Standing, Sitting, Lying Down

So. Your Humble Blogger happened to be listening to NPR this afternoon and heard a sound clip of Our Only President:

I have returned to make it clear to people that I understand we're marking the first anniversary of the storm, but this anniversary is not an end. And so I come back to say that we will stand with the people of southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi until the job is done.

My reaction was that this was absolutely typical prose from Our Only President, that he will “stand with” people rather than do anything for them. I’m sure it’s great comfort (I thought to myself) to people who have no homes to know that the President of the United States is standing with them. It would be even better if he sat down and wrote them a check. Or bent down and cleared some debris. Some sort of action.

And I was thinking that this idea of “standing with” is a key idea for this administration, that the important thing is not doing anything, or making sure that anything gets done, but to make sure that you are standing with the right people, and that the right people are standing with you. Because it’s about where you stand, you see. Not what you do, or what you fail to do, or how many people die, or how many houses are destroyed, or how much money gets funneled into the pockets of your cronies, but just where you stand. And Our Only President is sure that he is standing on the high ground.

And it also occurred to Your Humble Blogger that Our Only President is awfully good at standing with people, but he doesn’t seem very good at sitting down with people. I wondered whether it would be possible to highlight that with repeated rhetoric, and whether people would respond to a candidate that sits down with people rather than standing up for them. Or if it could be used effectively to ridicule candidates who claim that you know where they stand, but you may not know that they lie down with dogs. Or who they roll over for.

Unfortunately, the sound clip was just a sound clip, and the full speech does not have so much of the withstanding as would justify mockery. I do think it’s a bit odd that there’s so much understanding in the speech—eleven instances, only one less than rebuild—but I suppose that’s the compassion. I could still do with less understanding and more action, but then I don’t really believe in the understanding, do I?

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.