The Life in My Years

March 4, 2025.
Aspiring Fuehrer Donald J. Trump gave a State of the Union Speech before the usual gaggle; members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, a bunch of bemedaled generals and anyone in the world who had nothing better to do. Nothing better to do sounds rather apathetic, but the fact of the matter is that after Trump’s 100 minute harangue, nothing better would have been better.

In general, the State of the Union speech has become an anachronism, a holdover from the olden days that goes back to the early twentieth century. It’s kabuki that’s as yesterday as the telegraph and the Model T.

There’s the traditional grand entrance where members of Congress crowd towards the president, supplicating for the honor to shake the regal hand or touch his sleeve or to be recognized by name by whichever fearless leader is in charge at the time (one would think that Jesus himself was entering the building). During the address, members of the President’s party wait for the perfect pauses so that they can rise as one with thundering applause and huzzahs while the other side sits in smug, seated on their hands, silence.

Beginning with Ronald Reagan, the speech now includes props. Props in the form of people who are supposed to add some sort of real life context to the message. The human prop seated in the gallery stands and waves, while the President relates the human prop’s heartrending story of triumph or tragedy. At the end of the President’s tale, men are shouting praises and women are dabbing their eyes.

At the end of the speech, the President’s party proclaims the speech to be Churchillian, while the other party calls it a collection of hogwash, and the pundits analyze it to death while revealing the misrepresentations, and the outright lies. Afterwards, the opposing party chooses someone to give a televised response.

Historically the State of the Union has been a President’s annual message to Congress and the nation, that is meant to communicate the current condition of the country, and the President’s proposals for the coming year. Until 1912, the State of the Union was not an oratory but a written report submitted to Congress. Given the partisan theater that the State of the Union has become, perhaps the whole thing should revert to a written report.

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I was torn between watching Trump’s speech and watching NBA basketball. It was my own sense of duty to remain informed that compelled me to watch Trump. In the end, there was nothing informative about it. The State of the Union address turned out to any one of Trump’s campaign speeches recycled for consumption by the entire nation. In the end NBA basketball would have been time better spent.

It was a spectacle like no other State of the Union I’ve ever seen. On the President’s side it was a collection of lies and slanders, with some insults and intimidation aimed at the Democrats sprinkled in. It was combative and nationalistic and another embarrassment that could be added to an already long and still growing list of embarrassments perpetrated by the Trump Administration.

During his diatribe Trump:
As usual puffed about “a mandate like has not been seen in many decades.” He went on, “We won the popular vote by big numbers.” Both lies.
Claimed that his first month in office was the best in history, with George Washington running a measly “number 2.” If success is measured by chaos, then his claim of primacy is spot on.
Boasted that he “stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America. It’s back,” he said. That’s if you don’t count the press corps that has been locked out of the press pool or the press and media that have been consistently intimidated or Trump’s threat to withhold funds from colleges that allow “illegal” protests (without defining illegal).
Resurrected the canard about immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
In a statement of breathtaking hypocrisy said of law enforcement, “We’re also, once again, giving our police officers the support, protection and respect they so dearly deserve — they have to get it.” This from the man who inspired an insurrection and pardoned insurrectionists who assaulted police officers.
Introduced to the audience a 13 year old boy who had brain cancer that “likely came from a chemical he was exposed to.” He went on, “Since 1975, rates of child cancer have increased by more than 40 percent. Reversing this trend is one of the top priorities for our new Presidential Commission to Make America Healthy Again.” And yet his administration is gutting the Environmental Protection Agency and rescinding regulations. He has ordered that for every new regulation, ten regulations must be repealed.
Once again threatened to take Greenland, saying, “And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”

An excess of servile flattery
Following the speech, the flunkies and bootlicker’s sought to outdo each other with forelock tugging praise.
Fox News’s Brit Hume: “If you ever doubted that Donald Trump is the political colossus of our time and our nation, this night and this speech should have put that to rest.”
Sen. Rick Scott: “Under President Trump’s strong leadership, our allies respect us, our adversaries fear us, and the world respects us again!”
The toady of the year award will probably go to someone named Amber Rose Levonchuck, a model, television personality, former reality TV star, and rapper who gushed, “Donald Trump just gave the greatest presidential speech of all-time.” My guess is that Ms. Levonchuck hasn’t heard or read any other presidential speeches – ever.

Democrats surrender the field – again.
None of the content or tone of the speech should have surprised anyone, particularly the Democratic Party which has spent nearly two months in wilting disarray. March 4, 2025, should have been, could have been, the time to send America a message, by dumping the party’s usual facade of stodgy decorum. The Democratic Party could have chosen to fight fire with fire but decided instead to fight fire with a white flag of deference.

What should have been an opportunity for coordinated protest turned out to be disjointed, uncoordinated milquetoast. Some Democrats held up identical, little round signs saying “false” or “Musk steals.” There were a few hand scrawled signs. Some Democratic members walked out during the speech revealing t-shirts emblazoned “No Kings Live Here.”

