SOTU, Brute

In a world increasingly riddled with acronyms (or WIRWA, for short), the other day POTUS delivered the SOTU for the fifth time. West Wing has already taught us that POTUS stands for the President of the United States; now SOTU, for State of the Union, seems to be becoming common. I'm waiting for the day when we have acronyms inside of acronyms, the whole damn thing boiling down to PS5, for POTUS's fifth SOTU.

But that's neither here nor there (BTNHNT). I've always made a point of watching the SOTUs, just as I've always made a point of watching as much as possible of both the Democratic and Republican nominating conventions. This isn't because I'm a political junkie; more like an interested observer. (One of the important themes in my script based on the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. is an emphasis on the responsibilities of an individual citizen--the Greeks, who were so badly outnumbered by the Persians in that fight, had probably twice as many men at hand, but half of them were slaves, i.e. not citizens, therefore they were never asked to fight. Contrast that with this.) But on Tuesday, which was also the day the Oscar nominations were announced, I had it in my head to go see Brokeback Mountain--at the same time as the POTU. Should I keep a long-standing bargain with myself, or go see the movie that I needed to see? (Needed to see? Yep--there's a scene in the movie that is almost identical to one I've had in Beaudry for a year, and damn it all, there is now no way I can use my scene and will have to come up with something else.)

In the end, the decision was easy. Watching the SOTU, after all, is not an end in itself; it's about obtaining the information necessary to be a responsible citizen. But when the entire transcript can be found within hours at the New York Times, the information is the easy part. More to the point, the question became this: is there, at this late stage, anything that George W. Bush can say that I will believe? Does the man have any credibility with me at all? And the answer is: nope. So I went to see the movie.

And it was good, and in the end none of it mattered: I got home at 10:00, turned on the TV and CNN was just beginning a complete replay of the entire SOTU. So I got to have my movie and get pissed off at the President! Such a deal! (I must confess, it was nice to be able to see the whole thing--the moment when he complained about Congress not passing his Social Security "reform" and the Democrats started cheering definitely had me cackling.)

Now--what did I think of the speech itself? Well, it boils down to some pretty simple stuff. First, you have to admire the skill of his speechwriters, whose skill at making night seem day and day night is extraordinary, an artistry of bullshit that I think has never been matched. Bush is a dualist right down to his toenails, a black-and-white ideologue who seems incapable of comprehending anything that might be complex. His early statement that "...the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline" was typical of the whole speech. His path is presented as "[t]he only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny," and anything that is not his path can only end "in danger and decline." It was particularly astounding to hear this President--who during the 2000 campaign sounded like such an isolationist--suddenly beating the drum against the dangers of isolationism. But then it has long been evident that the son of the man who railed against a "new world order" is in fact trying to create a new world order, with himself as its head.

Now it might seem that in changing his position on isolationism, Bush is doing exactly what his critics always accuse him of never doing: changing his mind to accept a new reality. September 11th clearly demonstrated that a problem festering somewhere else in the world can now wreak havoc on our shores all too easily, so that isolationism is simply an unviable option. Trouble is, everyone agrees with that, Democrats and Republicans alike. But where George Bush sees freedom "on the march," wearing the boots of soldiers, there are other ways to advance freedom. Martin Luther King understood this, so did Gandhi, so did Jesus Christ. The thing that continually astounds me is how unChristian these Christians are, how incapable they seem to be of embracing Christ's most revolutionary idea: turning the other cheek. Greet hostility with love. The path will be hard, and unclear, and fraught with danger (it is serendipitous that the final volume of Taylor Branch's magnificent biography of Dr. King has just been released, reminding us of just how dangerous and hopeless Dr. King's path of non-violence became), but in the end it is (not to get too dualistic about it) the best way to achieve peace. Freedom need not march forward on the boots of a soldier; it can also take flight on the wings of a dove.