The State of the Division

On Tuesday night Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address. Will I watch it? No, I am hoping TBS will run a Big Bang Theory marathon or maybe I can find back, to back episodes of The Andy Griffith Show somewhere. I started watching some of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on Netflix Sunday. Trump’s speech would give me a good excuse to binge watch the rest of them.

The bottom line, there isn’t anything “our” President can say Tuesday night that will make me feel any better about his young Presidency. He is expected to give an optimistic, unifying and conciliatory speech and I would add to that list of adjectives, insincere. The hard truth is this, Trump is not capable of unifying all of America, just a small deplorable segment. And his unification tools? Fear, intolerance, deception and hate.

The problem with having a reality television star as President is that his speeches attempting to sound presidential come across as fake and hollow. He hasn’t provided the American people, or at least 65% of us, with a bench mark on how presidential he can act other than those staged and heavily scripted events like the international conference in Davos, Switzerland. His Jekyll and Hyde act will be on full display Tuesday night for the world to see and that is just what it is, an act.

But Republicans have set the bar very low for Trump hoping that he will simply “appear normal” never mind presidential and stick to his talking points, which will be very predictable, Fox News, and Sean Hannity predictable. Trump will take credit for everything from the stock market to the sunrise this morning and he will do it with the kind of medicated, fresh spray tan calm that only a heavy dose of Valium could insure. 

But rest assured, no matter how well his “speech” is received, by the end of the week he will become the Trump of old, the one the Deplorables know and love spewing insults at those who disagree with him, shifting blame to others when things go wrong, and celebrating his own would-be achievements in a hyperbolic way that offends the rest of us. As my grandmother used to say “You can put red lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig”.

No I won’t be watching “our” President address the nation Tuesday night because “our” President doesn’t represent the hopes and dreams I have for my children. He doesn’t speak for me or share my morals or values. And most importantly, he doesn’t treat people the way I would want to be treated or believe in the words “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”