The State of the Union I’m Hoping For

This post runs contrary to my general rule against writing and posting on the same day; it arises from an email exchange I had with a close friend earlier today.

President Donald J. Trump delivers his Presidential State of the Union Address to Congress this evening.  All who care are aware that Mr. Trump’s conduct of the presidency during the first year of his second term has been so disreputable that his approval rating has plummeted among all voter segments save his hardest-core supporters, and in even that segment he has sustained erosion.  I have heard commentators opine in recent days that because the speech will be watched by a wide swath of Americans across the political spectrum, the President’s advisors see this State of the Union Address as perhaps his last opportunity (think about that; he’s only been back in office a year) to right his sinking popularity and at the same time provide a campaign lifeline to Republican candidates representing swing areas (and possibly not-normally-swing areas) who seemingly currently face the prospect of a political bloodbath.  To achieve the result that Mr. Trump’s advisors and his terrified Republican officeholder supplicants hope for, Mr. Trump will need to project a reasonable tone, acknowledge the majority of Americans’ fears about their economic circumstances and the country’s future while laying out specific proposals to address these Americans’ financial plight, express regret about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling vitiating his tariff policy without descending into vituperation, point out the way his administration has shut down the border while perhaps indicating that ICE will be adopting a lighter touch in its activities within our cities, etc., etc., etc.

I am confident that these Republican worthies (obviously using that term loosely) fervently hope he will avoid a harsh, combative tone of denial, or claim that America is in a golden age, or claim that America is loved around the world, or any declaration that affordability is a hoax, or any declaration that his administration intends to take steps to prevent widespread voter fraud in the 2026 elections, or personal attacks on Democrats, or racially-tinged attacks on immigrants, or above all, personal attacks on the Supreme Court – including the two Justices he appointed — that recently struck down his fairly unpopular tariff policy.  (I admit that I felt perverse amusement when following the adverse decision, Mr. Trump referred to the three Republican-appointed Justices who rejected his claim to broad tariffing authority as “lapdogs”; I considered his comment an unwittingly indictment of the three Republican-appointed Justices who did vote to uphold his tariffing authority – Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh – who are, indeed, lapdogs.)  

You and I are both sufficiently aware of my fallibility, but I am nonetheless going to make a straightforward pronouncement here:  Mr. Trump is at this point congenitally incapable of performing in the manner his advisors wish and his Republican supplicants need to politically survive.  He will claim that under his leadership, that our union is strong; that the economy is strong; that the world is more secure, and he alone has been able to bring peace in about 100 countries (none of which actually seem to be at peace 😉); that he does intend to take steps to avoid voter fraud in certain areas (all Democratic strongholds); that ICE has made the country safer; and that the Supreme Court has acted shamefully and hurt our country by its recent tariff ruling, and he intends to impose more tariffs.  In short, he will adopt the combative tone and say all the things that his advisors and fellow Republicans want him to avoid. 

Although I have continued with my recent months’ habit of not watching or listening to Mr. Trump’s lies and loathsome diatribes – my heart is not that strong – I intend to watch the address tonight, hoping for the best – the best being that Mr. Trump will indeed perform as I have predicted.  Although one is heartsick at the hardship, the lost and ruined lives, the irreparable damage to innocent children’s psyches that this Regime has cruelly wrought, it is seemingly clear that each report of a new despicable outrage by the Regime – from its ICE’s Nazi-like activities and the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, to its continued refusal to even acknowledge let alone address many Americans’ economic plight, to its continued refusal to provide impoverished Americans with healthcare financial assistance, to its refusal to follow the Epstein law and provide justice to the Epstein victims, to its threats to invade Greenland, to its attacks on its own Supreme Court (which must make even some semi-perceptive MAGAs wonder if he’s acting legally), to its plastering Mr. Trump’s name on and flying banners with Mr. Trump’s picture from various federal buildings, to … you get it (I apologize if I have left out any of the Regime’s shameless activities you find the most offensive) – has, at one level, become means to an end.  As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in June, 1940 – and I make this analogy intentionally, and not lightly – “We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering.” At this point, I don’t want to see Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., or Epstein-implicated Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick fired; they serve the same emotive rallying point for Regime opponents as MAGAs used to point to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.  If Mr. Trump was savvy enough to jettison some of these subordinates, it would take some of the steam out of the Regime’s opposition.    

Returning to a theme you have heard me repeat here endlessly: given the majority of American voters’ selection of Donald Trump in November of 2024, I – like our European allies — have lost and will probably never regain confidence in the good sense of the majority of American citizens.  It is clear that in order to get the pivotal segment of our citizens who inexplicably thought Mr. Trump was the solution to their difficulties to continue to see reality, they must be regularly confronted with Regime outrages.  Ironically – and at the same time unfortunately and happily — Mr. Trump seems willing to accommodate this need.

I would suggest that we must face the fact that at this point there is no chance – zero — that we as a nation are in a position to face the myriad of pressing substantive problems we should be addressing – the economic insecurity of a large percentage of our people, what meaningful work can be developed for our citizens whose skill sets may be less well suited to the automated future, our federal debt, climate change, artificial intelligence, progress in the health sciences, the improvement and broadening of our education systems, a coherent immigration policy, our proper role in world affairs, you name it – until we manage to stifle the Regime of ignorance, denial and autocracy now governing our country.  We need to put our substantive concerns aside, and for the present absorb the future Regime outrages that seem likely to further distress the pivotal middle segment of our citizens as setbacks that might ultimately enable us to preserve our democracy.  Let the President continue to blithely deny that many Americans are suffering economically.  Let him idiotically withhold vaccines, moronically declare Tylenol unsafe for pregnant women.  Let him impose more illegal tariffs.  Let him withhold the last 2 million Epstein documents.  Let him fly his picture from every building in Washington.  Indeed, let him bulldoze the West Wing, erect a castle, and paint his face on it.  These are arguably means to an end. 

There are, of course, two exceptions to this rule.  The first is that we don’t want any more people’s lives sacrificed to Regime violence.  The second involves the measures that the Regime is almost certainly going to attempt to subvert free and fair 2026 federal elections.  These must be contested by all legal and peaceful means available.  I’ll venture that the culmination is likely to arrive this summer when Mr. Trump knows — when it absolutely sinks in – that a fair election will be a tidal wave against him; that he will be facing circumstances, unlike his loss in 2020 — which, although clear, was undeniably close in states such as Georgia and Wisconsin – where most citizens will intuitively know from their own feelings that despite Regime claims, Republican defeats weren’t “rigged,” weren’t due to “voter fraud.”  

That will be our most dangerous period.  At the start of the Regime’s term, I thought the struggle might be coming in 2028; as I’ve indicated more recently, I think that it will be upon us in 2026.  (Get ready to attend your next local NO KINGS rally on March 28.  😊)  In a positive statement in which I wholeheartedly believe:  if we can get through it, we are still the United States of America, the most democratic nation in the history of the earth, which despite its faults has through its goodwill, industry, and initiative done more good for more people than any other nation in history and solved the greatest number of the greatest problems humankind has faced.  The substantive and political challenges we now confront can be addressed – if not entirely during my generation’s lifetime, during the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren — if we manage to secure our democracy.

We’ll see what happens tonight.