Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Last night felt less like a serious address and more like open-mic night at the Ministry of Make-Believe. The union bravado, the pure Patterson-style rhetoric—grand, indignant, overflowing with confidence—might have sounded impressive if you didn’t actually, you know, live here.

At the center of it all was Donald Trump, once again spinning tales that exist primarily in the cinematic universe of his own imagination. According to the script, everything is booming, everyone is thrilled, and any evidence to the contrary is just fake, unfair, or insufficiently loyal. It’s a remarkable trick: declare victory loudly enough and hope reality gets embarrassed and leaves the room.

And apparently, brevity is for the weak. What we witnessed was a record-length marathon of self-congratulation—a filibuster of fantasy dressed up as governance. If ratings were measured in sheer endurance of nonsense, this would have broken every Nielsen record on the books. The American public, should they have tuned in, were subjected not to information, not to policy, but to an extended director’s cut of alternate reality.

The problem is that the American public doesn’t feel the standing ovations he seems to hear in his head. Groceries still cost what they cost. Rent still arrives on time. Paychecks still stretch like cheap elastic. You can’t union-buster your way out of lived experience, and you can’t Patterson-plot twist your way past math.

The hypocrisy is the real headliner. Rail against elites while gold-plating your own narrative. Preach truth while peddling stories that wobble under the slightest fact-check. Wrap it all in patriotic bunting and call it destiny.

In the end, it wasn’t just long. It was impressively, almost athletically long—an Olympic event in rhetorical excess. And somewhere between hour one and “are we still doing this?” the applause faded, the talking points blurred, and the country was left wondering whether leadership is supposed to inspire confidence… or simply test bladder control.