(This is political. If you’re tired of politics, skip to something else.)
I didn’t watch Kaiser von Shitzenpants’ address to the Reichstag last night, but from everything I’ve read — someone called it “probably the most divisive State of the Union in history” — I think I’ve got the flavor of it.
None of what’s currently happening is going to end well for us in the United States. The pathways from here are pretty grim.
To be clear: I think the side of justice will ultimately win.
As I was leaving work the other day, there were two young guys ahead of me — probably in their late teens or early 20s — who I would have labeled jocks of some kind. Tall, athletic, appeared to be wearing warm-up jackets. One held the door for the other, and then they walked off down the sidewalk holding hands.
That just didn’t happen when I was an undergrad.
This administration is trying to undo 100 years of progress. That’s not going to happen quietly. Do you think those two young guys are going to be willing to go back to an era when gay people were neither seen nor heard? Do you think Black people are going to be willing to return to an era when they were powerless to control their own futures? Or women are going to be willing to return to an era when they weren’t allowed to own property or even have a bank account without their husband’s consent?
Americans — who can’t even agree on whether pineapple should be allowed on pizza or whether or not to make a right turn on red — are not going to quietly accept a federal dictatorship, especially one as shambolic and transparently corrupt as the one that this pillow-fisted mama’s boy (H/T Christopher Titus) is trying impose.
But it’s going to be an ugly five or 10 years in the U.S., and we’re going to make it increasingly ugly for our former allies around the world.
Some people like to say, “My country, right or wrong!” But they’re misquoting that.
The original phrase, from the U.S. Navy Commodore Stephen Decatur, was a toast following the War of 1812: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”
In the 1890s, U.S. Sen. Carl Schutz simplified it, but kept the spirit: “Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.”
I know Americans like to think of ourselves as the “good guys.” We were never always the “good guys” we’d like to think we are, but when we were wrong, we did work to set things right. (There is a British joke: “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”)
I’d be hard-pressed to remember when we were deliberately being the bad guys — until now.
- When we’re cancelling emergency shipments of food and medicine to starving countries —
- When we’re kidnapping foreign leaders —
- When we’re telling immigrants “we just want you to come here legally” and then arresting them when they arrive for their legal immigration hearings —
- When we’re bombing fishing boats — and then strafing the survivors — and the president is bragging that “no one wants to go fishing any more” —
- When we’re threatening to bomb friendly, democratic, free countries while giving aid to dictatorships in the Middle East and Eastern Europe —
- When the President of the United States is bragging about all of the bribes he’s receiving —
Well, then we’re the bad guys, and we’re doing evil on purpose.
I was listening to an interview that Marc Maron did last year with Seth Meyers. Meyers noted it was easy to handwave away the 2016 election and say, “well, this isn’t who we are,” but after the last 10 years, it clearly is “who we are.”
We, as a country, have decades of work ahead to repair the internal decay and rot. The United States is a house that’s been flooded up to the second story and now has mold behind the walls. Cleaning and patching isn’t going to fix it. We’re going to have to rip out the drywall and rebuild.
Here’s Bill Kristol — founder of The Weekly Standard, former Dick Cheney advisor — writing about the real State of the Union:
The publication of the Declaration of Independence didn’t achieve independence. That took years of war. And like Mad King George, Trump will not give up easily. He has many levers of power in the executive branch at his disposal. He and his supporters have tons of money to spend on the coming elections. They have the acquiescence of many elites outside of government. They will not go gently into their well-deserved night.
(…) Trump will, as Steve Bannon memorably put it, “flood the zone with shit.” The good news is that the American people seem increasingly sickened by the odor. But we have a long struggle ahead to get rid of it.
One election, or two, or four, isn’t going to eliminate the stink. Anyone — Democratic, independent or “never-Trump” Republican (I assume there are a few left) — who doesn’t understand the scope of the job ahead needs to get out of the way.