Motus Mentis

Everyone’s abuzz about last night’s State of the Union address, and I’ll say that I enjoyed it quite a bit myself: it was an hour-and-a-half long trolling of the Democrats in a way that was at least eight years overdue. Their discomfiture was so acute that they lost all concern for the political optics of sitting on their hands, glaring, as Mr. Trump read off an impressive list of good things that have been happening lately for America and its people. It became very clear indeed that the actual state of the Union doesn’t really interest them much at all; the only thing that matters to them is the state of their power over it — which is at a providentially low ebb for at least the next several months. All of this was never supposed to happen, and the Left is very, very angry about it.

What’s that you say? The Democrats are simply upset over the fate of the poor “Dreamers”? This is now shown to be obviously, transparently false. In these last days, Mr. Trump has offered legal status to approximately two million of them. This is far more generous than anything Barack Obama ever put on the table, and is an offer, I’m sure, that any “Dreamer” would accept without a moment’s hesitation. It would grant them their fondest hope — and if the Democrats truly cared about them, as they so ostentatiously pretend to do, they would leap at the proposal themselves (which, I should point out, is as unpopular with many to Mr. Trump’s right as it is on the far Left).

So why don’t they? Why, instead, do they spit on it, and denounce it in the vilest terms? The answer is obvious: because it does not immediately give these illegal aliens the vote, and because the offer is contingent upon reducing indiscriminate immigration — legal and illegal — in the future. Let me put that another way: the Democrats will not take this offer, despite it giving so-called “Dreamers” what they most desire, because it is designed not to assure the Democrats of a continuing flood of new Democrat voters. That is all there is to it.

From the moment Trump made this offer, infuriating so many on the Right, it struck me as a feint. He knew the Democrats would never bring themselves to accept it, despite it being a godsend for “Dreamers”, and that this would make it obvious to all of America where their priorities really are. (This just shortly after the Democrats had already embarrassed themselves by shutting down the government for the sake of illegal aliens.)

On display again, also, was Mr. Trump’s uncanny knack for taking the Left’s framing and language and making it his own. (You may not recall, for example, that “fake news” was originally used as a bludgeon against Mr. Trump, but it was.) Last night, in a brilliant stroke, he seized another verbal whip from the Democrat’s hands: “Dreamers”.

“Americans are dreamers too!”, he said, to the loudest applause of the evening. How can anyone argue with that, and win?

For almost ninety minutes, the Democratic Party demonstrated, with the eyes of America and the world upon them, just how sullen and small they are, and where their true allegiances lie. Our civil war may only be beginning, but this bravura performance was a significant, and victorious, skirmish for our side.

Do forgive me, Readers, if I sound quite uncharacteristically chipper about all this tonight. It will pass.