SOTU address 2017

My fellow Americans. By the way, that is the cue for all you illegal aliens, immigrants with green cards, visitors from foreign countries and descendants of former slaves to turn off your televisions and stop using electricity provided by your nearest coal-fired power generating facilities. And how about those coal miners, folks? Aren’t they terrific? They love me. They voted for me. Let’s give those terrific coal miners a round of applause. [Wait two seconds for applause] OK, my fellow Americans, that’s enough for the coal miners. Save your applause for me. I don’t want for your hands to get sore, because believe me, you’re going to be clapping your hands a lot when you hear what I have to say in this, the first State of the Union Address of my amazing presidency. And by the way, your knees will get sore rising up every time you give me a standing ovation, so you might as well just remain standing for the rest of this speech. See how I’m always thinking of your knees? I want you to keep them in good shape for the genuflections you’ll be doing later as I make my spectacular and dramatic presidential exit.

My fellow Americans, this has been an amazing presidency, following an amazing election in which I won by an amazing landslide victory in which my opponent was able to get only two million more votes than I did, despite all the lies the nasty media were paid by my opponent and the Canadian government to tell about me. But that’s alright. Nobody watches CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC or ABC anyway, and nobody reads those third-rate newspapers, the New York Times and the Washington Post, because everyone knows all they tell is lies told by losers paid for by my opponent. Folks, I think that’s the longest sentence I have ever spoken. It was almost forty words long, several of them two or three syllables long. It was an amazing sentence, spoken in this, my first State of the Union speech, three days after my amazing inauguration, which by the way, more people attended than were at the inauguration of President Franklin Pierce on March 4, 1853. And how about that terrific son-in-law of mine, Jared Kushner? He’s an amazing scholar. He looked up President Pierce’s inauguration date on Google for me. He’s an incredible scholar. He’s Jewish, you know. The people of Israel love me, and nobody loves Israel more than I do. Jared is also a terrific son-in-law, because he let my daughter Ivanka keep her maiden name. He agreed with me that Ivanka Kushner sounds horrible. It doesn’t sound daughter-of-the-presidential. And speaking of Ivanka, how about that beautiful necklace she is wearing tonight just above her breathtakingly beautiful cleavage? Replicas of that necklace will be on sale for a staggeringly high price through her incredible website immediately after tonight’s show. Also available on Ivanka’s amazing website are replicas of the tiara that our beautiful First Lady, Queen Melania, is wearing tonight. I don’t mind calling her Queen. Members of the LGBTQ community love me, and nobody loves them more than I do—in a wholesome and proper way that Mike Pence would approve of, of course.

But that’s enough about other people for now. Let me say a few words about how great I have made this country again. Take a look at the Members of Congress sitting in the box seats here at Yankee Stadium—the Capitol Building was much too small to hold all the people who wanted tickets to see this, my first State of the Union address. By the way, I heard that scalpers are selling tickets for up to ten scalps. That’s how much people want to be here on this amazing occasion. Unfortunately, the previous owners of those scalps were unable to be here tonight, but I have sent their families red baseball caps as mementos, just like the red baseball caps you see on the heads of all the Senators, Representatives and Supreme Court Justices who are here tonight. This I can tell you, every one of them is so proud to be wearing the new national uniform. Stand up, all you Members of Congress and Supreme Court Justices. Let the people see your red baseball caps and the almost matching yellow jerseys that say “Make the Washington Redskins Great Again.” Let’s give the members of the Legislative Branch and the Judicial Branch a big round of applause. [Wait two seconds for applause] OK, folks, let’s not overdo it. Save your applause for me.

