Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Part I

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Politics, Partisanship, and Performance Art in a Social Media Age: President Trump’s Historic Joint Address to Congress

Well, last night, President Donald J. Trump went into the House of Representatives’ chamber to address a joint session of Congress. And everyone knew that history would be in the making and everyone who knows Donald Trump and American politics knows full well that it was going to be a demonstration of political theater at its height as well. And it was both things last night.

It was a major historic political event that’s necessary. It’s absolute when you have a President of the United States addressing a joint session of Congress. That means the House and the Senate together in a formal occasion in order to give hearing to an address. That’s history. It’s always going to be history, but it is also politics. It’s theater, all of it now together in this appearance of the president upon the invitation of Congress addressing the Congress at the beginning of his term.

Now this points to a technicality and I noticed that so many in the major media were very quick to underline this technicality. What the president delivered last night was not a State of the Union address. That is a particular address also at the invitation of Congress and it is a constitutional requirement. The president is to report from time to time on the State of the Union. Presidents have decided to make this over time a more and more public event. George Washington sent a written communication to Congress. By the time you get to the modern age, this has become a major television event and now of course you add social media to it. More on that in just a moment.

So even as this was not officially, historically, a State of the Union address, President Trump will be expected to give the first in his second term of those addresses about this time next year. This was a presidential speech to a joint session of Congress. But the theater’s pretty much the same. The formalities are pretty much the same. The historic setting, pretty much the same. And so the distinction here is just the distinction between a State of the Union addressed given later in a president’s term and this speech to a joint session given even in the early weeks and months of a president’s term.

And of course Donald Trump has been here before and many of those sitting before him as members of Congress were also here before, 2017 to 2021. But now President Trump is back and he is back with a surge of energy. And the president underlined that energy as he was even affirming the fact that he and his administration have issued more executive orders than any other administration in American history to this point.

And the president was quite emphatic on pointing to the fact that a major corner had been turned in terms of the US and its politics. He made a very unusual comment hearkening back to President Joe Biden describing him as the worst president ever. And that’s a very interesting historical debate. It’s a real matter of debate when you look at the history of the presidency if you’re going to try to argue which president was worst, or for that matter, best. That’s a matter of historical argument and you can count on the fact that there will be partisan temptations there as well.

In an actual State of the Union address, the president usually begins with the words the State of the Union is strong. Interestingly, most presidents make that statement without obvious regard to the actual conditions operant at the time. President Trump got right to the point making very clear that his agenda was a change agenda, and he made much of the change that he and his administration have brought, and are bringing, and will bring in the future.

I want us to consider some of the factors that went into this address, number one, the listening public. Going back to even when you had presidents deliver these addresses in person to a joint session of Congress, it was a far more formal and personal private event back before the age of modern media. The media age has changed everything. When you had a president address a joint session of Congress either for a State of the Union address or for some other form of address, the fact is that most people would read about it eventually in the newspapers. Even if the hottest news was made throughout at least some decades in American history, it would have to be communicated by telegraph and thus it was still awaiting publication for most people in newspapers.

But now you’re looking at instantaneous response. All this began to change with the advent of radio. Presidents discovered that they could use their voice and project their voice in this kind of address in order to speak over the heads of the members of Congress directly to the American people. No one did that more effectively than President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

But then you had the coming of television and television changed it spectacularly because it went from an auditory event to a visual event. And a visual event means that you add visual theater. Even in the early age of black and white broadcasts, seeing a president deliver the address, seeing the House of Representatives Chamber filled with members of both the House and the Senate, seeing the Supreme Court members sitting, seeing the cabinet being seated, watching the entry of the President of the United States, seeing the president at the door and then introduced and then walked towards the rostrum, introduced with the statement, “Mister Speaker, the President of the United States.” In the case of Nancy Pelosi, a speaker of course, it was, “Madam Speaker, the President of the United States.”

The president generally enters with a great deal of support and encouragement, shaking hands along the way. But you’ll notice that things have changed not only with the advent of, say, the Trump administration or Trump administration 2, but going back even earlier, a very deep divide of partisanship has changed the tenor of the event. Something else has changed it, and that is the advent of social media.

And so even as you had the entire process, the entire event made more democratically accessible by radio and then by television, it’s a different thing entirely to have people be able to respond to the speech during the speech and engaged in what the mass media loves to call fact checking, which often tells you as much or more about the media as about the president’s address.

By the way, one of the historic notes about this address by President Trump to a joint session of Congress is that it clocks in as the longest in American history, 1 hour 40 minutes. Okay, so who would be his rival in terms of speaking over a very long duration? Who else gave long speeches? President Bill Clinton back in 2000, he gave an address that clocked in at an hour and 30 minutes. President Trump in terms of the race to elongate the address beat him by a full 10 minutes.

