Looks like even corporate media outlets are giving a thumbs-up to our president’s SOTU speech last week. However, as one commentator opined, the bar for him was set pretty low. Regardless, give POTUS credit for a crucially needed effective delivery. No cognitive stumbles, fumbles or any verbal gaffe to add to that corporate media’s clear bias in focusing on his cognitive health and little else.
Sure, he has had some awkward delivery moments. However, he provided no further cannon fodder for the Right (and a lazy, irresponsible mainstream media) to use against him.
Speaking of the metaphorical setting of a bar to get over, this writer would opine that our electorate has been given a pretty low bar to get over in this coming November’s election. We are faced with, I feel certain, two of the worst candidates ever offered in our entrenched, members-only, two-party political system. How so?
First, one candidate, who previously occupied the Oval Office, is a convicted sexual assaulter, and currently faces 91(!) other felony charges. Including that thingy that occurred live and in color on major media on 6 January, 2021. Really? And somehow he is allowed to run again? In public, as opposed to behind federal prison bars at the least? Sure he has entrenched followers, but so did Jim Jones, he of spiked Kool-Aid infamy.
Then there is the SOTU speaker from last week. He has followers, but to say the least not all are entrenched. In fact, some have already put him on notice that he won’t get their vote in November unless he uses a certain power he apparently cannot bring himself to act upon. That, in case you haven’t been paying attention (and many do not), has to do with the ongoing bombing of Palestine by Israeli military. Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself, but five months after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that killed about 1,400 mostly civilians, that response has taken the lives of over 30,000 Palestinians, about 40% of whom were children. At the drop of a hat, our president can stop sending (taxpayer) money and weapons to Israel, but he seems not to have a functioning moral compass.
He is a fully functioning, pragmatic, corporatized politician, so pragmatic that the visual evidence of the human carnage taking place on Palestinian civilians apparently precludes being cognitively clear enough to care about the polls showing he is losing potential voters. And thus, the rapist/insurrectionist just might be given the key to the White House again!
That is evidently the choice we have in November. It’s a Hobson’s choice (look it up). Cannot we do better than this?
Joe Harrington
Oak Park