(02-26-2026, 02:57 AM)ANNEE Wrote: There is issue when a poster considers anyone who doesn’t agree with them to be opposite.
I consider myself to be “Logical Centrist”. I can agree with part of what is stated without agreeing with all of it.
I mostly post in social issues. I support equal rights/opportunity. Some transfer that as Left/Liberal to ALL subjects — which is incorrect.
TOPIC: I am still reading opinions/assessments of Trumps speech. It’s fair to say he rambles. But did he address specifically any pertinent topic?
Other than handing out some long overdue chunks of metal, probably not. I really can't recall any political speeches, especially any SOTU speeches, in a very long time that actually addressed by specifics any pertinent topics. Most SOTU addresses seem to have devolved into "lookit me, and lookit what I done!" speeches.
Matter of fact, the rest of political speeches, in the main, are just some blowhard talkin' big crap about what they are gonna do, and all such promises are usually entirely forgotten once they have won the election and are in office.
Take for example last fall's elections in Virginia. The gubernatorial candidate ran on increasing "Affordability" and "law and order" and, to a slightly lesser extent, "getting Trump". Once in office, she immediately set about increasing affordability by taxing the hell out of it and making everything MORE expensive and LESS affordable.
The only real promise she even tried to keep was "getting Trump", which she did, so far, only by declaring the state was going to utterly ignore Federal law.
It's gotten so bad that Boeing, who had been in Northern Virginia a little less than 4 years, is picking up stakes and moving to St. Lois, Missouri, a place they see as still being a "free state", in sharp contrast with what Virginia is becoming. that's going to be a lot of money leaving the Virginia economy which is also likely to affect "affordability".
She's also utterly ignoring not one but TWO court orders by trying to run an illegal (by state law) off-season referendum intended to disenfranchise and un-voice roughly half of the state's citizens at the Federal level by gerrymandering House districts VERY heavily in favor of her own party. That's going to silence the voices of her opposition, something any tin-pot dictator does when they first set out to dictate.
That (disenfranchise the political opposition) and disarming folks... both of why she is leaning heavily into, just like any good little Dictator does. Frankly, regarding the disarmament thing, Virginia is starting to wonder what ELSE she might have planned for them, and what she thinks they might shoot her for when she tries to do it to them.
To address "law and order", Virginia politicians are, right now, trying their danmdest to unleash a criminal class upon an unsuspecting (and, they hope, entirely disarmed) population. They want to empty prisons of violent felons and turn them loose again on the unsuspecting - and, they hope, defenseless - Public. I guess maybe that is one way to "address law and order", but if so it's sort of a left-handed means of addressing it, and not quite what Virginia had in mind I think.
I could be wrong about that - the Attorney General that Virginia put in office has fantasies about killing off his political opponents and their children as well, so maybe actual "law and order" isn't what the voters who went to the polls had in mind... but hell fire! That's the Attorney general, fantasizing about doing unspeakably illegal things! What do you suppose the public expected when they voted him in? So, yeah, I could be wrong about that one.
That's not to mention her assault on the Constitutional Rights of Virginia's citizens. She never even mentioned that was in the offing when she was campaigning.
So much for "affordability" and "law and order" in Virginia.
It's like that with almost all of them, Left, Right, and Center. They promise one thing, but act on entirely another. Generally speaking, one cannot listen to what a politician SAYS, we can only watch what they DO to evaluate them. It's why politicians as a class have gained a reputation as professional liars.
I can't say much good about Trump. He's an asshole, but he's OUR asshole... and whatever one may think of what he SAID on the campaign trail, good or bad, it's hard to deny that what he said is exactly what he set about trying to DO.
So there's that.
People just bitch. They bitch about politicians lying to them, and they bitch about when politicians do what they say they are going to. People just bitch.
That's why I rarely if ever even bother listening to political speeches any more. I bypassed the SOTU entirely - I had more important stuff to do... like take a nap.
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“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake