Unworthy

During my adult life, I’ve watched most State of the Union Speeches. But I will not be watching tomorrow night’s.

My reason is simple. I don’t believe the man slated to give it is worthy to do so. I believe he will lie about the state of our Union. I trust he will paint a relentlessly deceptive and rosy picture. I think he will focus on himself and his aggrandizement, as he often does. I fear he will spend far too much time damning and profaning his political enemies, and far too little discussing the very real and rapidly advancing problems that threaten our Union.

First among those problems is the state of our economy and its likely future. Once trained as a doctoral-level scientist and engineer, I know something about tangible equipment. So I’ve bought nothing important that was made in our country for the past seven years.

My split-duct home heating system was made in Japan. My leased EV and my clothes washer and electric dryer were made in South Korea. My iPhone, laptop and desktop computers were made in China or South Korea. In my judgment, after diligent research, nothing similar made in America was worth buying. (GM did produce my 2018 Chevy Volt, a fine serial hybrid, and in the US, but before it decided mostly to abandon EVs.)

Never mind. Seventy percent of our national economy now involves services. Plumbers, construction workers and auto mechanics will always be with us—although EVs require far less service than ICE cars which, outside our country, are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of service workers—especially those who earn more than auto mechanics, plumbers, and construction and hospitality workers—have jobs vulnerable to replacement or “downsizing” by AI. They include managers, insurance agents, accountants, investment advisers, HR workers, lawyers, computer programmers, promotion/advertising people and even some non-hands-on members of the medical establishment (especially workers in medical insurance).

So there are two near-term possibilities. First, our present vast overinvestment in AI and its computer infrastructure will do to our upper middle class what outsourcing to China and other low-wage countries has done to manufacturing workers. The devastation and impoverishment of our upper middle class will be upon us.

Second, if the AI boom fails to have this expected effect, we will have a massive, energy-wasting overinvestment in worthless computers and software that will outdo the Dot-Com Bubble and the Crash of 2008 put together. In either case, the future of Americans now in or graduating from college will be dimmer than ever since we first began mandatory public education in Lincoln’s day.

Our chief executive will say nothing about any of this, let alone in his SOTU speech. He won’t because: (1) he wants to paint a rosy picture; (2) he has no idea how cause and effect work in the real world; and (3) the sycophants whom he has pulled around him work mainly in high finance. They’ll benefit from personal connections among the oligarchy, as they do now. So their lives won’t be affected, at least not as immediately and directly as most of our upper middle class.

No one in the present administration has any idea what is about to happen, let alone if positive feedback in planetary heating takes off and causes migration to explode.

I think there is only one person in the entire current administration who might be competent to conceive of these problems and possible solutions, let alone to put them into effect. That person is Marco Rubio. But the enigmatic, ruthlessly opportunistic and likely incompetent J.D. Vance will automatically become president in the event of the current president’s death or removal after impeachment or under Amendment 25. The more experienced and more competent Rubio will be at his mercy.

So as you nod off Tuesday listening to the inevitable self-praise, rosy-tinted lies, and insults to political enemies and helpless minorities, know this. We don’t have three years to turn this country around, let alone its over-investment in AI. If we continue on our present course, those old enough to remember them, or to remember stories that their parents told about them, will look back on the Great Depression and subsequent horrible war with fondness. What they and their families can look forward to will be much worse.

So my hope for the coming SOTU is simple but probably vain. As our increasingly senile and demented president gets up to speak, I hope every Democrat rises and silently leaves the room. I hope that enough Republicans also do so to put a realistic fear of impeachment and removal (or removal under Amendment 25) in the mind of every official who remains.

Barring that, we are looking at something like the Fall of Rome, but at our characteristic “Warp Speed.” It took three “mad” emperors, over a period of some 140 years, to seal Rome’s fate. Ours might easily be sealed in three, with the inevitable sequelae to follow. Ancient Rome did not have a much larger, more prosperous, more advanced, more disciplined and much more populous China to contend with, let alone a modern Europe, India and East Asia, all striving mightily to take its place.