And then there was a group of Democratic women wearing pink as a form of protest, something which most people in the viewing public must have wondered was meant to signify. At first I thought it was a statement about breast cancer until I looked it up. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico who conjured the idea, explained that the color signified a “protest of Trump’s policies which are negatively impacting women and families.” She told Time Magazine, “Pink is a color of power and protest. It’s time to rev up the opposition and come at Trump loud and clear.” “Rev up the opposition?” If you have to explain your protest, well, your pink dress might’ve been loud but it wasn’t at all clear.

Towards the beginning of the speech there was a smattering of boos and catcalls directed at some of Trump’s lies. And then the real, albeit temporary, drama took place when Rep Al Green of Texas stood up and shouted at Trump, “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid.” To make sure that everyone knew he was serious, Green waved his ornate cane at the dais, where J.D. Vance and Mike Johnson scowled and shook their heads until Johnson ordered Green removed. Green went peaceably if irascibly. Fair enough, “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.”

Green was the only Democrat who showed an ounce of gumption. After Green was removed, the Democrats were largely cowed for the duration, and Trump made certain to have his way with the Democrats, berating them as a group and calling Elizabeth Warren, “Pocahontas,” the nickname he christened her with during his first iteration.

(To add to their own self-abasement, ten Democrats would, two days later, join the Republicans in voting to censure Green for his behavior. A censure is in essence an admonition that you’ve been bad)

There should have been a coordinated response, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had earlier cautioned his caucus to sit quietly and be good little Democrats. And for the most part that is what they did. It was sad acquiescence.

I recall seeing Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado looking down at his feet as Green was escorted out. Was he embarrassed for Green or was he ashamed of his own weakness?

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A soft rebuttal
Trump’s speech was a long winded, ceaseless recitation of lies and partisanship. At the point during which Trump was doing the dog and pony show of introducing a string of human props in the gallery, and seeing no end in sight, I’d had enough and switched it off. And I didn’t return to watch the Democratic response. Two days later I watched a replay of the response.

Historically, the rebuttals have either been tediously bland or absolute fiascoes. The former are forgotten in ten minutes while the latter are remembered for their shame.

For their response, the Democrats selected newly minted, and quite capable Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. She is a former member of the CIA who was inspired to service by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. And she is largely unknown, which required her to spend valuable, already late in the night, time introducing herself. It was not an auspicious beginning.

Slotkin’s response was underwhelming. To use a baseball analogy, she popped up a bunt when she should have swung for the fences. When addressing Trump’s responses to Russian Vladimir Putin, Slotkin said, “(Ronald) Reagan must be rolling over in his grave.”

As a 71 year old historian and political junkie I fully understood the context of Slotkin’s remark, and her remark was spot on – to a 71 year old historian and political junkie. Viewers under the age of 50 were probably left scratching their heads – unless they were historians or political junkies. How many people not already on Social Security know about Reagan’s quotes about the Soviet “evil empire,” or his famous, “Mr. Gorbachev tear down this (Berlin) wall?”

Who was around to watch? Certainly not the MAGA crowd (not that it mattered). Maybe dyed in the wool Democrats (but they’re already invested). Certainly there were the newscasters and pundits who were compelled by their jobs to watch. How many people who really matter (the undecideds, the Independents, the ones who are getting Trump fatigue) stayed around to watch, or even got up the next morning and said, “ I need to watch Elissa Slotkin’s speech?

More Jasmine Crocketts please.
Jasmine Crockett is a 43 year old Black former lawyer, now a representative of Texas’s 30th congressional district. Like Slotkin she is a newcomer, but one who needs less of an introduction. She is brash and outspoken, perhaps too much so for the sober tradition bound Democrats.

In one famous confrontation with Republican representative and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, Crockett called out Greene for having a “bleach-blonde, bad-built, butch body.” It was classic Jasmine Crockett who is not afraid of being controversial but is, at the same time, as capable and as qualified and as passionate (maybe more so) as Senator Slotkin. Crockett is the pot stirring, shit disturber who the Democrats need to emulate.

When asked for her own response to Trump’s speech, Crockett said, “I would tell him to grow a pair and stop being Putin’s ho.” My sense is that people might have stayed around to watch the rebuttal if Crockett had been tabbed to deliver it. At the very least, people might have awakened the following morning, scrolled through Facebook and said, “Jasmine Crockett said what? I have to watch that speech.”

For better or for (oftentimes) worse, the Republicans have turned the act of challenging tradition and decorum into a measure of success. It’s time for the Democrats to lose their powdered wigs, waistcoats, and quill pens and fight back in kind.

The weak, deferential behavior of the Democrats both during the speech and after was a sad microcosm of a party that is wilting under the pressure, a party that is uncoordinated and seems cowed. Meanwhile, earlier that same day, there were American citizens who had the fortitude to roll up their sleeves and take to the streets by the thousands, doing the job that their representatives have been too timid to take on.