NOTEBOOK: State of the Union: ‘More of the same, re-elect me’

I make lots of random notes. Some turn into articles, but some are too short or never make it. I’m cleaning out the notebook of a few of those brief items.

I can’t bring myself to watch presidential speeches anymore, so I didn’t see Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last night. (It has nothing to do with who the president is. They’re all just as nauseating.)

Obama’s pitch seems to be for Progressive Lite, but the GOP already has that position covered, don’t they?

What about you? Did you watch it? Did you throw things at the TV? Did you like what he had to say? Or were you — like me — ignoring the whole thing?

I sometimes feel as though I should institute a “Missing-the-Entire-Point Award,” but I’ve realized that I’d have to give it out so frequently that it wouldn’t have any novelty or value. Do you ever feel as though people respond — in online discussions or in real life — without bothering to even understand what they’re responding to? I feel that way most days lately.

On a related note, I’d like to know why so (relatively) few people can see outside of their own existing narratives. For instance, a lot of people who call themselves conservatives have framed the political world as being about the “liberal media” working to hurt conservatives, so they can’t see past that frame and see that other things are sometimes going on.

Since Newt Gingrich has been attacking the media lately and pretending that anything negative about him is the media’s fault, some people are failing to see that there’s more than that going on. Gingrich is a slimy, dishonest narcissist, but some people are reacting to their programming about the “evil liberal media” and assuming that Gingrich is right. It’s frustrating.

The people who see things just through the lens of their existing narratives don’t know what they’re doing, so they don’t know that they’re misinterpreting new information because of their bias. My biggest frustration about this, though, is my constant worry that I’m doing it myself and just don’t realize it.

If you want to see what the GOP presidential race has looked like so far as a horse race, take a look at this nice animation from Slate.

It seems as though people are desperate to find heroes today. As I listen to friends who support various presidential candidates, they act like salespeople for those candidates. Then when that candidate drops out, they generally latch onto another candidate as their next Great Hope for Humanity. They put lying narcissists onto pedestals and blind themselves to obvious realities about them. The only reason I can come up with is that they need a hero, so they latch onto someone they consider the best of a bad lot. (It’s yet another reason to give up on the system, of course.)

It’s only five days until my surgery next Monday. (If you missed it, here’s the initial story and here’s the follow-up.) I keep hoping that the doctor will call back and say, “We were just kidding. You don’t have to have surgery. Just take this pill and check back in a few years.” Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet, so I’m still scheduled to be cut on. The closer it gets, the scarier it sounds.

You can finally stop wondering where this guy is. He’s been found in the basement of a college dorm hiding behind the soft drink machine.