THE STATE OF THE UNION BOYCOTT

 

When Donald Trump stands before Congress this evening to deliver his so-called State of the Union Address, it will be with some notable absences in the official audience. And it will also be with the haunting presence (unless the regime finds a way to bar them) of some of the survivors of the Epstein Affair, to which Trump’s name has been so intimately linked—some of the same survivors on whom his administration has literally turned its back and victimized even further.

The boycott includes no few high-profile Democrats, and is a reflection of not merely their frustration, but also of the ever deepening divide between MAGA World authoritarianism, and the erstwhile system of American democracy that has been severely undermined in the five years of the Era of Trump, and particularly in this past year of utter lawlessness under the regime. What it also implies is that the opposition is feeling the power to be gained from Trump’s faltering popularity—especially among independents suffering from buyer’s remorse. According to multiple polls, Trump’s approval is pretty much circumscribed to his most blindly loyal MAGA base. And the gap is widening as his behavior turns daily ever more insane.

This is important, because senators and representatives all too often forget that their power is not their own, but is derived from the people. And in the grueling events of this past year, if democracy has begun to claw back some of the power usurped by the Trump regime and his hijacked GOP, it has been reclaimed, not by senators and representatives, but by the people of the United States, through their grassroots action, their incredible courage, their ultimate sacrifices, and their resounding rejection of the Trump crime organization’s authoritarian designs.

The protest promises to hurt Trump in what he considers the worst way: by taking the focus off of him and what will certainly be, as usual, one of his lengthy, wild rants, which, by now, have become a tiresome, insulting noise to anyone but his cheerleaders, enablers and sycophants, and putting it on his opponents.

Among key lawmakers refusing to attend the speech are senators Adam Schiff, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Chris Murphy, Tina Smith and Chris Van Hollen. House members who will give it a pass are Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, Becca Balint of Vermont, Greg Casar and Veronica Escobar of Texas,  Pramila Jayapal of Washington State, Delia Ramirez of Illinois and Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey. All of these members of Congress are taking part in the boycott on general principles and in support of America’s ailing democracy.

Other lawmakers have also said that they will boycott Trump’s speech in support of specific causes. Maryland Representative Kweisi Mfume is protesting Trump’s record on both of the main issues he ran on—the economy and immigration enforcement.  Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley says she is boycotting the State of the Union to draw attention to the trauma affecting children abused by Trump’s violent immigration enforcement policy. And Maine Representative Chellie Pingree confirmed that she will be joining other Democrats at an anti-authoritarian rally instead of sitting through Donald Trump’s State of the Union rant.

Parallel to lawmakers’ individual protests, the MeidasTouch Network—a pro-democracy independent journalism medium that just surpassed six million followers and 9 billion views—is joining ranks with the MoveOn Civic Action group to organize a parallel event billed as the People’s State of the Union. The event is expected to be hosted by media personalities Joy Reid and Katie Phang. Many of the lawmakers skipping Trump’s event will be taking part as speakers in the People’s State of the Union, headed up by Senator Schiff. Pennsylvania Representative Summer Lee has said that her boycott is specifically linked to this event.

 Another parallel event is being called the “State of the Swamp”.  It is organized by DEFIANCE.org, the Portland Frog Brigade, and COURIER. Lawmakers taking part in that event will include Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and representatives Jason Crow of Colorado, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Dan Goldman of New York, Eric Swalwell of California and Eugene Vidman of Virginia.

This is being described as a “live rebuttal” of the Trump State of the Union Address, and speakers are also expected to feature civic leaders, journalists, and cultural figures, including Robert De Niro, Mark Ruffalo, Stacey Abrams, Jim Acosta, and Miles Taylor.

Other Democrats have said that they will boycott the State of the Union Address but without joining specific protests. These include Illinois Representatives Sean Casten and Eric Sorensen. Sorensen said, “While I will watch the State of the Union elsewhere, I will not attend in person.” He made his reason for not attending clear: “My respect for the office of the President of the United States cannot abide the disrespect that Donald Trump shows to that office every day.”

The corporate mainstream media has given the idea of the boycott mixed reviews. Fox Trump State Media, of course,  is defending attendance and playing protests as a “disruption” of what passes in their world for “democracy.”  CNN, which is now owned by Warner Brothers and to an ever greater extent expresses the stances of that firm’s shareholders rather than those of the professional journalists and commentators who work for the network, is tending toward a wishy-washy “let’s play nice” take. If there is one thing I have learned in half a century of journalism, it is that when objectivity is taken to mean impartiality rather than fact-based reporting, the essence of news as a vehicle of awakening people to reality is lost.  And CNN has increasingly lost its way as an honest news medium.

In general, some mainstream commentators and political pundits have criticized the boycott as inappropriate or counterproductive, arguing that lawmakers should attend and challenge Trump from within. Clearly, however, with the Trump-hijacked GOP heading up both chambers of Congress, challenging Trump from within frequently turns out to be a fool’s errand. And then there is the question of how you define “within”. The Trump authoritarianism problem is no exclusive to Congress. It is a threat to the American people as a whole. And more and more, we are seeing that people are waking up and taking action without waiting for Congress to decide to do something about it.

