Speaker 1: The Thinking Atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
an idea.
Speaker 2: The population of atheists in this country is going through.
Speaker 1: The rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If
I tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not.
Speaker 2: Because I put my hand on a book and made
a wish.
Speaker 1: And working together for a more rational world.
Speaker 2: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
Speaker 1: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
Thinking Atheist podcast, hosted by Seth Andrews.
Speaker 2: This is the audio of a Substack article and it
was borrowed from Monday night's live stream My Secular State
of the Union. Donald Trump gave a presentation last Tuesday,
and so I had some commentary in advance of it.
Of course, Trump's speech is already behind us, but I
thought this Secular State of the Union was still pretty relevant.
So I'm releasing it here as a bonus broadcast, and
if you would like the written version, the Substack link
is in the description box. Traditionally, in January or February,
the President of the United States stands before Congress and
gives the State of the Union speech. This thing uses
the same template every year, big claims about the economy,
a list of the president's achievements, and vacuous plays to
American patriotism. The speech is also conveniently vague and loaded
with applause lines. There will be a singling out of
at least one quote unquote great American somebody who is
sitting in the balcony. The cameras will look up and
focus on a first responder, a civil rights movement hero,
or some other everyday person, and the arena will laud
and applaud before, during, and after the State of the
Union speech. There will be smiles, but any outward expression
of goodness will actually be a rictus of contempt for
the other side. Tonight, as many Democrats are skipping the
event in protest, expect many empty seats. And of course,
this speech will change absolutely nothing by design. It's simply
re en forces who people were and what they thought
long before they walked into the Congressional chamber. Tonight won't
exactly be a State of the Union that is officially
scheduled for twenty twenty six, but it will be almost
certainly a big Republican zieghile of white Christian nationalism, cruelty,
and laws. If we're lucky, Trump will form a few
complete sentences as he verbally pleasures himself with the usual hyperbole, greatest, worst, always, never,
and the repeating of his favorite prepositional phrase in the
history of our country. He'll be petty and childish. He
will dehumanize and stoke fear, and he'll bask in the
ovations of sycophantic ass liquors who used to call him
Hitler but today call him daddy. And as usual, the
media will go badshit crazy over every scrambled syllable that
comes out of Donald's wordhole. I have this fantasy about
a lightning bolt of new life striking the graves of
founding fathers, who would crawl out of the ground, brush
themselves off, walk into tonight's event, and deliver commentary. I
suspect they'd look around and immediately began drawing up a
new declaration of independence. I envision Thomas Jefferson quoting from
his Notes on the State of Virginia from seventeen eighty eight,
when he said an elective despotism was not the government
we fought for, but one which should not only be
founded on free principles, but in which the powers of
government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies
of magicistry as that no one could transcend their legal
limits without being a fan actually checked and restrained by
the others. James Madison would be there and he would
ask the room, weren't you listening to the words I
wrote way back in seventeen eighty eight at my New
York Address. The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive, and
judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few,
or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may
justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Benjamin Franklin
would be there and he would reference his words written
back in seventeen seventy four. Equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges,
and advantages is what every part is entitled to and
ought to enjoy. And I have this fantasy that the
founders would pick a spokesperson among them to grab the
microphone and speak directly to the big copper comb over.
Perhaps John Adams would do the honors, defiantly telling Donald Trump,
we came here to escape a king. You tissue skinned
silver spoon draft, dodging, pussy grabbing, vendor, bilking, charity scamming,
dancing baby. The oxygen you breathe is a waste of trees.
We would explain our secular constitution to you, but we
don't have the time or the crayons. What you have
done and what you are doing, is a betrayal of
everything we intended. It's unequal, unconstitutional, Unamerican. So we are
going to write a fresh new declaration of independence from you,
Donald Trump, and its first words will be the door
is there off? You must fuck. Donald would not have
to walk far to find the exit because he would
be sealed in a soundproof dunk tank at the back
of the room. Instead of water, the box would be
filled with orange Fanta. Security would grab Trump by the arms,
escorting him out to a clown car in the parking lot,
and as he was being taken away, I would warn
the attendees, be advised people, tomorrow he will be selling
Trump and a clown car commemorative merchandise. And then my
actual speech would begin. I would say to the eighty
nine million eligible voters who stayed home in twenty twenty four,
the only reason I am not more pissed at your
absolute dereliction of duty is pity. Anybody motivated to be
unmotivated in a time of national existential crisis must be
critically ill or held hostage in somebody's dungeon. It's the
only reason that makes sense. It's the only explanation that works.
It can be that you weren't aware of the dangers.
It must be that somebody had tranquilizer darted to you,
making it impossible to reach the polls by seven pm
to do your part for the protections of democracy and decency.