One of the things that makes this amazing nation so great, especially since I became President, is the spirit of forgiveness. That’s why I have pardoned Crooked Hillary for all her hideous war crimes and for selling state secrets to those who wish to destroy us. I have also pardoned former director of the FBI, James Comey, for his criminal negligence in failing to charge Hillary with all the horrible crimes she committed. He has sent word to me that he is very happy in his new home in Tierra del Fuego, where he moved after discovering that he just didn’t fit in in this country. And because Hillary is a terrific person, and because she appreciates my magnanimous forgiveness so much, she has taught me how to set up my own private email server. It’s very secure. I have been assured that it is by far the most secure server in Moscow. Eat your heart out, Julian Assange.

One of the vicious lies the crooked media told about me before I repealed the First Amendment by executive order on my first day in office was that I was insensitive to the feelings of people of color in this country. That was such an unfair thing to say. Colored people love me, and nobody loves darkies more than I do. And that is why I have changed the name of my residence in Washington, DC. What kind of message was it sending the American people to have the President of the greatest country in the history of the world living in a place called The White House? What an insult to all those people who made this nation great by coming all the way from Africa to pick our cotton, and to all those folks who kindly moved to Oklahoma so the rest of us could build shopping malls and Interstates and oil pipelines on their former hunting grounds. So on day one, I changed the name of the President’s residence. People in central Virginia can read their newspapers by the light of the big sign at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that says Trump House. And how about those terrific people in rural Pennsylvania? They love me in the great state of Pennsylvania, and nobody loves Pennsylvannikers more than I do. That’s why I have signed an executive order to change the name of their state to Trumpsylvania. What kind of a message was it sending the rest of the world when the country with the most powerful military in the history of the galaxy had a state named after William Penn, a Quaker pacifist?

There are so many things to say about my amazing first three days in office, and we only have four or five hours to say them, but one of the amazing things that needs to be mentioned is that next week I will be announcing the winners of the new Medal of Fairness award, which replaces the Medal of Freedom award that former Presidents handed out like candy. The Medal of Fairness will be awarded to patriotic Americans who have heaped the most fulsome praise upon their President. I’m going to keep you in suspense about who the first recipient will be, but I’m going to tease you by giving you a hint. It’s going to be Kellyanne Conway. What a terrific lady. She just can’t find enough positive things to say about me. And what a beautiful smile she has. And so sincere. Let’s give her a big round of applause. [Waits one second for applause] OK, folks, let’s not cut into my time too much. I have so much more to say.

I would like to conclude this, my first State of the Union address, by talking about what a terrific job I have done streamlining legislation. The old way of drafting new bills was a total disaster. Legislators would draft laws that were billions and billions of pages long. Nobody could possibly read all those words. Members of Congress were voting on laws that were so verbose and full of adjectives that no one could possibly know what was in them. Besides, they had so much legal gobbledegook in them that the average unemployed ranch hand in Wyoming couldn’t understand them. So one of the first seventy-five executive orders that I signed during my first hour in the Ovaltine Office in the Trump House was an order saying that no bill in Congress can be more than 140 characters long. I figure if a bill is any longer than my attention span, I don’t even have to look at it. Send me a bill with 141 characters and I get out my veto pen. It’s that simple. Just think of how much money that will save all the taxpayers, not to mention paper. Tree-huggers love me, and nobody loves trees more than I do.

There is just one more thing to say before I conclude this, my first State of the Union address. A lot of people have been worried about how they will get affordable health care now that I signed an executive order repealing every word of the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act. There is absolutely nothing to worry about, my fellow Americans. Before repealing Obamacare, which by the way was a total disaster, by far the worst law in the history of the universe (which my terrific Vice President Mike Pence tells me is five thousand years old)—before repealing Obamacare, I signed an executive order banning all diseases and injuries from this great land of ours. What kind of nation allows diseases and injuries inside its borders? A nation of sick people, cripples and losers, that’s what kind. But America is a nation of winners. So there will be no more disease or injury in this nation. And I have also banned tooth decay, myopia and deafness. And therefore we do not need hospitals, clinics, dentist offices, opticians or veterinarians, which is why no one will need health insurance—unless they travel to some socialist country such as Canada or Norway. Medicare also been consigned to the ash heap of history. We are now a country of healthy, able-bodied winners.

