Faith in the press to fight our battles for us is truly a double-edged sword, as the president's first address to Congress was greeted with pretty widespread and fawning headlines from various points of the mainstream media. But of course there is no new direction from Trump, no kinder, gentler president. The Trump-Bannon team has at least previously done us the service of broadcasting loud and clear that their intent is to attempt to shock and awe the American republic, and until they are ejected from office, they will continue to do so with still more authoritarian, anti-free press, anti-Muslim, pro-billionaire machinations. The widespread opposition to Trump is based on overwhelming evidence of his unfit character and rancid anti-American politics, and most people are well aware that the speech to Congress was just another bit of performance art. And though much coverage of the speech painted it as some sort of softening of his positions, something presidential, it notably contained blatant lies about the raid in Yemen, with Trump using the death of a sailor to distract from questions about the utility of the action; it seems to have yielded little information of use, but, more importantly, brought about the deaths of 25 Yemeni civilians.
(This raid also demonstrates one of the main reasons why we are still fighting an escalating cast of extremists across the broader Middle East a decade and a half after 9/11: by treating this as a military conflict, we are making enemies faster than we kill them. How can a raid that kills 25 civilians in any way be counted a success, no matter how "important" its other accomplishments? This idea alone should shock the conscience.)
And the speech comes just after Trump once again is refusing to take responsibility for the raid's shortcomings. This in particular seems particularly staggering to me — surely even Trump supporters must sense something amiss when the commander in chief can't bring himself to at least go through the motions of accepting responsibility. I also hope that the many military voters who pulled the lever for Trump are starting to look anew at this pathetic man who now has the power to send them into harm's way.