Build Back Better-er

I'm trying to really consider honestly why I didn't watch the State of the Union speech two nights ago and I'm wavering between a couple of conclusions that may not be mutually exclusive.

First is that State of the Union speeches are pretty boring. They try to make them theater with SPECIAL SURPRISE GUESTS, but they're always 90 minutes of a laundry list of legislative stuff that probably won't actually happen. We're supposed to find some kind of drama by reading the room, looking at who claps and who stands up for ovations, but I've been a voter for 30 years now. The president's party whoops and acts like their seats are made of poison they stand up so much, while the opposition sit with arms crossed making kidney-stone faces and wouldn't stand up if the president told them they were on fire. If you're looking to learn something--anything at all--this is the wrong venue.

Second and absolutely paradoxically, I really can't bear the tension of it. Either it's dull (see above) or it's the highest of high stakes, and the idea of the president I voted for going up there and performing less than Reincarnated-Abe-Lincoln-levels of astounding* makes me die inside little bit by little bit, one malapropism by one pacing issue by one cornball joke at a time. Watching it live, I could die, really. I've always been too sensitive to second-hand embarrassment anyway and at that level, with that much weight, I can barely do it. I can dull it and deflect it with pacing, muttering, some swearing, but at the end I'm exhausted and, if anyone else is in the room, present as a fucking lunatic.

So I don't watch, but that the norm. I have a transcript I can see. And there are always clips or, if the mood strikes me, the whole-ass speech (which is weirdly more tolerable pre-recorded, when some of the commentary has been filed and whatever impact it was going to have in the moment has dissipated) on demand. I consume political content now the same I way I episodes of Dungeons and Dragons live-play streams, which seems entirely appropriate (as part of a media landscape) and so shockingly not (considering the real-life stakes by comparison, though I'll let you guess which direction the scales tip there).

I think overall it's just a running theme of a retreat from political engagement; a fatigue born in the post-Facebook era of Debate Bro Culture and the indefatigable network of Incorrect Uncles. It's not that I don't believe in stuff, it's just that when I reach out, I think the dispenser might produce a peanut (this is a very modest goal, one peanut!) and I keep getting electric shock, like a stupid, stupid mouse. But you can't ignore it entirely because if you don't push it at all, the only thing you're guaranteed to get is probably fascism. Which is a lot to put on one stupid mouse.

I need to re-locate the fire, the projectile controlled explosion, the burn. The kind of thing I know I felt when I was my oldest kid's age, who at 22, keeps tacking farther and more loudly left. He hasn't wandered out beyond any thought frontiers I recognize yet, but that's because in my head and heart, I've always been pretty left of anyone I know. My third presidential election, however, was 2000, when we all got an express lesson in practical politics and the way in which elections matter, maybe even over principle. Principle feels like a luxury when you've talked your way out of any power to implement or realize it, but that's almost certainly an artifact being born and raised in a comically strict two-party system. There are still socialists and Liberal-Democrats in the UK system even though nobody really cares and they never get to do anything; for voters and candidates, the small presence seems worth the effort. But 30 years of fights in this stupid zero-sum binary has gotten me gunshy. Believing what I believe, voting for a guy like Joe Biden seems inauthentic, but everyone's guiding principle is "it's better than the other guy." It's convenient to say the whole system is thus built on cynicism to a degree, but the end result isn't just systemic, it's also deeply personal. A cynical or burned out progressive is a centrist. You aren't intention, you are action. Intention is private. It's a secret that, if never expressed, curdles into a lie; if you're a combination of lucky and conscientious (if we can still use that word in this context), it's just a lie you tell yourself. Mostly harmless unless/until you nurture it into full-on delusion: a lie you tell yourself, speak to others and start to believe. 

I don't really want to listen to a Joe Biden speech, not because he's going to stammer or misspeak or disappoint, but probably because he's going to tell me exactly who I am even as I'm trying to pretend I don't really care that much.

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*Not like where it's reincarnated Abe Lincoln and we just accept that as a premise, like it's the Gettysburg Address guy and we're reckoning with the mind-blowing implications of whatever technology/sorcery got him upright again. That's the bar.