The State of the Union Address; or, "There ain't no Jack S. like OUR Jack S."

The State of the Union Speech was several things, among them surreal – more, that is, virtual reality. The rich and powerful – all but invariably, the former is the reason for the latter – cavorted and reveled in their legislated superiority, paying their nauseatingly de rigueur lip-service to their responsibility as “public servants.”

Mostly, our top patrician’s speech served to only underline what is already obvious:

1. The nation’s chief executive is incompetent, a religious megalomaniac just about totally out of touch with reality.

2. The Nation is in sharp decline, as megalomaniacally out of touch with the real world as is its leader.

3. Our megalomania is largely a female mental disorder, characterized by endlessly dithering talk, productive only of emotion and more talk. More than anything else, we suffer politically as nation and society from PMS. Think about it.

4. Concomitant with that (3 above), the society and nation’s priorities are in disarray, something in the individual mentally typical of hormonal imbalance, largely chaotic and incomprehensible by normal intellect (and hormones).

And then there is that "virtual reality" state I keep talking about, a specific example being New Orleans and the rest of everyone brutalized first by Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita, then by federal government indifference. With that I have real rapport. Empathy, even. I know how the hurricane victims must feel.

When the force five hurricane that is IRS struck my family(s) and me, I kept expecting, as must have the storms’ victims, that the vaunted U.S. “system” would swiftly go into operation – government here did that sort of thing. Here, the individual is important; he has a right to expect that his fellows will come to his assistance in time of disaster and great tribulation. Damned right. Just like they always say they will.

Well, New Orleans and all the rest, how do you feel today – in the hours after the great man’s State of the Union Address? Do you perhaps see how I felt, after a while? As I said the other day here, I still feel that way – like what is couldn’t possibly be.

After all, we’ve been taught from birth that it can’t be. The very expression, “United States of America” means that it can’t be. During every election, our “honorable” “leaders” recite to us some variation on the State of the Union Address: our government is striving mightily to provide for all our needs; everything is wonderful. It can’t be otherwise. It can’t be.

Well? Are you going to believe the patricians in Washington on the Potomac or are you going to believe your eyes and ears, your lives?

You don’t matter, New Orleans. The people of a place far away, another country, Iraq, matter. What could you do with the three hundred billions of dollars your government is spending there, for the people of Iraq? Or the trillion that your federal government intends to spend there, for people of Iraq? Imagine that Mr. Bush had sent one hundred, thirty thousand troops to help you, or that Halliburton were in your city the way they are in Iraq.

Just imagine that your citizens, all of those put out of work by the storms, were employed by Halliburton and the rest. What could your out-of-work people do with the two billion dollars in wages Halliburton workers in Iraq have gotten thus far?

What I would like to hear is the Halliburton State of the Corporation Address. That would really tell us something about the state of the union. But we won’t hear that, will we . . .?

I mentioned “surreal,” virtual reality. This year, something was added to the usual, repetitious, and unreal drivel. The State of the Union Address, Santa Claus, the Christmas Carol (Dickens, I mean), the Easter Bunny stories and all that are national rituals, with about the same bearing on reality. This year, however, we had something new - the Mighty Wurlitzer and Operations Mockingbird apparatus of our military industrial complex masters operating at peak capacity. “Deception is a state of mind, and deception is the mind of the state.”

Of course, I predicted it here yesterday. Kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Like predicting that winter in Iowa will bring snow and cold. Talk about “limited hangout!” (Well, George never admits a mistake in so many words, but everything about last night said “I made a mistake” - didn’t it?). In case you had any scintilla of doubt about the Mockingbird tactic being in use here, there was the only virtually real “Democratic Party” rebuttal to the president's self-expiating oratory.

Folks, we can’t lose. If the surpassing brilliance – all those rhetorical imaginary maneuvers on the rhetorical bunker map – of our Führer doesn’t succeed, the cavalry – our heroic and honorable U.S. Congress – will come dashing to the rescue. Sure.

Just like they did for you, New Orleans.

Just like they – and the nation’s courts – did when I was in your shoes (years before, by the way) in the way you are today.

No, we saw the state of the union, all right. Clear and cold as a one of the winter morning in the Rockies during the time I spent there while running before the hounds of government. The view was as panoramic and far-sighted, too. The people there in the House of Representatives last night were representative, all right, a microcosm of all the nation is and is becoming.

My fellow second-class citizens - second to the citizens of Iraq, that is - you’d better think about that.