life. He was there just as a propaganda tool, sadly, for what is seeming more and more like an inevitable war with Kim Jong-un.
Goddamn, what a sad, pathetic drone of a speech. What a deliberately cruel and calculatedly triumphalist bore. The only thing worse was when Republicans chanted, "USA!" repeatedly at the end, as if they needed reminding of who really runs the joint.
Oddly, Trump only mentioned Russia once, in passing, as one of many "rivals."
