“Delivering the longest address to Congress in modern presidential history, Mr. Trump reprised many of the themes that animated his campaign for president and spent little time unveiling new policies, as presidents traditionally have done on these occasions. He spoke for roughly one hour 40 minutes… Democrats lodged protests throughout the evening, with one representative getting kicked out and others holding signs in silent opposition.” — New York Times
Look, I hear you. I was there in the room with all my fellow Democrats. It was a bleak speech. President Nyarlathotep was on his A game last night, and the torrent of malignant incantations, orgiastic cultist moaning, and JD Vance’s wimpy snickering will haunt my ears for the rest of my life. But I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by anything the Dread Lord hissed into our psyches—it was largely his standard retinue of lies interspersed with nonsensical asides and arcane blasphemy. We basically knew what Nyarlathotep had in store for his first primetime Sermon of Sin.
I gotta be honest with you though. I think the Outer God got the message loud and clear. Our tasteful combination of fashionably coordinated clothes, tiny paper fans with BAD! printed on them, and some of our sternest looks of disapproval to date really drove home the fact that we aren’t jazzed by all this cosmic cruelty. I can’t think of anything we could have done differently to inspire our petrified constituents to rise up and take a stand against Nyarlathotep’s unholy resummoning. Sure, the Dungeon Lich-at-Arms tossed that representative from Texas into a Torment Portal after they booed the president, but there’s no way that will play well to anyone beyond his most devout minions.
On the whole, I’d say yet another job well done for us ol’ Democrats. Thanks to our fearless acts of defiance, the tides will turn against the Dread Lord in no time.
Okay, well, at the very least, I certainly wouldn’t describe our efforts as “useless,” much less “infuriatingly embarrassing.” And to call our responses “spineless” is, quite frankly, offensive to the millions of people who have lacked spines ever since Nyarlathotep extracted them to build his Gulf of Carcosa border fence.
In case you forgot, we are the opposition party, which means being strategic about where and when we say, “Enough is enough, Mr. Dread Lord.” And tonight simply wasn’t the right time for it. Neither was yesterday, for that matter. Or the day before that. Really, the proper moment just hasn’t presented itself yet in the three months since we learned Nyarlathotep re-shat himself from the fetid netherrealms.
I mean, sure, we weren’t required to attend the Terror Telecast. We could have done literally anything else instead of showing up to the Dread Lord’s freebie primetime propaganda power hour. Maybe we could have all stormed out of the chamber together in an unprecedented display of admonishment and fury. We could have hosted nationwide public town halls to reach out to Nyarlathotep’s increasingly scared and wavering cultists. We could have caught up on The Pitt.
But if you’re so certain that we are “abject failures in the fight against totalitarian darkness,” then riddle me this: Who else would have wagged their fingers at Elon while muttering “Tsk-tsk, Mr. Musk”? Who would have posed for the selfies to include in the next round of ResistBlue fundraising emails?
Check and mate, naysayer.
Listen, this isn’t our first rodeo with the Black Pharaoh. If there’s one thing we know how to do, it’s to get under the Outer-God-in-Chief’s contused, hypnotically throbbing skin. We have nearly a decade’s worth of experience vaguely vexing the Stalker Among the Stars, damn it, and we’re not about to take suggestions from the peanut gallery now.
We remain confident that there’s going to come a time when the Dread Lord’s incomprehensibly grotesque policies finally push this country down to its unfathomably bleak nadir. We (as well as our exorbitantly expensive consultants) feel that it’s best to let Eternal Darkness speak for itself. That, and occasionally remind people that egg prices could be better.
But fine. If you’re really desperate for something tangible, maybe we can get Lin-Manuel Miranda to write an inspiring new song about the first Lincoln-Douglas debate or something. We’re Democrats, not miracle workers, okay?