The state of the union is ... broken?
Americans aren't as divided as we might think, yet our politics is staring into the abyss
When I thought about writing about the State of the Union this week, I didn’t particularly want to focus on the specific things that Donald Trump said in his address to Congress. Partly because everyone can and does get that information elsewhere. But also because, as I was watching the address, it occurred to me that the words being spoken weren’t really of any great importance … however, the spectacle itself was significant because of how it symbolized greater issues with our politics. So, just a few thoughts …
This week’s State of the Union address was, uh, something. It was the longest such speech to Congress ever by a president. It was also decidedly not an address crafted with the intention of bringing the country together, but rather more of a campaign-style speech in which the president’s main goals seemed to be to ignite culture wars, troll Democrats, blame Joe Biden for anything negative happening in the world, and take credit for everything else. In other words, not your typical State of the Union.
Along the way, Trump managed to moan about how Democrats weren’t cheering for him (“It’s very sad,” he said), taunt a sitting Senator with a derogatory nickname (he criticized “Pocahontas” — Sen. Elizabeth Warren — for supporting Ukraine), and tell an almost uncountable number of outright lies (you can see the fact checks for yourself.)
He also declared to the world that he believes he survived last summer’s assassination attempt because he was being “saved by God to make America great again.” (I don’t know, now that the White House is putting out pictures of him as a monarch, maybe he’s decided to bring back the concept of the divine right of kings.)
So yes, I watched the address. I watch all such speeches by presidents of both parties. But while I found it cringe-inducing, that actually wasn’t my biggest takeaway from the event.
My takeaway was that the address was difficult to watch less because of the cringe factor and more because it feels to me as if we’re watching democracy crumble before our eyes.
And when I say that, I don’t mean it’s crumbling in a dramatic, Germany 1933 type of destruction, but more of a frog in boiling water, slow-motion collapse.
This has been going on for a decade or so, and one could argue the seeds for it were planted back in the 1990s or even the 1960s. But for purposes of this post, let’s consider just a few observations from the State of the Union:
The president did not act as the leader of the nation but rather as the leader of one party, with contempt and disregard for the opposition. Not to mention that he’s also been aligning himself with autocrats abroad over America’s traditional democratic allies.
The two major parties are almost not on speaking terms. Some Democrats walked out of the president’s address — and one of them was expelled for interrupting the speech — while Republicans were so incensed at Rep. Al Green’s protest that one reporter in the press gallery said he’d never “seen rage like that on the House floor.”
A Democratic Congresswoman who was not making a scene but rather quietly holding a sign that read, “This is not normal,” had the paper ripped out of her hands by a GOP Congressman.
If you went on social media after the event, you found both progressives and moderates who were appalled at Trump’s speech, while MAGA supporters were gloating and cheering that the president was “owning the libs.”
The reality is that we’re no longer having policy debates in this country. Politics is being driven by culture over policy, and it’s being led by two tribes who live in different realities.
What’s sad is that I don’t think most Americans are that far apart on how they feel about issues. I’ve thought about writing a larger post about this topic, and perhaps I’ll get to it at some point, but for now let’s just say that if you don’t know the politics of the parent sitting next to you at your kid’s Little League game, you’re probably going to think he or she is a pretty good person. However, if you happen to meet the same person on social media and they make a political comment you disagree with, there’s a much greater chance you’re going to be enraged.
I truly believe that if we could somehow go back in time a few decades to when partisan information bubbles didn’t exist in the way they do now, politics would be vastly different. In a good way. Obviously, we can’t go back, we need to act in the political landscape that exists now. But the landscape at this moment, unfortunately, is one in which one faction of one party — it’s not the entire party by any means, but it does happen to be the faction that now controls that party — is dedicated to obliterating the opposition and establishing an autocratic government.
In this sense, the sign that was ripped out of Rep. Melanie Stansbury’s hands had the absolute right message.
This is not normal.
And this polarization is not only not normal, it’s destructive. It’s dangerous to democracy. Whether we want to admit it or not, we’re sitting in a pot of slowly boiling water.
I know people say that America has come back from such divisions before. Absolutely true. And we can do so again. However, it’s also true that the history is not as simple as all that. In the past it’s taken a disaster for people to find a way to unite again. A Civil War. A Depression and a World War. Assassinations. A presidential resignation. This is not the way forward we want.
But it’s hard to know how to fix something once it’s been broken.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.
Sorry, not trying to be a downer, but this country needs to find a way to wake up from these divisions. We need to be inspired in a good way, not be driven to vote by rage incited by politicians or tech titans or media influencers who care only about their own power.
If the solution were easy we’d have already found it. But somehow, some way, we need a better way forward.
Cover image via Shutterstock.