I understand the rage and the confusion that our liberal friends are feeling this morning. Last night President Trump gave a State of the Union speech that had absolutely no shout-outs to the liberal agenda. Nothing about protecting gays from Christian bakers; nothing about transgender bathrooms, nothing about the innocence of the Dreamers.
I agree with the liberals: what was advertised as a unifying speech was in fact a clever and cunning attempt to divide the American people.
Let us analyze the speech in the light of my reductive Three Peoples theory. Was there a word for People of the Creative Self, artists and writers and activists? No there was not. Was there a word for People of the Subordinate Self, workers and peasants and victims? No there was not.
Instead the whole speech from beginning to end was a riotous celebration of the People of the Responsible Self, the ordinary middle class that follows the rules, goes to work, and obeys the laws.
If you are a well-born white liberal living in some urban ideopolis, Trump doesn't care about you. If you are a helpless illegal immigrant brought here as a child, Trump doesn't care about you. But if you are an ordinary middle-class American, with a job and a house and a family, then Trump absolutely loooves you.
Oh, and if you are a legal immigrant, that went through the process step by complicated step, then Trump is speaking to you.
Trump's love was made manifest in the call-outs to the human props in the gallery, the tradition that Ronald Reagan started in the 1980s. Everyone of his props, from the kid planting flags on the graves of veterans to the black parents of two girls killed by MS-13 to the couple that adopted the baby of a drug addict to the North Korean defector with the crutches, everyone of these people were and are ordinary middle-class people doing the right thing, and they were, of course, every color of the rainbow. There were no "activists" and no "victims." And, of course, Trump finished with his memorable celebration of the Capitol itself, which stands under a statue, standing atop the Dome, of Freedom.
Wow. I didn't know that. But now I do.
So what Trump was doing was encouraging more Americans to identify as good ordinary Americans doing the right thing, rather than identify as specials, whether special snowflakes or special activists or special victims, which is what you get night and day from the mainstream media and the Hollywood media.
So no wonder the usual suspects were flummoxed last night, and no wonder Joy Reid complained.
And let us now mention my Perfect Plan, which is a set of marching orders for the Ruling Class, people like Joy Reid.
Part One of the Perfect Plan is for Joy Reid to help and encourage the lower-class to rise up into the middle class, on the notion that to live a happy life in a nation state of the exchange economy you need to get with the bourgeois culture or you are going to be miserable. In fact, of course, Joy Reid does the opposite.
Part Two of the Perfect Plan is for elitists like Joy Reid to act with compassion and understanding towards the ordinary middle class, like the folks that the president called out in the gallery. In fact, of course, Joy Reid sneers at people like that as evidenced by her tweet.
See what I mean? President Trump's speech was completely aligned with my Perfect Plan. Strategically he is trying to put the Joy Reids of the world on the back foot, by encouraging all Americans to identify as patriotic responsible middle class Americans, the People of the Responsible Self, and by giving to ordinary middle-class American identity and dignity and respect that the liberal elite is determined to deny it.
The liberal ruling-class strategy is designed to marginalize and demean the ordinary middle class, by celebrating the upper-class creative culture of artists, writers, and activists, and by celebrating the world of the victims. This was brought out by the Democratic response to the SOTU by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA), who talked about marching and protesting in support of the Dreamers. And about transgenders.
Yeah. Marchin' and protestin'. Not a word about that in Trump's speech.
Here's my bottom line. Trump is obviously making a mega-play for the ordinary middle class, the people we saw in the gallery in the House chamber. Will he succeed in bringing the ordinary middle class, the "working families" that the Democrats talk about, into the Republican tent?
The answer is: We Don't Know. That's why we have elections.
I agree with the liberals: what was advertised as a unifying speech was in fact a clever and cunning attempt to divide the American people.
Let us analyze the speech in the light of my reductive Three Peoples theory. Was there a word for People of the Creative Self, artists and writers and activists? No there was not. Was there a word for People of the Subordinate Self, workers and peasants and victims? No there was not.
Instead the whole speech from beginning to end was a riotous celebration of the People of the Responsible Self, the ordinary middle class that follows the rules, goes to work, and obeys the laws.
If you are a well-born white liberal living in some urban ideopolis, Trump doesn't care about you. If you are a helpless illegal immigrant brought here as a child, Trump doesn't care about you. But if you are an ordinary middle-class American, with a job and a house and a family, then Trump absolutely loooves you.
Oh, and if you are a legal immigrant, that went through the process step by complicated step, then Trump is speaking to you.
Trump's love was made manifest in the call-outs to the human props in the gallery, the tradition that Ronald Reagan started in the 1980s. Everyone of his props, from the kid planting flags on the graves of veterans to the black parents of two girls killed by MS-13 to the couple that adopted the baby of a drug addict to the North Korean defector with the crutches, everyone of these people were and are ordinary middle-class people doing the right thing, and they were, of course, every color of the rainbow. There were no "activists" and no "victims." And, of course, Trump finished with his memorable celebration of the Capitol itself, which stands under a statue, standing atop the Dome, of Freedom.
Wow. I didn't know that. But now I do.
So what Trump was doing was encouraging more Americans to identify as good ordinary Americans doing the right thing, rather than identify as specials, whether special snowflakes or special activists or special victims, which is what you get night and day from the mainstream media and the Hollywood media.
So no wonder the usual suspects were flummoxed last night, and no wonder Joy Reid complained.
Well, exactly. The whole point of the Sixties and political correctness and identity politics is to marginalize and eventually eliminate the tropes and the culture of the middle-class nation state. The whole point of what Donald Trump is trying to do is re-valorize the middle-class culture that most non-elite Americans identify with and that "we" want lower-class Americans to aspire to.Church ... family ... police ... military ... the national anthem ... Trump trying to call on all the tropes of 1950s-era nationalism. The goal of this speech appears to be to force the normalization of Trump on the terms of the bygone era his supporters are nostalgic for. #SOTU— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) January 31, 2018
And let us now mention my Perfect Plan, which is a set of marching orders for the Ruling Class, people like Joy Reid.
Part One of the Perfect Plan is for Joy Reid to help and encourage the lower-class to rise up into the middle class, on the notion that to live a happy life in a nation state of the exchange economy you need to get with the bourgeois culture or you are going to be miserable. In fact, of course, Joy Reid does the opposite.
Part Two of the Perfect Plan is for elitists like Joy Reid to act with compassion and understanding towards the ordinary middle class, like the folks that the president called out in the gallery. In fact, of course, Joy Reid sneers at people like that as evidenced by her tweet.
See what I mean? President Trump's speech was completely aligned with my Perfect Plan. Strategically he is trying to put the Joy Reids of the world on the back foot, by encouraging all Americans to identify as patriotic responsible middle class Americans, the People of the Responsible Self, and by giving to ordinary middle-class American identity and dignity and respect that the liberal elite is determined to deny it.
The liberal ruling-class strategy is designed to marginalize and demean the ordinary middle class, by celebrating the upper-class creative culture of artists, writers, and activists, and by celebrating the world of the victims. This was brought out by the Democratic response to the SOTU by Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA), who talked about marching and protesting in support of the Dreamers. And about transgenders.
Yeah. Marchin' and protestin'. Not a word about that in Trump's speech.
Here's my bottom line. Trump is obviously making a mega-play for the ordinary middle class, the people we saw in the gallery in the House chamber. Will he succeed in bringing the ordinary middle class, the "working families" that the Democrats talk about, into the Republican tent?
The answer is: We Don't Know. That's why we have elections.
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