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Title : Was Trump's SOTU theme "nationalism"? Was it devoid of values?
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Was Trump's SOTU theme "nationalism"? Was it devoid of values?

Every weekday morning I listen to the NYT podcast, "The Daily," which goes up around 5 a.m., so it's usually there when I'm making my first cup of coffee. They don't give us a transcript, so if I want to blog about it, which I almost always do, I'd have to find the point in the recording and transcribe it myself or simply go on my memory of what I believe I heard. The first approach is workable when there's one specific line I want to talk about, but not when I want to convey the whole theme of the show, what the podcasters are trying to tell us, and whether they've really supported that position.

The State of the Union Address is the topic of today's show, and like the State of the Union, the whole thing washes over you and you're left with various feelings and impressions, and it's virtually impossible — without the transcript or careful relistening — to remember exactly what they said and what you contributed as you absorbed all that. But that's life. That's what it means to be human, and if we weren't human, the speech and the entire subject matter of the speech would not exist.

So I'm going to tell you what I believe I heard in the NYT podcast this morning. I think the host Michael Barbaro and his guest Mark Landler (a NYT White House correspondent) said that Trump's SOTU address was deliberately written to minimize Trump and put the spotlight on individual Americans (and one North Korean) who acted heroically, displayed feisty entrepreneurship, or suffered tragically. Trump, the divider, removed himself from the center of things, and filled the screen with vivid stories of people, heightening the effect by repeatedly talking about the importance of individuals. Though Trump didn't talk that much about what government can or should do, the stories created support for things Trump does want to do, because they generate, on a deep emotional level, the sense that foreigners are evil and dangerous. The speech was thus profoundly "nationalist." Trump's idea of America is a crude us-versus-them vision, with no other content, no values.

This is what I feel they were saying, as they expressed what they purportedly felt about what Trump said. Please listen to the podcast and see if you agree. Offer corrections or alternative interpretations. It's a great podcast, carefully composed, and full of audio clips from Trump's speech, so the argument is elegantly developed. There is even music which is, I think, designed to massage your thought processes. At one point, the music is obtrusive, but perhaps where I was annoyed and distracted, a Trump-o-phobic person might have felt powerfully moved because the music would feel like their own heartbeat.

Let me make a few points:

1. Barbaro/Landler seemed critical of Trump's minimizing himself, as if that's a tricky device, but Trump — who is so often denounced as narcissistic — should get at least some credit for performing the absence of narcissism.

2. Individualism is a value, and the whole speech was expressive of the value of individualism. But it was a show-don't-tell statement. The word "individualism" never appeared, and "individual" only came up in a reference to the Obamacare "individual mandate." (You can check the the transcript.)

3. Freedom is a value. Trump spoke of it in connection with our kinship with freedom-loving people in foreign countries: We "stands with the people of Iran in their courageous struggle for freedom," and we love Ji Seong-ho who "traveled thousands of miles on crutches across China and Southeast Asia to freedom" and "is a testament to the yearning of every human soul to live in freedom." Freedom is a universal value that we share with good people all over the world and that "gave birth to a special place called America."

4. Self-government is a value. The "yearning... to live in freedom" led to "a revolutionary idea: that [Americans] could rule themselves." By instituting a system of self-government, Americans "light up the world."

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