Tag Archives: political speech

With fire and sword, 1/29/26

Posted on by Henry

I love some good utopian storytelling. I like Star Trek, for crying out loud.

But there’s a problem with utopian stories that tell you that utopia is possible as an endpoint, as something that can be reached and, once reached, cannot be lost—like reaching Heaven and being blessed and content forevermore. That utopia is static. It’s locked in place, unchanging. And because this promised ‘utopia as an endpoint’ is so stable, so permanent, so inherently capital ‘g’ Good, you can justify any action to reach it.

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If you can keep it, 12/11/25

Posted on by Henry

I am not-sick again, for however long this lasts. I had nearly forgotten how good it feels to not be ill. This isn’t terribly surprising, but before my past several months of back to back sicknesses I had stopped consciously appreciating how good being well felt.

In very similar ways I had failed to appreciate how good it was…

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untitled, 10/22/20

Posted on by Henry

My thesis dealt with political speech by the President of the United States (POTUS). My original topic was ‘enemies,’ and how they were constructed by the POTUS in political speech. I ultimately had to change and narrow my topic to the use of the word ‘government’ by the POTUS in the State of the Union address, because I didn’t have a clear enough consistent and comparable body of data.

I wish Trump hadn’t changed that so much.

No other POTUS has so relied on creating and using “us vs them” relationships in their speech. It’s like he doesn’t know how *not* to. Like he doesn’t know how to say anything without bringing “us vs them” into it.

It’s infuriating.

I hope that our political speech can change. I hope that we can spend more time building each other up instead of driving wedges between us.

I don’t expect that any time soon. Seems likely we have more trouble to get through first.