I watched the recap of the State of the Union.

My acid reflux mechanism is ignited by the sound of his voice. 1 hour and 48 minutes of Agent Orange would have Stanley Steamer at my home for an entire day dealing with clean up.

Even the highlights or rather lowlights of the interminable, least watched SOTU address ever were extremely tough to digest.

These days the State of the Union feels less like a national update and more like an SNL opening skit protraying a very loose relationship with reality.

I will admit I am confused. Is this really happening and was I unconscious during Biden’s presidency because I thought the state of the country was trending positively.

Not that long ago we still pretended facts mattered. Then along came what’s his name, who discovered that if you repeat, and repeat and repeat something loudly enough, preferably in all  caps on social media, millions of people will treat it like scripture.

Immigrants become invaders.

Journalists become enemies.

ICE raids that scoop up terrified families somehow get marketed as patriotism.

It’s quite the branding campaign.

Meanwhile the boring stuff, the actual numbers, keeps sitting there quietly. The national debt is approaching $39 trillion, which means taxpayers are now heroically funding interest payments like a household that put the entire country on a credit card during a marijuana infused late-night Amazon binge.

But nuance doesn’t trend.

So instead we get outrage theater, invented emergencies, unnecessary wars, rampant antisemitism and immigration bias even though the workforce has been depleted and most Caucasians will not take a job washing dishes, working in poultry and meat plants and picking crops.

These approaches earmarked by Agent Orange, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon represent the political strategy of a middle school argument: say it first, say it louder, never admit you are wrong and keep saying we are the hottest country in the world. Let us not forget the constant mantra, declaring our elections are rigged and that our prescription drugs are free as prices are down 1500%.

Truth becomes optional.

And once lying becomes normal, something worse happens…people stop expecting honesty at all.

That’s how you end up with a political culture where cruelty toward immigrants is called strength, innocent people become campaign props, and accountability disappears faster than a campaign promise after Election Day.

The speech had the usual ingredients, applause lines, special guests representing manipulated partisan policies, selective memory, and statistics delivered with magician level confidence.

What the rant lacked was accountability and concrete policies for the future of America.

Trump’s governing philosophy appears to be simple. If  something goes wrong, blame Biden, blame immigrants, blame Democrats, blame the deep state, blame the moon and once again, blame Sleepy Joe who by the way, never fell asleep during a meeting, just never blame the guy hunched over the microphone.

Meanwhile the rest of us are standing in the grocery store staring at egg prices like we’re reviewing luxury real estate.

Maybe the real State of the Union is that Americans aren’t just angry. They are exhausted. Exhausted by lies, outrage, and watching innocent people turned into villains for applause.

The State of the Union felt less like a report and more like theater and like most politically exploitive shows the plot is built around exaggeration, hatred, bullying, verbose lying by alleged macho men and selective truth rendering the blabfest completely out of touch with reality.

Ultimately, it was a flop.