While some traditional media like The New York Times have limited themselves to describing the climate leading to the boycott, in which there is deep-seated polarization and plummeting popularity ratings for the performance of the Trump government, The Washington Post—which is being kept on a tight leash by owner Jeff Bezos, who now tells the editorial board what it can and can’t print and who just fired 300 journalists—stuck to analyzing polling information and pointing out that low approval and anti-authoritarian public sentiment are driving the protest context. USA Today indicates that heightened political stakes and protest strategies are surrounding the Trump speech boycott. 

Fox, as I said earlier, is framing this as must-do engagement, as opposed to a boycott strategy. They seem to be trying to make the point that members of Congress have a duty to attend. This coincides what many Republicans—both politicians and at a grassroots level—who are insisting on saying that, even if people oppose Donald Trump, they have “a patriotic duty” to “respect the office” of the president.

Okay, I’m game. Let’s talk about that. Let me just start by saying that when Donald Trump starts respecting the office of the president and all that it is supposed to stand for, so will I. But I don’t figure I should hold my breath. In Trump’s five years in office, and especially over the course of this past nightmare year, he has not once behaved in a way worthy of a president. He has defied the courts, trashed the rule of law, repeatedly violated the Bill of Rights, used the Justice Department to make good on his own personal vendettas, released hundreds and hundreds of felons into society while sending out his thugs to abduct people who have formed a useful part of society, sought to take away the right to birth-right citizenship, had his attorney general cover up a criminal pedophile ring, threatened and sued senators, representatives, journalists, political opponents, members of the judiciary, comedians, and just about anyone else you can think of, and has gotten away with running for and winning the presidency with the backing of a scant third of registered voters,  despite being a convicted 34-count felon, while vastly increasing his own wealth and that of family and friends.

Donald Trump has disrespected not only his office, but also the two other co-equal branches of government. He has wiped his feet on the Constitution and the law, violently infringed on states’ rights, trucked with dictators and shunned our closest democratic allies, committed unjustified acts of war completely bypassing Congress, and has lied repeatedly, consistently, yes, even constantly to the courts, to Congress and, above all, to the American people. He has basically turned the US government—as the New York Daily News so aptly put it— into, “the most powerful crime syndicate in history.”

So tell me again, why on earth I should “respect the office of the president” as long as it is being usurped by a vile authoritarian and the head of what is clearly a criminal organization, in that it acts consistently beyond the limits of the law, and under the assumption that the rules simply do not apply to him. A would-be despot with a raging Napoleon complex. A narcissist with well-documented psychopathic tendencies. As long as Donald Trump is president, the office of the president has, in my book, ceased to exist as such and has been replaced with something very much akin to what ensued in Germany when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor at the end of January 1933, and, by February 27, had swiftly dismantled the country’s democracy, burned the Reichstag (legislature), and used the fire as an excuse to declare a state of emergency and to push through a so-called Enabling Act that, as of March 1933, permitted him and his cabinet to dictate laws without parliamentary intervention.

Trump needed no fire in the Capitol—although he held his violent insurrection there of January 6, 2021, after legitimately losing the 2020 election. All he needed was a complicit and acquiescent majority in both houses of Congress that, up to now, has let him get away with every sort of lawlessness imaginable—let him, in fact, get away with murder.

Supporters of the boycott frame it as what it is: a principled stand against what we see as the normalization of rhetoric and behavior that we find not only misleading but also pernicious for the Republic and devastating for democracy. 

Many of those who are now suddenly taking the “they-go-low-we-go-high” attitude toward tonight’s State of the Union Address are, oddly enough, some of the same ones who have accused Democrats and Independents of sitting on their hands and letting Trump and the hijacked GOP carry the United States to hell in a handbasket. They are some of the very ones who have accused the opposition of inaction in the face of tyranny.

It is hypocritical, then, to now shake one’s head, cluck one’s tongue and claim that opposition politicians’ taking part in unprecedented grassroots activism—there have never before been parallel (shadow) events like the ones scheduled for tonight’s State of the Union—is somehow improper.

It appears to me that what is improper—and dangerous—is to continue to labor under the delusion that the Era of Trump is anything like “business as usual” or that it is “just another sunny day” in US democracy.  It is not. And we can’t continue to be passive spectators in the clear and present dismantling of two and a half centuries of American freedom, democracy and justice. This is where patriots are separated from hangers-on. It is where the rubber meets the road. This is where Americans—be they politicians or common everyday citizens and residents—must choose to be part of the solution or part of the problem. This is where we must choose to hold leaders accountable, or become the victims of their despotism. And if we choose freedom and democracy, then we must be willing, from each of our own little corners, to shine a light on the dark designs of a tyrannical regime and to oppose its war on democracy with every tool at our disposal.

Democracy can survive, but only if we are willing to get behind it and oppose its enemies. Democracy dies in darkness and making ourselves beacons in any way we can is the only way to uphold it. That is why this boycott—led, I am proud to say, by independent journalists and democratic activists—is so important. That is why it is so vital in unmasking the truth and drawing attention to abnormality. It is why this protest, and other events like it being organized around the country, are a matter of life and death for the Nation as we once knew it.