Good, but fragile.

Let’s talk about the fragile first:

• We have unrest due to the genocidal war in Gaza. Israel is a long-term ally of the United States, but… their government has lost its mind. They’ve responded to a horrendous terrorist attack with an even more horrendous war that it’s hard to see a good ending to. Lots of blame to go around on it, but as for the United States, we’re stuck with a particularly sticky political problem because of it.

  If we cut off support for Israel, it’s likely that they’ll face invasion by their neighbors, plunging the entire region into war and strengthening Russia.

  If we give them everything they need to raze Gaza to the ground, no strings attached, they’ll… raze Gaza to the ground, and probably try to destroy all of Palestine in a grotesque act of true genocide. This will also result in their neighbors attacking them, and likely cause an even more horrific war. Biden is currently trying to thread a very difficult needle between these extreme outcomes.

  I genuinely don’t know if he will succeed and ultimately convince Israel to stop the horrific destruction, but at least he’s trying. If Trump wins the next election, we - and Palestine, and Israel, and everyone who isn’t Russia or Iran - are fucked.

• We have a serious long-term problem that threatens the stability of the entire country, which I will sum up in two words: Fox News. This misnamed infotainment channel is almost single-handedly responsible for a decades-long - and horrifyingly successful - campaign to make an entire half of the country stupid, misinformed, bigoted, and angry all the time about utter nonsense.

  Have you heard about how trans people are beating all the “real” women in sports? Or raping them in public bathrooms? Have you heard about how DEI is flooding every business everywhere with unqualified employees, because white people are superior reasons that will remain carefully unspecified? Is Disney trying to turn little Timmy gay? Is the “woke mind virus” something you’re familiar with?

  Then you’ve probably either seen Fox News, or interacted with its victims. And I mean that: victims. These are people who have been intentionally targeted for, quite literally, brainwashing. If you’ve ever found yourself in an argument with a Fox News victim, you’ll have discovered that they’re remarkably impervious to facts, fully capable of believing complete balderdash without a single scrap of evidence, and are prone to become angry - sometimes violently so - in defense of their worldview and in response to anything that causes the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.

• We haven’t yet figured out how to really counter bad actors, both foreign and domestic, who take advantage of all of the above to try to destroy the United States as it is right now.

  Domestically, actual white supremacists and Neo-Nazis are absolutely thrilled with the current state of affairs in Israel and Palestine, because 1) they hate absolutely everyone involved anyway, and 2) they see it as an opportunity to try to recruit new white supremacists from college students who are angry about the genocide. Does that make any sense? Of course not; if they’re upset about the horrific slayings of thousands of Muslims in a majority non-white country, it’s absurd to believe that they’re likely to be turned by white nationalism. But it’s not like Neo-Nazis are known for their critical thinking skills, and they still might succeed in dividing enough of the electorate to help Trump get back into office. They certainly want to.

  On the foreign front, there’s Russia, of course. Russia still wants to do everything it can to destroy the United States. Putin and his ilk have long since concluded that the easiest way to become a mover and shaker on the world stage isn’t to make a strong Russia, it’s to make everyone else weak. They’ve utterly squandered the opportunities of perestroika. And they are hell-bent on making the world suffer for it.

Pretty depressing, huh. But it’s not all bad:

• We seem to be taking genuine, if tentative, steps towards actually forcing Donald Trump to experience the consequences of his actions. This will destroy him. He’s a corrupt narcissist, and even being forced to be in court is absolute torture for him. And if he’s found guilty and becomes a felon, it’s a near-certainty that he will lose the upcoming election. There’s some evidence that while it would invigorate some of his base (comprised of Fox News victims), it would also partially divide them. He would, at last, look weak to some of them.
• Our economy is actually doing quite well. Jobs are up, inflation is down, GDP is up, and overall things are actually going fairly well. You don’t hear about it much, because “Everything is going well” doesn’t make for an exciting news headline, but it appears to be true.
• Biden has made remarkable strides, all things considered, on multiple issues, from the environment to student loans. This, even with a House controlled by the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and a corrupt Supreme Court.
• The pandemic isn’t over - it probably never will be - but with actual grown-ups at the wheel, we’re doing much better on that front, too.

So… yeah. Good. But fragile.

Do you mean the speech, or the actual current condition of the nation?

The speech is mostly a tool for the president to have everyone look at them and announce what The Agenda™ for the year should be. Congress doesn’t have to listen, but if the presidents party controls either house, their role as the head of the party pretty much ensures that there will at least be bills proposed on their agenda.
Usually don’t bother to watch it and instead read the summary unless it’s during a rough time or we have reason to expect something interesting, like the 2021 speech. Lot of infrastructure talk, and we just had some pretty scary things happen.

sound and fury signifying nothing

We’re heading towards some crescendo in our national history, I don’t believe it will be a full on civil war, but I do believe that whatever it ends up being will be resounding enough that whoever comes out on top will be in a position to redefine the American system, and I’m actually optimistic about what that redefining will end up looking like.

Been better, been worse.

We are staged to have some real improvement, but that because I think “age of easy money” was the largest source of economic degeneration we’ve seen in human history. A subtle economic dark age where investments had no real world meaning, and a huge portion of human effort was put into huge ineffective orginazations that became more and more divorced from reality.

I think a lot of the “industrial policy” approach is well meaning too, but we have overcome the fact they are from the federal government (which is frankly bloated and poorly managed) and relearn some of our entrepreneurial skills.

People want things to get better and some people still think they can.

I don’t watch that shit any more. Trumpyboi ruined politics for me. I don’t want it in my life any more. If they’re not going to take it seriously, then I’m not going to waste my emotional resources on it.

It is actively consistantly getting worse with time

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The state of the union is quit good if you adapt. Prices are up but people who stay home and prepare the food they eat get way better food for a lot less. People who stay home instead of vacationing in far off places are find gardening and home improvement rewarding.

Once you realize that there are two USA’s occupying the same continental land mass, things start to make allot more sense.

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