The State of the Union Is Strong, If You Ignore Reality

(Or: How I Learned to Stop Counting Lies and Love the Absurdity)

By Stihn B. Kinna

I sat down to watch the latest serious presidential address. Big mistake. I should have known better. I should have braced myself for the fever dream that was about to unfold—a symphony of nonsense, a masterclass in unreality.

Within minutes, I was no longer watching a speech. I was watching a live-action hallucination.

The audience leaped to their feet in spontaneous, pre-orchestrated applause. Even the ones who had supposedly lost the ability to stand. A moment of political miracle-making, I suppose.

And then, as if divine inspiration had struck, came the revelations.

• We’re spending billions of dollars on free Teslas for undocumented immigrants.

• 140-year-olds are cashing Social Security checks.

• The government is hemorrhaging cash at an unprecedented rate—except when it comes to programs that actually help citizens, which have apparently vanished into the void.

Reality had packed its bags and left the building.

The Great American Absurdity Machine™

There was a time when politicians at least tried to lie believably. Those days are over. Now, we get full-blown children’s book logic, where the laws of math, physics, and human biology are rewritten on demand.

The problem isn’t just that these statements are false. It’s that they’re not even good lies. They’re the kind of thing you’d expect from a bad scriptwriter who got lazy halfway through the first draft.

And yet, we’re expected to nod along. As if it is perfectly reasonable to believe that:

• Millions of invisible ghost-people are draining the Social Security system.

• Electric cars run on gasoline now.

• Fort Knox might be emptied at any moment by a caravan of undocumented grandmothers in government-issued Lamborghinis.

It’s not just deception. It’s dumb deception.

The Cult of the Contradiction

Let’s talk about the people still clapping.

They are told, in the same breath, that:

• The government is completely incompetent and also somehow a perfectly efficient machine for orchestrating mass fraud.

• Socialism is evil, but unlimited corporate bailouts are just good business.

• The government is out of control, but somehow, the strongman at the top is our only hope.

The mental gymnastics required to believe these things could qualify for Olympic gold.

And the worst part? The sheer obedience. They know it’s a lie. They know none of it makes sense. But at this point, the lie isn’t the point—the performance of belief is.

And so, they stand. They clap. They chant the slogans, even as reality crumbles beneath their feet.

Welcome to America, Where Satire Is Dead

At some point in the last decade, satire became obsolete.

How do you parody something that is already a self-parody? How do you write political absurdism when the people in power outdo your wildest exaggerations in real time?

Imagine pitching a dystopian novel where:

• The Department of Energy is rebranded as Elon Musk’s Twitter Fan Club.

• The U.S. Constitution is replaced with a Terms of Service agreement.

• The Library of Congress is torched because books are woke, but don’t worry—you can subscribe to history for $8.99/month on TruthSocial Premium.

A publisher would reject it for being too unrealistic. And yet, here we are.

What Comes Next?

Four more years of this, and what’s left? Do we finally reclassify lying as a patriotic duty? Do we get official government press releases that just say, “Facts are for communists”?

Do we reach the point where reality is so divorced from governance that the next State of the Union declares that Abraham Lincoln is alive and well, endorsing unlimited executive power from beyond the grave?

There is only one way out of this madness: refusing to participate in the charade.

• Stop debating nonsense. It doesn’t deserve the dignity of engagement.

• Stop “interpreting” bad-faith lies. They mean exactly what they mean—power at all costs.

• Start calling it what it is: a deliberate, farcical destruction of truth itself.

And if all else fails? Well, at least we’ll be laughing when they claim George Washington’s ghost just signed an executive order.

Final Thought: We cannot outmatch this level of absurdity. But we can point at it, laugh, and expose it for what it is. The only thing more powerful than a lie is the moment people stop believing it.

Stihn B Kinna