A Secular State of the Union Address

Trump is giving a speech this evening. Here's my alternative.

NOTE: This is an update of my March 3rd video livestream monologue.

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Traditionally, in January or February, the President of the United States stands before Congress and gives The State of the Union speech.

This thing uses the same template every year: big claims about the economy, a list of the President’s laudable achievements, and vacuous plays to American patriotism. The speech is also conveniently vague and loaded with applause lines.

There will be a singling out of at least one “great American,” somebody sitting in the balcony. The cameras will focus on a first responder, a Civil Rights Movement hero, or some other everyday person, and the arena will laud and applaud.

Before, during, and after the State of the Union speech, there will be smiles, but any outward expression of goodness will actually be a rictus of contempt for the Other Side. Tonight, as many Democrats are skipping the event in protest, expect many empty seats.

And of course, the speech will change absolutely nothing. By design, it simply reinforces who people were and what they thought long before they walked into the congressional chamber.

Tonight won’t exactly be a State of the Union (that's officially scheduled for 2026), but it will almost certainly be a big Republican ”sieg heil” of white Christian nationalism, cruelty, and lies. If we’re lucky, Trump will form a few complete sentences as he verbally pleasures himself with the usual hyperbole: greatest, worst, always, never, and the repeating of his favorite prepositional phrase: “in the history of our country.” He’ll be petty and childish. He will dehumanize and stoke fear. And he’ll bask in the ovations of sycophantic ass lickers who used to call him Hitler but today call him Daddy.

And as usual, the media will go batshit crazy over every scrambled syllable that comes out of Donald’s word hole.

I have this fantasy about a lightning bolt of new life striking the graves of Founding Fathers who would crawl out of the ground, brush themselves off, walk into tonight’s event, and deliver commentary. I suspect they’d look around and immediately begin drawing up a new Declaration of Independence.

I envision Thomas Jefferson quoting from his note on the state of Virginia:

James Madison would be there, and he would ask the room, “Weren't you listening to the words I wrote way back in 1788?”

Benjamin Franklin would be there, and he would reference his words written back in 1774:

And I have this fantasy that the founders would pick a spokesperson among them to grab the microphone and speak directly to the Big Copper Combover. Perhaps John Adams would do the honors, definantly telling Donald Trump:

“We came here to escape a king…you tissue-skinned, silver-spoon, draft-dodging, pussy-grabbing, vendor-bilking, charity-scamming dancing baby. The oxygen you breathe is a waste of trees. We would explain our secular Constitution to you, but we don't have the time or the crayons. What you have done and what you are doing is a betrayal of everything we intended. It's unequal, unconstitutional, un-American. So we are going to write a fresh new Declaration of Independence from you, Donald Trump, and its first words will be: ‘The door is there; off you must fuck.’”

Donald would not have to walk far to find the exit, because he would be sealed in soundproof dunk tank at the back of the room. Instead of water, the box would be filled with orange Fanta. Security would grab Trump by the arms, escorting him out to a clown car in the parking lot. As he was being taken away, I would warn the attendees, “Be advised, people. Tomorrow he will be selling Trump-in-a-Clown-Car commemorative merchandise.”

And then my actual speech would begin.

(ahem)

To the 89 million eligible voters who stayed home in 2024, the only reason I am not more pissed at your absolute dereliction of duty is pity. Anybody motivated to be unmotivated in a time of national existential crisis must be critically ill or held hostage in somebodys dungeon. It's the only reason that makes sense. It's the only explanation that works. It can't be that you weren't aware of the dangers. It must be that somebody had tranquilizer-darted you, making it impossible to reach the polls by 7 p.m. to do your part for the protections of democracy and decency. Wherever you may have been incarcerated, or in whatever coma you must have been in, I hope there are enough people remaining in our defunded institutions to help you get out next time.

To the 77 million people who checked the box by Trump's name last November, you used democracy to destroy democracy. You let someone play to your paranoia and prejudices. You believed a strong man who promised to save you if you would just surrender pretty much everything. You gave him the keys to the whole American house, no matter who else it hurt.