One thing to note here is that it is unlikely that most members of Congress have an attention span of more than an hour or so. An hour and 40 minutes is a long time. Bill Clinton found that out. President Trump may find out the same thing as well. However, he had information he wanted to share, arguments he wanted to make, and here’s where the social media aspect comes in. It really didn’t matter at what point during an address, President Trump said something that might have gone viral on social media. The fact is that social media in that sense is timely, but also in another sense, timeless. Duration is not the point. The point is the point.

Looking over the course of similar addresses, a couple of things really do stand out. One is the president’s use of the first person over and over again speaking of himself, his own achievements, his own arguments, his victory, speaking of his own place in history, of the decisive nature of the actions that he and his administration have undertaken, pointing to the record number of executive actions or executive orders handed down in the first days and weeks of his administration. The president leaned into the first person in honestly an unprecedented way.

The other thing was that when you look at the address, not looking so much at the speaker, but at those spoken to, it is very clear that a partisan divide is now also a matter of performance art. That partisan divide has been present in Congress for a very, very long time. The partisan divide is probably deeper now than it has been for a very long time, precisely, as we understand as Christians, because we are down to issues that are justifiably divisive. We have a division of worldviews over issues now ranging not only in terms of budget and taxation and tariffs and foreign policy, but down to ontological issues such as the existence of male and female.

The president and his opponents, his Democratic opponents, both leaned into partisanship last night and both did so not only in terms of issues of substance but in issues of performance. Both the president and his Democratic detractors wanted to create something of a spectacle and they did. Of course, it wasn’t equal. The president was standing at the rostrum delivering the address. He had the control over the communication.

The Democrats in the chamber outnumbered in both Houses and out of the White House, they had a political strategy, but no one knew exactly what it was until the event began. They laughed at the president at certain points, they booed at other points, and of course, one member of Congress, Congressman Al Green of Texas stood up and challenged the president, refused to sit down, and was removed from the House by the sergeant-at-arms. That certainly made a bit of history.

The president went right towards the most controversial issues. He said that his administration meant the end of woke. It meant the end of CRT, critical race theory. It meant the clarification that in his administration there were two and only two genders. Now, here’s where things at the deepest level get really, really interesting, not just interesting, but really, really important.

When you had the president go back to the executive orders he has issued, and he really leaned into executive orders protecting young people from hormonal and surgical intervention and also preventing boys from playing in girl sports, men from playing in women’s sports or there would be the loss of federal tax money, the fact is that the Democrats sat on their hands, so to speak. They not only did not applaud, they tried to act as impassive as possible.

But they were communicating the fact that they are unwilling to back off at all from their complete support for the LGBTQ+ agenda. And you understand the T is very much included in that on the Democratic side. And for that matter, the LGBTQIA+, it just uses that plus sign to say, stay tuned for more in terms of developments in their revolution.

When the president was pointing to what he said were the accomplishments of his first weeks in office, one thing stood out from all the rest and that was a radical decrease in the number of those crossing illegally, especially from America’s southern border entering into the United States. The president leaned into that, pointing out that he had established border control. He underlined the fact that he had been sending a very public message and not only nationally, but internationally. And then he said this, “They heard my words and they chose not to come.” He then went on to say, “Much easier that way.” He then continued with the words, “It turned out all we needed was a new president.”

The president spoke of his unrelenting agenda and he went on to describe part of that. He described tariffs, and by the way, he seemed to acknowledge that the tariffs could bring some disequilibrium and even some economic pain. He went on to say that his tariffs were intended to protect the soul of our country. He acknowledged that they might create “a little disturbance.” He went on to say, “It won’t be much.”

He didn’t make particular headlines speaking of Ukraine. Those headlines have been quite numerous in recent days. He leaned into border control. He leaned into the rest of his agenda and he said that even as the early days and weeks of his administration had been filled with executive action, especially executive orders, there would be more of the same.

I want to point to three dynamics most important as we think about the address last night. First of all, the reality of that partisan divide. We’re not talking about a divide over minor issues. We are talking about a divide over some of the deepest issues imaginable. And then after that, we recognize politics as performance. Who was performing last night? Well, to be blunt, everyone in that room. Everyone had a certain part.

It was interesting to see the performances delivered by the Speaker of the House and the Vice President of the United States, and you say they didn’t say much. In the case of Speaker Johnson, his most memorable words were calling the entire audience to order and then evicting Congressman Green, but the cameras were on them all the time.

