What to Watch for During Trump's Speech

President Trump will speak in a few hours to a joint session of Congress, where his remarks will be accompanied by one half of the room giving a standing ovation to his words while the other half sits and seethes in crabby displeasure. It looks rather like a disjointed and semi-coherent version of "Simon Says: Politics Edition." 

Now, as PJ Media's Scott Pinsker observed earlier, there is some scuttlebutt that Democrats hope to bring their own brand of theatrics and distractions to the evening's proceedings. Some say they will simply walk out of the chamber when Trump says things they find objectionable (thereby bringing themselves and those who remain in the chamber to a happier place). Others might bring their [heretofore unread] pocket copies of the Constitution to protest the President's exercise of executive power over the executive branch. Still more have floated the idea of visual props and noisemakers to distract attention from the President's remarks, though if they start persecuting everyone with their lacerating and incessant protest chants, they should be locked in a room with a platoon of nagging ex-spouses to see who passes out from oxygen deprivation first. 

But there are times when silence speaks louder than protests, and it is here that an important point needs to be made. It's a point highlighted by the following video clip from President Trump's 2018 address to Congress, in which he talks about a 45-year low amount of unemployment claims. Then, at the 55-second mark, the President proudly remarks that the African American unemployment rate had reached the lowest level in history. 

What should have been received as a historic achievement by, and for, the American people was received by Democrats in general and the Congressional Black Caucus specifically by a delegation who neither applauded nor stood up. Seated as if their butts were glued to the chair and scowling as if Donald Trump had suddenly donned a white sheet, they were visibly disgusted with news that most sentient Americans applauded. 

Tonight, when the President announces that illegal border crossings have dropped by 95% in the last six weeks and are currently at the lowest level on record, look for Democrats to react as if a national tragedy has occurred. Their mourning will only deepen when the President highlights the continuing arrest and deportation of violent predators, red with the blood of innocent Americans on their hands. 

Why? Because it never was America First with these people. It's Americans Last for them because they measure their achievements and their power by the sacrifices they exact from you. Your freedom to be safe in your towns and on your streets is a negative indicator for the party of government dependence. 

Likewise, they will react like the witch coming into contact with water as President Trump declares the end of identity politics. The days of a person's color or any other immutable characteristic being dispositive of that person's character and status as oppressed or oppressor are over. Love, as the song says, comes in all colors. So does hate. 

Individual integrity, ability, ambition, knowledge, skill, potential, and achievement — those are the currency of how we build and live our lives. And that currency will be met with severe disapproval from the party and the ideology that stands to lose its influence over people who are free once more to go as far as their dreams, their aspirations, and their abilities will take them.  

"The gravamen of the liberal's case against America," wrote William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1997, "has always had to do with the free-market society's disposition to let people make out on their own." That sort of freedom is deemed too risky, don't you see? Better to let a gaggle of collectivist philosopher-kings decide what is best for us, the ultimate realization of which was laid bare during the four years of the Biden administration. We're not going back to that. 

So let Nancy Pelosi rip the text again, and let the court jesters of the left perform their theatrical idiocies for the camera. America has moved beyond all that.