And that concludes this, my first State of the Union address. There is just one more amazing accomplishment I want to tell you about before we leave the stadium. For years I have been deeply concerned about our catastrophic national debt, and I was determined to do something to remedy that disastrous situation. When I looked into the matter, I learned that the cause of the national debt was the huge budget of the Library of Congress, which was costing every man, woman and child in this country trillions and trillions of dollars every hour. So I signed an executive order turning the money-losing library into the biggest used bookstore in the nation. When all the books, magazines, newspapers and archived documents have been sold, the building will be renamed The Trump Library, which will house the book I read in college, all the books ghost writers have written in my name, and terrific dioramas that will inform the American people about my amazing presidency.

And that is all I have time to say, my fallow Americans. But just before we go gentle into this good night, I think it would be good to explain why I signed an executive order to invade Saudi Arabia. Thanks to the lies being circulated by the nasty media, which nobody pays attention to, because they are all a bunch of losers with worthless degrees in journalism from third-rate universities, there has been some confusion about why I ordered our military to make Saudi Arabia a colony of the United States of America. And some people are reportedly worried that I might order a nuclear strike. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, my reason for taking over the Arabian Peninsula has nothing to do with oil. It’s not about the oil at all. It’s about the sand. I need that terrific Arabian sand for the traps in all the golf courses I am planning to build in Russia, Kazakhstan, North Korea and Burkina Faso. And that’s why there’s absolutely no worry that I will order nuclear strikes in the Middle East. Nuclear explosions would wreck the sand. That would be a stupid thing to do, and I don’t do stupid things, because I am the smartest President in the history of the Milky Way.

My fellow Americans, I am going to stop now so I can spend some quality time with my comb and mirror. If I have more to say, I’ll send out a few hundred tweets. And this concludes my first State of the Union address. God bless us, every one—by which I mean all the members of the amazing Trump family and even our Jewish son-in-law, Jared Whosit. God bless you all. And God help the United States of America.

To see or not to see

During the 2015–2016 election cycle, it was not unusual to see Donald J. Trump characterized as a fascist or as a Nazi. Such labels rarely help clarify what is happening, because in stressing similarities they overlook important differences. One important difference between Trump and the Fascists, to give just one example, is that the Fascists had a clearly worked out ideology and an agenda for carrying it out, which they did with brutal efficiency, whereas Trump does not. People who have worked with him say that he has a remarkable ability to “read” people and to know what to say to persuade them or intimidate them or play to their basest instincts, but having the ability to spot people’s vulnerabilities and to take advantage of them is not quite the same thing as having policies for a nation and a plan for how to implement them. Donald Trump is no Nazi. He is much too capricious and unstable for that epithet.

While the candidate who became the president-elect cannot accurately be described as a Nazi, he can be described as being one who does not see. This squib will outline a few of the ways in which Donald Trump and the Trumpistas do not see.

