I simply couldn’t bring myself to listen to the president last night. I honor the office, or want to. Honor implies some sort of trust and I cannot find that in myself any longer. I did not listen last night because I cannot stand to hear the president of our nation offer full whoppers about the state of the union. It makes me cry.
This morning, of course, the news is full of commentary on the speech. What I read in the more conservative press was bound to be very negative, so I didn’t read that. The straight news offered me absurdities like the president talking about creating jobs while raising the minimum wage. Doesn’t that mean that jobs are bound to be fewer, with employment dollars spread even more thinly? On top of that, isn’t Obamacare bound to cause a hidden increase in the cost of employing anyone? I’ve heard that each employee will carry about $3 per employee hour just to pay for the new healthcare coverage that we absolutely have to have. Who can afford to hire anyone? What I have read about raising the minimum wage is that eventually the economy absorbs the increase with the inevitable result of making products and services cost more. The dollar adjusts and is worth less. This will have the happy result of making the national debt and the deficit feel lighter. Please, someone tell me I am wrong.
I was giving myself a headache reading the news. I’ll listen to the radio, I thought. I have housework to do. During busy work I often listen to National Public Radio. Good, I thought. They will give me a positive spin on the president’s speech. I did hear plenty of highlights of the president and the news was about the various promises President Obama was making. The female voices of the Morning Edition positively chirped. Despite their cheer, the pattern of my thought as I listened was this: “How is this going to work, if that is true?” For example, how can the president promise this and that benefit while claiming to reduce the deficit? Foreign policy has the same kind of pattern. Of course, I could not stop listening.
Ah! Finally came the NPR Morning Edition analysis of the speech. That was what I was waiting for, a positive spin on anything President Obama says that pretends to be intelligent. Steve Inskeep and NPR reporters are bound to offer the silver lining to the clouds I see going forward. (I do get to feeling like Eeyore on a gloomy day.) Today, no, they do not. Even those guys seemed stunned by the — I want to say bald-faced lies, but they used much softer words. The pattern of their thought was also, “How is this going to work, if that is true?” and worse, “That is not true and this seems unlikely to work, as a result.”
Hopeless. I am left hopeless. Maybe it will take a couple of days for the spin on the State of the Union speech to work around to something positive. I will probably only hear or read that secondhand. Unless this proves the rare occasion in politics when both the Left and the Right agree that the president has worked the union into such a state that only in lying about it can he make any public statement about it. I should be watching for that agreement as an agreeable development. Can I stand to listen?
Note: while washing the dishes and listening to the news, I grabbed a knife by the wrong end. The cut on my finger has not stopped bleeding and I now notice that I have blood all over my keyboard. I note that, as it seems somehow apropos. This is what writing feels like lately, bleeding on the keyboard. And it seems to me that conservative postmodernism eschews bandaids.
February 13th, 2013 | 10:06 am
Great post, Kate. I like taking it into the personal like this, connecting the political to the personal will and motivation to engage with the political.
Is that what you meant by the “Emo” tone here at pomocon sometimes? Well, whatever this is, I like it.
And yeah, Kate, it’s just too grim sometimes: Words Fail. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2012/11/07/words-fail/ What a long four years its going to be with this automaton whose most apparent soulful feeling is his willful contempt for the likes of us.
I wish more of those NPR-analyst-type Democrats, and there are still plenty of reasonable Democrats out there, could have been more honest with themselves in November about what they knew at heart about Obama.
God has some purpose for America in letting this man be re-elected–I’m afraid to know what it is.
February 13th, 2013 | 10:59 am
Welcome back, Kate. The speech was genuinely wretched and shamelessly reactionary. Wasn’t even progressive.
February 13th, 2013 | 12:02 pm
[...] Trying Not to Listen – Kate Pitrone, PoMoCon / First Things [...]