Wherever you might have been incarcerated, or in whatever coma
you must have been in, I hope there are enough
people remaining in our defunded institutions to help you get
out next time. To the seventy seven million people who
checked the box by Trump's name last November, you used
democracy to destroy democracy. You let someone play to your
paranoia and prejudices. You believed a strong man who promised
to save you if you would just surrender pretty much everything.
You gave him the keys to the whole American house,
no matter who else it hurts. There was another guy,
not Hitler, but another guy elected in a similar way
his name was Benito Mussolini. Mussolini played to Italian nationalists
and notions of restoring national greatness. He was elected through
the democratic process, and then he splintered the process so
nobody could challenge him. A symbol of power for his
government was taken from ancient Rome. It was an axe
wrapped in sticks, called a fescio, which is where we
get the word fascism today. Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and
the oligarchs are the axes. You are the sticks. That's
your legacy. You propped them up and fortify them, completely
blind to the iyer of being sticks that support an axe.
Of course, we know what often happens to dictators, don't we.
King Louis the sixteenth was dragged at the guillotine. Saddam
Hussein was hanged. Mussolini himself was violently executed. Other tyrants
in our history have been kicked out, imprisoned, or ruined
in some way. Now I have no illusions that a
guy as slippery and slimy as Donald Trump is ever
going to get officially caught. Thanks to you, Maga, he
has been able to avoid those legal limits referenced by
Thomas Jefferson. Whatever else, history writes about you. It will say,
or it should say, that you deliberately roped the United
States onto your burning altar of zelotry, ignorance, ambivalence, or
outright stupidity. In today's climate, Trump is both cancer and
simp a black light at the crime scene. The rise
of American totalitarianism has exposed stains that we just didn't
see before. And those stains are you. That's your legacy.
You're all about freedom, yet you are uninterested in the
many responsibilities that come with freedom. To you, cooperation and
coalition sound a lot like evil socialism. The notion of
collectivist values makes you squirm. You bought into the lie
that we're not all in this together because Americans are individuals.
At some point, you'll hopefully come to learn that no
one is an island. Someone or something that you care
about will eventually get hurt, and you will scramble like
a bewildered child, wondering how it all went wrong. In
some places, this is already happening. Trump voter, will you
one day reach out to the Americans that you've harmed
when you lose your job, when you can't afford your
cancer medication, when you're broke and sleeping in your car.
Will others show you more empathy, grace, compassion understanding than
you showed them? What irony it would be if an immigrant,
a married gay couple, a transperson, a scientist, a public
safety worker and a government job, A foreigner or another
woke lib individual or group that you previously brushed off
donated to you from their savings because your vote killed
their social Security benefits. A lot of factors have gotten
us to this point. There are thousands of gears in
the machine, many of them installed by clever billionaires who
have been scheming for decades. America. The billionaires are not
going to save you, and it's unconscionable that three individuals
possess more wealth than the bottom fifty percent of this country.
The oligarchs aren't empathizing from their five hundred million dollar yachts.
They don't even see you. How could Elon Musk, worth
more than the value of one hundred forty world nations,
be connected to an everyday American. I saw an item
for sale on Etsy recently. It was a satirical poster
featuring one half Donald Trump the other half Elon Musk
in sunglasses. The caption said I'm with Elonald. Maga often
argues that Elonald is working for the public good because
filthy rich people couldn't be motivated by money. Trumpers, listen
to yourselves, watch the oligarchs, while yours is a life
of hard work, mortgage payments, medical bills, and the paycheck
to paycheck grind into an uncertain future. Elon Musk today
could lose three hundred and fifty eight billion dollars and
he would still be a billionaire. Perhaps this is the
greatness American conservatives are referring to. The ideal is to
become a wealth hoarder, and until Maga can become them,
it will worship them. Their naivety and ignorance boggle the mind.
If you really believe that the billionaire Donald Trump works
for you, you also likely believe the stranger in your
junk email folder has your inheritance check, the stripper really
is in love with you, and the Mara Lago Mango
stands ready with a swank guest room, gourmet Big Max,
and free rides for your family in his four hundred
thousand dollars rolls Royce. I suppose infantile thinking should be
expected in an America that has declared itself the greatest
while failing to other nations in almost every metric employment, education,
housing costs, crime rates, health care lifespan, overall happiness. Our
response to that data isn't to elevate our standards, but
rather to hold our flags a little higher in the
hopes that claims become true by mere declaration. What else
should we expect from a culture which has declared war
on science. Often more afraid of cures than they are
of diseases, Americans blink blankly at climate change. They're doubtful
we landed on the moon. They're unsure that the planet
is spherical. They scan the world for shiny objects, UFOs,
star charts, golden toilets. It's unsurprising they'd be impressed by
a Secretary of Defense who has denied the existence of germs.
How can anybody navigate the real world when they don't
believe in real things? The late cosmologist Carl Sagan wrote
these words in his book The Demon Haunted World. He said,
I have a foreboding of an America in my children's
or grandchildren's time when the United States is a service
and information economy, when nearly all the manufacturing industries have
slipped away to other countries. When awesome technological powers are
in the hands of a very few and no one
representing the public interest can even grasp the issues, when
the people have lost the ability to set their own
agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority. When clutching our
crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline.
Unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true,
we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
Then we have the hypocrisy of Christian nationalists who hoff
and poff about being followers of Jesus while adoring a
guy who refuses to turn the other cheek, who loves money,
who is an egomaniac, who lusts for women and commits adultery,
who steals from charity, and who finds glee in crushing
vulnerable people. I suspect if the best version of Jesus
Christ showed up in the United States today, MAGA would
shame him, shackle him and lock him, and get against
Trump cult cruelty. It is ironically often non Christians who
step up to love thy neighbor. In the last portion
of my speech, I want to speak to the other
free countries of the world. As you've seen, the United
States is a divided states, but there's hope to be
drawn from that division. Tens of millions of Americans are
proud to stand against the oligarchs, the bigots, and the opportunists.
It's true that we are disorganized and scrambling to find
our footing under Trump's horrifying blitzkrieg. We don't necessarily know
how to best derail the runaway train, but know that
there is a resistance. We are seeing demonstrations in the streets.
Lawsuits are piling up, Judges are pushing back against unlawful
executive of orders. Economists are sounding alarms about a Trump session.
Americans are learning how tariffs actually work. Senate offices are
fielding over sixteen hundred calls a minute. Elected Republicans are
feeling so much pressure from their constituents that they are
canceling town hall meetings and seeking shelter from angry voters.
Even Vice President JD. Vance saw a thousand demonstrators looming
over his ski vacation. It was beautiful. The arsonists are
beginning to get burned, and a percentage of former MAGA
loyalists are falling out of love with the man who
would be King Ukraine has been another rallying point for
the resistance, as a slim majority of Americans are demonstrating
solidarity with zeal Lenski. They're flying flags, marching in the streets,
declaring support on social media, etc. The message is clear.
Our White House may be currently putinized, but millions of
Americans understand that Vlad is bad. Trump's war on the
free press has been horrifying to witness, but as good
journalists are resigning rather than kowtow to Jeff Bezos and
his buddies, the United States is perhaps on the verge
of a zeitgeist change. Independent reporting from autonomous platforms like
substack in a cultural shift away from the Washington Post
and major cable networks. And then we have the satirists'
authors and artists eager to lampoon the self serious punks
of privilege, Trump, Elon and the others undoubtedly win that
Saturday Night lives. Most recent roast editorial cartoons have been ruthless,
and the meme verse has been wonderfully reliable with things
like images showing Putin walking Trump on the end of
a leash, a wild haired celebrity drunk elon musk wielding
his weapon at the Tesla Chainsaw massacre, and a tattoo
of Donald Trump on a maga arm under the caption
when sheep brand themselves and satire isn't mere fun. Ridiculing
power is a liberation exercise. The emperors have no clothes,
and so we draw them naked or in diapers. And
the more they whine and threaten, the more creative our
outlets become. Commoners know how to cook kings. This resistance
gives me hope. I hope it gives the rest of
the world some hope as well. I won't ask other
free nations to give the United States a pass. Our
government has broken trust. It's perfectly understandable that the countries
of Europe and elsewhere feel inclined to maneuver beyond us.
If punitive measures from former allies raise our prices, throttle
our industries, and limit our options. I understand many Americans understand.
But to anyone listening, please know that there are many
who are standing against the many. And if free Americans
survive this fiasco, if we can crush the oligarchy, overcome
the bigotry, and restore sanity. I hope we might one
day be given the chance to make things right again.
The United States doesn't and won't deserve bloe trust, but
if we one day extend a hand of friendship, I
hope it will be seen as an olive branch by
those who stood against hate and for our fellow travelers
in this world. The state of our Union is frightening.
We are possibly another empire falling or jumping to its death.
The Republic may not survive. Our future is unknown, but
whether or not we pull through, it is my hope
that history will remember the millions of Americans who refused
to go quietly, who stood for what is right, and
who demonstrated what true love of country really is. And
that is my secular state of the Union for twenty
twenty five. I hope you enjoyed it, or at least
I hope it resonated with you. Thank you for listening,
and I'll see you next time.