There was another guy. Not Hitler, but another guy elected in a similar way. His name was Benito Mussolini. Mussolini played to Italian nationalists and notions of restoring national greatness. He was elected through the democratic process, and then he splintered the process so nobody could challenge him.

A symbol of power for his government was taken from ancient Rome: an axe wrapped in sticks called a “fascio,” which is where we get the word “fascism.”

Today, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the oligarchs are the axes. You are the sticks. That's your legacy. You prop them up and fortify them, completely blind to the irony of being sticks that support an axe.

Of course, we know what often happens to dictators, don't we? King Louis XVI was dragged to the guillotine. Saddam Hussein was hanged. Mussolini himself was violently executed. Other tyrants in our history have been kicked out, imprisoned, or ruined in some way.

Now, I have no illusions that a guy as slippery and slimy as Donald Trump is ever going to get officially caught. Thanks to you, MAGA, he has been able to avoid those legal limits referenced by Thomas Jefferson. Whatever else history writes about you, it will say (or it should say) that you deliberately roped the United States on your burning altar of zealotry, ignorance, ambivalence, or outright stupidity.

In today’s climate, Trump is both cancer and symptom…a black light at the crime scene. The rise of American totalitarianism has exposed stains that we just didn't see before…and those stains are you. That's your legacy. You're all about freedom, yet you’re uninterested in the many responsibilities that come with freedom. To you, cooperation and coalition sound a lot like evil socialism. The notion of collectivist values makes you squirm. You’ve bought into the lie that we're not all in this together, because Americans are individuals.

At some point, you’ll hopefully come to learn that no one is an island. Someone or something that you care about will eventually get hurt, and you will scramble like a bewildered child wondering how it all went wrong. In some places, this is already happening.

Trump voter…will you one day reach out to the Americans you’ve harmed? When you lose your job, when you can't afford your cancer medication, when you're broke and sleeping in your car, will others show you more empathy, grace, compassion, understanding than you showed them? What irony it would be if an immigrant, a married gay couple, a trans person, a scientist, a public safety worker in a government job, a foreigner, or another “woke lib” individual/group you previously brushed off donated to you from their savings because your vote killed their Social Security benefits.

A lot of factors have gotten us to this point. There are thousands of gears in the machine, many of them installed by clever billionaires who have been scheming for decades.

America, the billionaires are not going to save you, and it’s unconscionable that three individuals possess more wealth than the bottom 50% of this country. The oligarchs aren’t empathizing from their $500 million yachts. They don’t even see you. How could Elon Musk, worth more than the value of 140 world nations, be connected to an everyday American?

I saw this little item on Etsy…a satirical “Elonald” poster.

MAGA often argues that Elonald is working for the public good because filthy rich people couldn't be motivated by money. Trumpers…listen to yourselves. Watch the oligarchs. While yours is a life of hard work, mortgage payments, medical bills, and the paycheck-to-paycheck grind into an uncertain future, Elon Musk today could lose $358 billion, and he would still be a billionaire.

Perhaps this is the greatness American conservatives are referring to. The ideal is to become a wealth horder, and until MAGA can become them, it will worship them. Their naivety and ignorance boggle the mind.

If you really believe that the billionaire Donald Trump works for you, you also likely believe the stranger in your junk email folder has your inheritance check, the stripper really is in love with you, and the Mar-a-Lago Mango stands ready with a swank guest room, gourmet Big Macs, and free rides for your family in his $400,000 Rolls-Royce.

I suppose infantile thinking should be expected in an America that has declared itself The Greatest while failing to other nations in almost every metric: employment, education, housing costs, crime rates, health care, lifespan, overall happiness.

