" I read the news today, oh boy...."
I missed the State of the Union yesterday, but I found it on the web and played it: I was encouraged by someone who had heard it that it was a total flop.
Well, maybe they edited it, or shot it differently for the streaming version on the web, but I thought it was a great state of the union. It thought it was stirring, well delivered, with an excellent metre and turn of phrase. And that scared me more than I've been scared in a long time. Because I knew it was not true, none of it. But I couldn't tell. Because it certainly sounded all true.

The caterpillar (or humpty dumpty or tweedle dee?) says "When I use a word it means exactly what I say it means, nothing more, nothing less."I cannot find the line in the book itself, but I vaguely remember Alice's reply: "Are we to be the master of words, or are words to be our masters."

The state of the union presages a time when words are our masters, and then, inevitably, the people who assemble them are our masters. The notion of fair, objective truth is obscured and rendered impotent by a faith which is so pervasive and self persuasive is seems much like the plaque of alzheimers running through discourse. Today, tonight, that time is now. I can make no sense of it.

Help is wanted.