February 13th, 2013 | 12:59 pm
But it was Progressive – the line about the Constitution making us “partners of progress” and all the times he tried to preempt charges that govt cant solve every problem. Rubio was overly sentimental and non-specific, thought he was going to cry at one point – like Biden did as he listened to Obama speak about rights. But Rubio did, in a weak kind of way, call Obama a liar.
February 13th, 2013 | 1:06 pm
If it cheers you up, there are some intelligent conservative folks over at TAC (such as Ron Unz) advocating a higher minimum wage as a practical economic stimulant.
The most dispiriting thing about O for me is that he has largely continued (and maybe even exceeded, in droneland) the GWOT policies of the previous administration. His taste in appointments, from Hillary on is also about as atrocious as Bush’s was. (At least he *probably* won’t invade a country needlessly, though you never can tell, such is the bipartisan consensus on bad foreign policy.)
February 13th, 2013 | 1:57 pm
As the saying goes, “there are lies, and there are damn lies.” I could not bring myself to listen last night, as the administration has clearly gone from the first to the second, and most people don’t seem to care.
February 13th, 2013 | 2:59 pm
As Yuval says over there at NRO, the speech was “tonally” but not substantially progressive. It was substantially defensive on belf of minimalist tweaking of unsustainable entitlements. It really didn’t point in any big way to bigger government.
February 13th, 2013 | 3:05 pm
[...] I simply couldn’t bring myself to listen to the president last night. I honor the office, or want to. Honor implies some sort of trust and I cannot find that in myself any longer. I did not listen last night because I cannot stand to hear the Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
February 13th, 2013 | 3:18 pm
” During busy work I often listen to National Public Radio. ”
Mrs. Cheeks allows me to listen to classical stuff on the commie radio channel, outta Pittsburgh. But, I must agree to turn if off when the commie news from NPR comes on.
She’s right, of course.
February 13th, 2013 | 5:02 pm
The best way I can describe the speech was “small”.
Tonally progressive, yes – but not particularly ambitious. Wonky on its face – but with no “there” there.
It just makes me shake my head.
February 13th, 2013 | 5:30 pm
Bob, my point is — THEY KNOW that what the president has proposed is awful and will not work. I look forward to Pete taking the speech apart. But Peter, I really did not hear anything like “the era of big government is over” from the president. Rather the opposite. However, the president cannot really propose any further great expansion of government while everyone knows that we cannot pay for what we have. The minimalist tweaking is going to be damned expensive, although it is a blip in the deficit since the deficit is as large as it is. Yet, he does propose more of the same and says it all will not mean more expense. Who believes that? That matter of the expense of government was what he both spoke to and did not speak to, because he claimed he has the deficit under control, while complaining that Republicans won’t let him get it under control. Well, which is it?
I spent today at the art museum and therefore do not know where the national conversation about this has gone. I can imagine where it has gone, but should not assume. Carl, I am trying not to despair, but truly I understood your cri de coeur, while agreeing with some your critics that our emoting about our despair probably does not much good. Honestly, if we cannot even look at Marco Rubio or any of our conservative young fellows and make ourselves believe “it is morning in America again” then we are likely to descend into one long commentitious whine, which is what I keep hearing from the Right (and certainly not just here) and dread being part of. It will not be morning in America until everyone wakes up and wipes the sweet dreams of heaven on earth from the eyes. Maybe that’s God’s purpose? To let us surfeit ourselves on the state as god?
I wished I could become prosecutorial with the NPR reporters. When did they know what they know?
February 13th, 2013 | 6:44 pm
It saddens me to see you collapsing into the proverbial ‘slough of despond,’ not to mention Carl’s poignant albeit oxymoronic comment referencing ‘reasonable Democrats.’
It strikes me that the Logos becomes real, in immanent terms, to people in times of great suffering.
February 14th, 2013 | 10:43 pm
[...] is a sense that Peter Lawler is right when he called Obama SOTU “reactionary.” There are no new New Deals or Great Societies. There is something really old fashioned about [...]
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact