Dear America, A Response

A Response to the Very Intense Republican Response to Joseph Robinette Biden’s Super Feisty State of the Union Address to Congress.

Good day, America.

I have the honor of serving the people of the great state of New York as a history professor and dad of one son, Hufflepuff, but those aren’t the jobs that matter the most.

What’s truly important is that I am a proud micro-influencer and I tweet constantly, and that’s why I am writing these overwrought words.

While it’s not even close to one of my top ten priorities, I do worry about little Hufflepuff’s future and the future of all the children found lurking in every street corner, hayloft, pinball parlor, and sewer of our glorious nation. That is why I have metaphorically invited you into my dark and damp underground lair. (Not paying your electric bill has consequences, and I accept that. For now.)

Like so many bored political junkies who have no friends and nothing worthwhile to do with their lives, I watched President Biden’s State of the Union address and Senator Katie Britt’s Republican response, and what I saw was the choreographed performances of two humans who were breathing oxygen, oxygen that could have been used by regular Americans like you and me!

I was appalled. And I cried. Then I hissed. Then I did some interpretive dance. Then I cried some more. The country we know seems to be slipping away. We’re living longer, have higher incomes, bigger cars, more seed oils, and schools are integrated, but this is not the America that Ronald Reagan wanted to go back to; this is not the America of John Winthrop or Cotton Mather.

I grew up when the American dream was still possible. When a kid like me, living in an abandoned mime school, scavenging for scraps at my Dad’s bocce hall, could one day get paid peanuts for writing drivel. Back then, we didn’t worry about anything because we knew that lead poisoning and fluoridated water would make sure we wouldn’t suffer for long.

That’s no longer true, and now Americans like me have to waste their time thinking about the future.

Like Senator Britt, I’m concerned about our border. Where is it? I’ve never seen it. Is it colored black, like on the maps, or is that just one more lie that’s been fed to us by lamestream media? We need a loud, proud, red, white, and blue border, with speakers playing Bruce Springsteen 24/7.

And what about inflation? The garlic plantain chips at my local bodega used to cost just one dollar and now they cost, well, still one dollar, but I’m sure there’s less garlic than there used to be. Inflation in America is three times higher than in every country on Earth as long as you don’t look at the “evidence” that the “experts” are trying to shove down our throats.

And crime? President Biden may be right that crime is down, but Senator Britt is also right that crime still happens, and sometimes we know the names of the victims, and that really hurts. We need to say their names, because that won’t solve anything, and we’ll forget them by next month, but it will make us feel virtuous, and Lord knows I don’t get to feel that very often.

We especially need to say the names “Putin” and “Hamas” more often because those are scary names, and although we may not know where they live and whether they have lots of inflation, we do know they aren’t American, and so it’s ok to get angry at them, and man President Biden was angry last night! Senator Britt was also angry but also almost in tears, which makes me think she has some problems in her life, and maybe they shouldn’t have picked her to make a speech?

And yet, no matter how angry and sad they got, they missed the point.

Biden and Britt praised the America of hard-working union guys and moms and immigrants and random regular people and I suppose that’s fine because I think they build stuff and deliver my DoorDash avocado toast, but what about real Americans (some of whom live in Malaysia), the reply guys, the trolls, and the proudly ignorant cat poop accounts?

Many of us will be tossing and turning at 2 a.m. wondering whether we should have tweeted “Read a book” or instead gone with “LOLLLLLL!!!” while the rent is overdue and we still aren’t quite sure what river and which sea.

Never forget that micro-influencers and their followers add 3.3 trillion dollars to the American economy every single year! The liberal New York Times may claim it’s only $33,072, but those kinds of irresponsible fact-checks put tweeters’ lives in danger.

When politicians start paying attention to the needs of social media mavens, I’ll start socializing with people who don’t have numbers in their names.

But despite all the blathering by those two politicians, I know you, and me, and adolf420lol will prevail. We have the blood of heroes in our veins, the legends of Usenet and MySpace, and that blood, although lacking in iron and most major nutrients, will not fail. I believe, with every fiber of my Chili Cheese Fritos-fed dad bod, that our best tweets are still ahead.

My God bless Jon Boy, Tiny Tim, and the United States of America!