State of the Union

I was thinking of doing another analysis of this year's speech, like I did a couple years ago. But I had class and couldn't watch it live, which is a big part of it.

I was trying to read the transcript this morning to maybe to a briefer version but I couldn't get through the whole thing. I just got tired of hearing the same shit over and over.

It's called the State of the Union, but it's turned into a show of rhetoric (which is why I like to analyze these things). I remember someone once mentioning that Lincoln used to make his Union speeches short, around 20 minutes, and he actually just talked about how the country was doing—he wasn't trying to sell us on any kind of speculative rhetoric about his party.

Those were probably the days, back when there were politicians you could trust. I know that sounds trite and old, but god damn it's so annoying to know that it's true.

I was trying to see how impartial I could be yesterday and asked myself to say something good about Bush.

I couldn't.

Then, I said, think of something good to say about Clinton.

I couldn't.

And that's pretty much all you need to know right there.