U.S. needs uplift in SOTU, not brow-beating

President Joe Biden, sitting on a fragile 54% approval rating, you will deliver your State of the Union message tonight, which traditionally is upbeat, positive and confident.

Although your approval rating is low — better only than Donald J. Trump’s at this stage of his presidency, meaning both of you are polarizing  — your tidal wave of trillion-dollar giveaways to the American people is popular because most people like free stuff. Two-thirds of us like that the free stuff will be paid for by corporations. We will not think about how corporations will pass along the added cost to us through higher prices.  Because we are kind of stupid and easily distracted by gifts. 

On the other hand, you get failing grades of 40% for creating the crisis at the border through your foolish “welcoming” words to (illegal) immigrants and your reversal of Trump policies that seemed harsh to the Left, but were working. Yes. Joe, they were  working.

You can paper over the border crisis situation by claiming it is under control and that VP Kamala Harris is on the job.

It is not under control, except in the sense that we have accepted about 42,000 kids to be distributed within the U.S.  with lots more on the way and Harris hasn’t done much. You are probably wondering how you backed into this buzz saw. It’s not too late to wise up and change direction.

For tonight’s speech, one important thing to do is rehearse so you don’t seem to be reading the address off a TelePrompTer, which of course you will. Rehearsing is important because you have a slight tendency to verbally trip — owing to your youthful stuttering problem — and to slightly slur words when you read too quickly.

Your “friends” on the Right will be watching like hawks for anything they can attribute to diminished mental capacity. In a way, they are helping you. When they suggest you are barely cogent and may crap your pants, all you have to do is bloop a single to center field to make you look like Rhys Hopkins.

That should not be hard. 

I’d recommend being upbeat, in the sense that Tyler Perry was upbeat at the Oscars, talking about love for all, hate for none. Tyler is a Black man who rose from poverty to become a billionaire and humanitarian.

Americans are more positive than negative. That’s why Ronald Reagan’s shining city upon a hill played better than Trump’s a nation in flames.

For God’s sake, lay off the “systemic racism” stuff you’ve been spouting lately. (So have the genocidal Chinese Communists, thanks to you. Yes, they lecture us on human rights.)

I don’t believe we live in “system racism” because the phrase means the system is racist. That would be like South Africa was. Why do you insult the nation you lead?

Our “system” — our legal and social structure which demands equality — is not racist. It is the opposite.

Does it always deliver equality?

No, because it is imperfect, and people are imperfect, but when it does not, there are remedies, usually through the courts. Or the ballot box.

Almost half of Blacks believe bias comes more from individuals than laws and institutions, Pew Research reports.

So there is racism in America, but it is the worm in the apple, not the apple itself. 

Secondly, if you talk about “systemic racism,” I might ask what the hell you have been doing the last 50 years you were in the Senate, or in the White House, serving a Black president who is best known for this quote: “In no other country on Earth is my story even possible.”

How can that be true in a nation of “systemic racism”? 

The term is racial masochism, telling the American people how terrible we are, when with a few exceptions, we are not. In an Ipsos poll last year, 70 percent of Americans strongly agreed that “all races are equal,” and 89 percent agreed that all races should be treated equally. 

Those are huge majorities. You would give your hair plugs for approval ratings that high.

We have racial conflict, a battered economy, a continuing pandemic, a divided nation.

You ran as someone who could bring us together.

You can’t do that by taking us on a guilt trip.