Read on Twitter
There's something deeply melancholic & tragic about Trump's Farewell Address. Much of it is his typical self-congratulatory boilerplate. But there is also a sincere wish to restore self-government to the American ppl, to recover the idea of citizenship & citizen rule. Thread.
Its message, of course is belied by the context of its delivery, a pre-recorded, unattended, half-hearted parting shot, with all the focus on the Military Ball Inauguration in Washington, with the outgoing President not in attendance.
That's what makes it so haunting. "We restored the principle that a nation exists to serve its citizens." How many of those citizens could articulate what a citizen is, as opposed to a subject, a client, or a customer?
"We have reasserted the sacred idea that, in America, the government answers to the people." And yet, across America, so many are coerced, restricted by interminable proclamations made with no legislative authority, under the pretext of public health.
The people's President--"the only true outsider ever to win the presidency" is departing in shame, the insiders finally having found the thing they believe will permanently discredit this threat to their authority, permanently color any and all threats to that authority.
"For years, the American people pleaded with Washington to finally secure the nation's borders. I am pleased to say we answered that plea and achieved the most secure border in U.S. history." At this very moment, a growing caravan of Central Americans is approaching that border,
...and all indications are that they will be welcomed, the signal having been sent and received that new client-subjects are desired and welcome. Oh, and by the way, get ready for 11 million new fellow "citizens," fellow citizens!
"No nation can long thrive that loses faith in its own values, history, and heroes, for these are the very sources of our unity and our vitality." And yet, this is clearly what has happened and is happening. Trump's 1776 Commission derided or ignored...
...while official critics of the American way of life and American history are elevated to cushy sinecures, paid handomely, and live comfortably for tearing the country apart. Poisonous, racialist doctrines are taught in public schools and colleges, and enforced in government
...offices and corporations. "Faith in [our] history" is taken to be tantamount to white supremacy; the use of the phrase "American patriot" is taken as prima facie evidence of incitement of terrorism.
"The belief that a nation must serve its citizens will not dwindle but instead only grow stronger by the day." Perhaps, yes. "The belief" of this will grow. It will be something we say to each other privately, miserably, fecklessly.
We are reduced to this "belief" because this is, increasingly, all we are left with. The President, of course, did not say this. He expressed hope, predicted flourishing communities and a prosperous people that cherishes its traditions.
I, for one, do not despair, nor should you. This has been a great year for clarifying purpose and direction, for removing illusions. But the President's Farewell Address is a soporific. The accomplishments he mentions are real. But the country he describes is not; it exists...
...only, as he says, as "deep and devoted love" in the "hearts" of the American people. His Farewell Address is a kind of love letter, not from the lover to his beloved with whom he hopes soon to be, but from a lover spurned and rejected...
...a statement of unrequited love, or of a love lost long ago, but a love now freshly remembered. There is in it also a hollow but powerful note of the eternal, an insistence on what "we are, and must always be"-- hollow, because it seems so litle now to be in expression...
...eternal, because it appeals to the longing of the human heart, and its attachments, such as of a people to its land and nation-- the thousands of people waving the flag. To these people, Trump almost seems autochthonous, and they are to him a confirmation that America still...
...exists as a tangible, physical, palpable reality; it is not a collection of governing institutions happening to cohere in a locality for the benefit of cosmopolitan, trans-national oligarchs. Because as long as they wave the flag, we are still "a republic of proud citizens."
That is, in our hearts. In fact, we are not. We have many years, likely decades, of increasingly authoritarian, despotic, infantilizing rule, foisted upon us in the name of protection from bigotry, intolerance, oppression, and hate.
But the ancient name of "republic" is very hard to eradicate.
"They came out with their families so that they could stand as we passed, and proudly wave our great American flag. It never failed to deeply move me."
"They came out with their families so that they could stand as we passed, and proudly wave our great American flag. It never failed to deeply move me."