Now, there’s a radical difference between what had happened when President Trump gave such an address and Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House of Representatives and Mike Pence was vice president. It was very interesting to watch both Vice President Vance and Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Of course, the president was at the center of the picture because this was his address and he is President of the United States. But I want to point out that every member of Congress seated in that room was involved in a performance as were those who were in the balcony of the House, including the First Lady of the United States, and Usha Vance, the wife of the Vice President of the United States and their selected guests.

All of this is a part of the performance, and that’s also true even for justices of the US Supreme Court, not all of whom were present, but many of whom were present in their robes looking as serious and impassive as possible. And then you had members of the president’s cabinet and they were of course cheerleaders in the president’s address. It was all a matter of political theater, but what’s different now is that Americans, by camera are effectively in the chamber not just reading about it later.

The third dynamic I want to talk about is the president as performative, the presidency as performative in a way that goes beyond just the performance last night. And this gets to the fact that the presidency has been, in many ways, modified toward the issuance of action through executive orders rather than presidential initiative in calling for legislation through Congress.

Congress has proved itself over and over again under the leadership of both parties, frankly, to be oddly dysfunctional in adopting substantive legislation. That’s why so much of the energy has actually shifted to the president, to “energy in the executive” as the framers referred to it and particularly to executive orders. But that just underlines how fragile all of this could be unless it is turned into legislation and unless President Trump is followed by a Republican administration.

When you look at these executive orders, it’s not true that all of them could be reversed immediately, but many of them could, and almost all of them could be reversed over time. If one president can say, do this, another president can presumably on the same authority say, stop doing that. When it comes to so many of the issues covered by the president’s executive orders, we desperately need those gains to be solidified in legislation.

One final thought about the performance art. It’s really interesting that almost always after this kind of address, when you look at say the major networks, the major cable news networks, they’ll have a panel at least purporting to represent something of a political spectrum. And here’s what you can predict every single time. Those of the party and of the political persuasion of the president will almost always say he did a phenomenal job. Those who are in the opposition by their own political ideology or partisan identity, they’re almost assuredly going to come out and say, “It was an awful speech, but that’s exactly what you expect from this person.”

The sum and substance of all of this is that a very large number of Americans watched the speech last night, but the big question is how many of them will remember it just a few days from now, or remember anything specific the president said? You’re looking here at something that affects the political class far more than the public in terms of their performance. And this president surely understands how to deliver a performance.

Part II

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Neon Tape, a Padlock, and a Little Library: 4 College Students in California Turn a A Little Library into Performance Art over Book Bans – Book Bans That Don’t Even Exist

But as I’m talking about performance, I want to shift from the US Capitol and the President of the United States to something quite different. Local media here in Orange County, California ran an article that came with the Orange County Register in recent days. Here’s the headline, Chapman students lock up little free libraries to tell story of cuts and censorship. The Chapman students here refers to students at Chapman University in Orange County.

Eric Licas is the reporter, and the Orange County report tells us, “A couple walking their dog in a tranquil Corona Del Mar neighborhood did a double take as they passed by a group of four Chapman University students wrapping neon caution tape around a wooden box stuffed with books on Orchard Street. More heads turned as they bound the Little Free Library with chains and then secured it with a padlock.”

“There was a man driving a truck and kind of stuck his head out and he took pictures of us, we think.” That was said by student Kestyn Hudson. Kestyn went on to say, “We don’t know for sure, but we think he took pictures of us maybe to submit us to one of the neighborhood watch sites because what are these kids doing with caution tape?”

Well, that sounds pretty much like an Orange County college student, but it really underlines the reality of life and issues being turned into performance art even by college students, maybe in this case, especially by college students who are claiming that they are protesting and trying to draw public attention to censorship and library cuts. But what they actually did was the performance of wrapping neon caution tape around a wooden box stuffed with books, and then they bound what was called the Little Free Library with chains and secured it with a padlock. Now that’s bravery for you. What a performance. And they think that someone might’ve been interested and might even have reported them and might even have taken a photo. Wow, this might even be significant.

You got to love the next words, “The display was temporary and similar to others the students created in Orange and Laguna Beach. It’s one of several campaigns developed for the Public Relations Student Society of America’s Bateman Case Study Competition.” Let’s just stop for a minute. You have something called the Public Relations Student Society of America’s Bateman Case Study Competition. You know this is going to be interesting. We’re told, “This year contestants were tasked with promoting every library.” The article went on to say, “The national organization advocates in support of library funding and opposes what many progressive groups describe as book bans.”

Well, as I’ve often discussed, when you see language and propaganda these days about book bans, it almost never has to do with what legally or historically would be described as anything like a book ban. Rather, in most cases, you have parents or others in a community saying that there have to be some standards for what is made available to children and teenagers, much of it driven by LGBTQ ideology and some of it downright, sexually explicit.

