Another year, another state-of-the-union address. Except this year, it's President Obama's last. For one party in Congress, the spectacle is a much-need exercise in calisthenics; for the other, an exercise in biting one's tongue and remaining silent for an hour or so. I pity anybody who actually watched the thing, reading the transcript is more than enough pageantry for me. Imagining having to sit through all of the obligatory standing ovations and all of the That said, people do love a circus, especially political junkies. As Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, politics is a guilty addiction.
In her rebuttal of Mr. Obama's speech, Governor Nikki Haley said that "tonight President Obama spoke about grand things. He is best when he does that." Alas, such grand things are meaning for people without any meaning, friendship for those without friendship, religion for those without religion. The grand vision promises that we might matter if our nation is great and, more importantly, if our particular faction is in ascendance. All too many political junkies care more for electing their grand priest to lead the ceremonies than the costs and benefits of their political program. It is they who think that the greatness of the nation can be expressed in whether we—there is always some 'we'—have put a new piece of metal out in space. Yes, because having a man walk on the moon has really made people's lives better. Alas, the delusion that we are somehow better people for being citizens of a great nation will save us neither from death nor our own misery. At least actual junkies tend to only hurt themselves.
Still, there is much to learn from an event planned two-fold as a exhibition of Washington's ruling court and as a much needed hit for those hopelessly addicted. One does have to admire rhetorical flourishes such as: " Food Stamp recipients didn’t cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did." That sentence alone is a good reason to learn the tools of rhetoric, lest one be persuaded by such nonsense. Food stamps and the financial crisis have nothing to do with each other, still the pairing of the ideas can keep one's head nodding until its sheer ridiculousness becomes manifest. I dare anybody to find a similarly catchy retort. Unfortunately, pointing out that the two ideas are entirely disjoint will not do. Much like those under the influence of some substance, sometimes it's best to just wait before discussing ideas with those under the influence of rhetoric.
Among the many insidious effects that a state of the union has on its listeners is the tribalistic reflex to defend one's own side. To either immediately point out how this address is the culmination of one of the worst presidencies known to man or to argue how it is the ultimate politic mic-drop. Let me do neither and point out something that I actually liked, despite not being of the president's political tribe, and that is his declaration he will close Guantanamo Bay. In the speech, Mr. Obama reemphasized his determination to close that monument to the excesses of American foreign policy in a post-9/11 world, something he had promised to do in his first year eight year ago, saying: "leadership depends on the power of our example. That is why I will keep working to shut down the prison at Guantanamo: it’s expensive, it’s unnecessary, and it only serves as a recruitment brochure for our enemies." That action is long overdue.
On the topic of Gitmo, I am reminded of a quote by William Ewart Gladstone, who wrote in 1845 of the British treatment of Ireland in a letter to his wife: "Ireland, Ireland! that cloud in the west, that coming storm, the minister of God's retribution from cruel and inveterate and but half-atoned justice! Ireland forces upon us these great social and religious questions. God grant that we may have courage to look them in the face and to work through them." In a misguided War on Terror, the United States has been the agent of great evil in the world. American policy has run the gamut of horror: From apathetically snuffing out individual lives from 50,000 feet without noticing to toppling a nation without much thought for the future.
Life is enough of a Greek tragedy for us to expect that even a well-intentioned delay from transferring the last prisoner from that shadowy fortress will result in some retribution.
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