• Trump apparently does not see that his broad-brush negative characterization of some sectors of the population sets an example that others feel justified to follow. All over the country since the November 8 election there have been reports of Muslims, Hispanics and Asians being singled out and heckled, humiliated and told to leave the country. When this was pointed out to him by Lesley Stahl in an interview broadcast on the program 60 Minutes, Trump said he had no idea that such things were going on and was very sorry to hear it. One cannot help wondering how he could not see that his inflammatory rhetoric, repeated loud and often for more than a year of campaigning, would enflame people and encourage some of them to act out on the implications of what he said.
• Trump apparently does not see that by kindling the fiery passions of his followers, he has made a substantial segment of the population feel less safe, less welcome, less included, more fearful, more unwanted and more vulnerable.
• Trump evidently does not see how his frequent remarks on the appearances of women, his characterizing them as either “hot” enough to be ranked as a “10” or as not being capable of satisfying the sexual needs of their lovers or as “not looking presidential” has the effect of trivializing women, making them feel their only value is in their most superficial characteristics and overlooking their real accomplishments.
• Trump clearly does not see that the underemployment or unemployment and the consequent precariousness of thousands of industrial workers has less to do with “disastrous” trade deals and an influx of immigrants “taking jobs” away from citizens than with increasing mechanization and reliance on robotics. He does not see that even if tearing up NAFTA and imposing high tariffs on American corporations that manufacture goods abroad resulted in those corporations returning to Ohio and Michigan and Indiana, only a fraction of the people who used to work on assembly lines and in mills would regain employment. If one observes a modern automobile assembly plant and compares it with films of assembly lines in the 1950s, one sees that a process that used to take hundreds of human workers now takes hundreds of robots programmed and maintained by a handful of highly specialized technicians. Trump does not see that he cannot possibly fulfill his promise to bring jobs back to the rust belt.
• Similarly, Trump does not see that the former workers in the extraction industries have not lost their jobs because of burdensome governmental regulations aimed at protecting the environment, but because of a variety of other factors. As long ago as 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy was meeting with coal miners in West Virginia about increasing unemployment following in the wake of increased mechanization. Slowdowns in the fossil fuel industry have far less to do with environmental regulations than with increased technological efficiency that has resulted in overproduction; when supply exceeds demand, prices fall, and when prices fall, production slows down.
• Trump does not see that abandoning, or refusing to enforce, the many environmental regulations that have been in place for the past few decades will surely result in the further degradation of a planet, the consequences of which will be both immediate and enduring for generations to come. He apparently does not see that a healthy biosphere is of inestimable value and surely far more important than the short-term financial superabundance of a handful of shareholders.
• Trump apparently does not see that the focus on “Law and Order” (which is usually a euphemism for “Surveil and Punish”) has rarely produced the desired results. Prisons are already overcrowded and woefully inept at providing inmates with the resources needed to prepare them for being reincorporated into society on the outside. When the emphasis is on being tough on criminals and punishment and isolation rather than training and reintegration, it is no wonder that the recidivism rate in most American prison systems is unacceptably high when compared to prison systems in Europe. Very little in the American prison environment is either physically, emotionally or psychological healthy. (I will never forget one prisoner writing to me, “I cannot imagine hating anyone so much that I would make him eat the food we are served in this prison.”)
• There is not yet reason not to believe that Trump does not see that being President of the United States is nothing at all like being a king, that a presidential cabinet is not a collection of loyal courtiers, that cabinet posts are not sinecures for one’s friends and relatives and that firing off angry tweets is no substitute for fielding questions from seasoned political reporters in a press conference. He also apparently does not see that newspaper and television editorials can provide valuable feedback that can help the captain of the ship stay a good course. Unless the future president can escape the gravitational field of his own ego, he will not see how much he, and the country he governs, stands to benefit from the humble act of listening to others.

In many ways it is not surprising that the United States is about to find itself being governed by a Not-See executive branch and a Not-See Congress, for all those people in office have been chosen by a Not-See electorate. The privileged too often do not see how life is for the poor, the marginalized, the different. Americans as a whole society as a rule do not see how people in other nations and the indigenous people of their own nation experience the world, and far too many Americans do not see that there is much to learn from the way that the overlooked peoples in their own country, and neighbors in the rest of the Americas, and Europeans, and Asians, and Africans and Antipodeans have found to make life sustainable and fulfilling for their populations. There are far too many Americans who do not see that the United States of America is not the greatest country in the history of the world, or even the greatest country in the present world, or even that the very idea of any country being the greatest country is an absurdity, a bankrupt conceit that precludes the possibility of being great, good or even adequate.

The time is still here—it has been here for my entire life—for the United States to stop being a Not-See empire and to open its eyes and minds and hearts and to join the rest of the human race.