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state of the union
Jan. 20th, 2004 11:34 pmSo yeah, as I mentioned, I drove to Minnesota, and the close reader will have noticed that I didn't mention driving back. That's because I didn't--I stayed there a few weeks, pretty much, and then came back by way of Seattle. Expect various posts about all that for a while, but for now just a few words about today.
It's about 700 miles from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
greyaenigma's house to my apartment, roughly eleven hours of driving. The first time I did it was last month, and I tried to keep the drive as short as possible by driving straight through with no stops. I made pretty good time but by the end of it I felt like dying.
So today I took the opposite approach: Lots of random stops, stretching breaks, roadside snacks, short explorations of small towns, and so on. It took about fifteen hours, but I feel pretty good. So I guess that's the way to go.
I spent an awfully large part of today trip listening to the State of the Union speech, and pre-speech speculation, and post-speech analysis. Those Republicans sure are clap-happy. I just thought it was disjointed and kind of picayune.
Earlier in the day I heard someone on NPR talking about a perceived decline in public interest in the speech, compared to the ones he's given the previous two years. The first year, it was said, we were a nation at war--9/11 had happened, and he declared the axis of evil. (I remember being impressed and even stirred by this one at the time.) The second year we were a nation at war again, as the president psyched us up to invade Iraq. But this year things were kind of back to normal, and it was just an ordinary state of the union speech, so only the political junkies were interested.
Except--Americans are still getting killed daily in Iraq, right? And we're still vulnerable to attack in any number of ways, and there are at least as many people in the world now that would like to do it. So was the NPR commentator's point that the American people have simply become resigned to a state of permanent war? Because that's not cool.
It's about 700 miles from
greyaenigma's house to my apartment, roughly eleven hours of driving. The first time I did it was last month, and I tried to keep the drive as short as possible by driving straight through with no stops. I made pretty good time but by the end of it I felt like dying.So today I took the opposite approach: Lots of random stops, stretching breaks, roadside snacks, short explorations of small towns, and so on. It took about fifteen hours, but I feel pretty good. So I guess that's the way to go.
I spent an awfully large part of today trip listening to the State of the Union speech, and pre-speech speculation, and post-speech analysis. Those Republicans sure are clap-happy. I just thought it was disjointed and kind of picayune.
Earlier in the day I heard someone on NPR talking about a perceived decline in public interest in the speech, compared to the ones he's given the previous two years. The first year, it was said, we were a nation at war--9/11 had happened, and he declared the axis of evil. (I remember being impressed and even stirred by this one at the time.) The second year we were a nation at war again, as the president psyched us up to invade Iraq. But this year things were kind of back to normal, and it was just an ordinary state of the union speech, so only the political junkies were interested.
Except--Americans are still getting killed daily in Iraq, right? And we're still vulnerable to attack in any number of ways, and there are at least as many people in the world now that would like to do it. So was the NPR commentator's point that the American people have simply become resigned to a state of permanent war? Because that's not cool.