Our response to that data isn’t to elevate our standards, but rather to hold our flags a little higher in the hopes that claims become true by mere declaration. What else should we expect from a culture which has declared war on science, often more afraid of cures than they are of diseases? Americans blink blankly at climate change, they’re doubtful we landed on the moon, they’re unsure that the planet is spherical, and they scan the world for shiny objects: UFOs, star charts, golden toilets. It’s unsprising they’d be impressed by a Secretary of Defense who has denied the existence of germs. How can anybody navigate the real world when they don't believe in real things?

The late cosmologist Carl Sagan wrote these words in his book, “The Demon Haunted World:”

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

Then we have the hypocrisy of Christian nationalists who huff and puff about being followers of Jesus while adoring a guy who refuses to turn the other cheek, who loves money, who's an egomaniac, who lusts for women and commits adultery, who steals from charity, and who finds glee in crushing vulnerable people.

I suspect if the best version of Jesus Christ showed up in the United States today, MAGAs would shame him, shackle him, and lock him up at Gitmo. Against Trump-cult cruelty, it’s (ironally) often non-Christians who step up to “love they neighbor.”

In the last portion of my speech, I want to speak to the other free countries of the world.

As you’ve seen, the United States is the divided states, but there’s hope to be drawn from that division. Tens of millions of Americans are proud to stand against the oligarchs, the bigots, and the opportunists.

It’s true that we’re disorganized and scrambling to find our footing under Trump’s horrifying blitzkrieg. We don't necessarily know how to best derail the runaway train.

But know that there is a Resistance. We’re seeing demonstrations in the streets. Lawsuits are piling up. Judges are pushing back against unlawful executive orders. Economists are sounding alarms about a “Trumpcession.” Americans are learning how tariffs actually work. Senate offices are fielding over 1,600 calls a minute. Elected Republicans are feeling so much pressure from their constituents that they’re cancelling town hall meetings and seeking shelter from angry voters. (Even Vice President J.D. Vance saw a thousand demonstrators looming over his ski vacation. It was beautiful.) The arsonists are beginning to get burned, and a percentage of former MAGA loyalists are falling out of love with The Man Who Would Be King.

Ukraine has been another rallying point for the Resistance, as a (slim) majority of Americans are demonstrating solidarity with Zelensky. They’re flying flags, marching in the streets, declaring support on social media, etc. The message is clear: Our White House may be currently Putinized, but millions of Americans understand that “Vlad is Bad.”

Trump’s war on the free press has been horrifying to witness, but as good journalists are resigning rather than kowtow to Jeff Bezos and his buddies, the United States is perhaps on the verge of a zeitgeist change: independent reporting from autonomous platforms (like Substack) in a cultural shift away from the Washington Post and major cable networks.

And then we have the satirists…authors and artists eager to lampoon the self-serious punks of privilege. Trump, Elon, and the others undoubtedly winced at SNL’s most recent roast. Editorial cartoons have been ruthless. And the meme-verse has been wonderfully reliable.

And satire isn’t mere fun. Ridiculing power is a liberation exercise. The emperors have no clothes, and so we draw them naked (or in diapers), and the more they whine and threaten, the more creative our outlets become. Commoners know how to cook kings.

This Resistance gives me hope. I hope it gives the rest of the world some hope as well.

I won’t ask other free nations to give the United States a pass. Our government has broken trust. It’s perfectly understandable that the countries of Europe and elsewhere feel inclined to maneuver beyond us. If punitive measures from (former) allies raise our prices, throttle our industries, and limit our options, I understand. Many Americans understand.

But to anyone listening, please know that there are many who are standing against the many, and if free Americans survive this fiasco, if we can crush the oligarchy, overcome the bigotry, and restore sanity, I hope we might one day be given the chance to make things right again.

The United States doesn’t - and won’t - deserve blind trust, but if we one day extend a hand of friendship, I hope it will be seen as an olive branch by those who stood against hate and for our fellow travelers in this world.

The state of our union is frightening. We’re possibly another empire falling (or jumping) to its death. The Republic may not survive. Our future is unknown.

But whether or not we pull through, it’s my hope that history will remember the millions of Americans who refused to go quietly. Who stood for what is right. And who demonstrated what true love of country really is.