Those who say that such materials shouldn’t be at hand for children and teenagers are described as censors, guilty of something akin to book burning. It’s absolute nonsense, but it’s very good propaganda, and you can understand why a student organization about public relations would see this as a golden opportunity, right down to the neon tape and the chains and the padlock around the books.

But the students were also protesting against a failure to provide more income for certain libraries. The paper tells us that officials in one city “reduced hours at three of its libraries in January.” The paper continued, “That move came after budget cuts across every department last summer, and the failure of a half-cent sales tax increase proposed on the November ballot.” So you go from the failure of a tax increase of a half-cent of a sales tax that has led to at least some reduction in hours, and all of a sudden you’re talking about censorship and book bans? Yeah, you do the math.

Four students are featured in this article, and one student said, “We’ve had some reactions of people who say, I think maybe these books should be banned or having that side.” The student went on to say, “But I think getting those people engaged to actually see the other side and understand what we’re fighting for and what the outcome would be if we continued down the path of defunding libraries and banning books, I think that was important and helpful.”

By the way, just to make my point, later in the article we read this, “Some of the most heated debate on those topics have come out of Huntington Beach, which approved the creation of a parent guardian children’s book review board in April. Supporters of that decision say it protects impressionable youth from exposure to obscene material and gives parents more agency in raising their kids. They also note that flagged material won’t be removed, but instead relocated from the children’s section into an adult’s section. Parents will still have access to it.”

So you’ll notice the very next words are this, “Book bans in other cities have often targeted titles that make reference to sexuality or LGBTQ+ identity.” What’s the point? The point is there is no book ban. The reporter has already told us that the move there in Huntington Beach wouldn’t even remove the books from the library, just move them to an adult section, but that’s now referred to as a book ban. Okay, so who’s telling the truth here?

Using the phrase book ban is just morally and intellectually dishonest, but it’s very effective. And public relations is not so much always, let’s just say, about being honest, it is about being effective, and this is a very effective tool in the left’s toolbox. Just remember, this is about college students and a public relations association, and these are public relations experts in training, presumably. But the public relations just comes down to the fact that a book ban turns out not to be a book ban, but the major media still continued to call it a book ban. Lesson learned.

Part III

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Big News from the Moon: Private Firm Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lander Successfully Reaches Lunar Surface

Okay, now for a report from the Moon, or at least in Cape Canaveral about the fact that a private lunar lander has now successfully landed on the Moon’s surface. As Marcia Dunn reports for the Los Angeles Times, “A private lunar lander carrying a drill, a vacuum, and other experiments for NASA touched down on the Moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth’s celestial neighbor ahead of astronaut missions.”

Okay, this really tells us something. The last time the United States sent a man to the Moon, and of course that was under the auspices of the Apollo program by NASA, that was 1972. That’s a very, very long time ago. The majority of Americans living now weren’t alive the last time a human being, and in all these cases thus far, it was an American stood on the surface of the Moon. We’ve had a hard time even successfully getting back to the Moon’s surface.

That tells us something about both the forward progress of our technology and the lack of that technology, or at least the lack of the application of that technology as a matter of national priority. In this case, it was a private firm. The firm is known as Firefly Aerospace, and the vehicle is known as the Blue Ghost. And we are told that it descended from lunar orbit on autopilot “aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the Moon’s northeastern edge of the near side.”

Now, here’s the big deal. There have been other attempts, but this was a successful attempt, successful because the vehicle landed on the Moon’s surface. Its landing vehicle registered the impact and the successful settling on the Moon’s surface. And there was also video showing the vehicle well situated where it was supposed to be. Here’s something else that’s interesting. About three different firms are attempting to reach the lunar surface in order to bring about some kind of commercial application, although NASA is also involved.

Here’s something else to note. These are private firms. Just a matter of decades ago, it would’ve been unthinkable that a private firm would be involved in such a project, much less doing it on its own, but that’s exactly what we face. And of course, when you look at other advances such as those that have been made by SpaceX, another private company, it just points to the fact that the future in terms of space, it turns out to be a private government combination, at least in terms of the United States.

The paper tells us, “Unlike NASA’s successful Apollo Moon landings that had billions of dollars behind them and ace astronauts at the helm, private companies operate on a limited budget with robotic craft that must land on their own.” Blue Ghost won’t be alone for long. Two other American firms are planning similar missions, and so is a Japanese firm. Its vehicle’s expected to land perhaps within just about three months. We’ll see. It looks like the Moon surface is going to get a lot more crowded.