All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.

—Herman Melville, Moby Dick

WASHINGTON—It was the most elaborate of charades, the most sophisticated of masquerades, that played itself out in the chamber of the House of Representatives on Tuesday night. The amount of pretense required to keep all sensible people—which is to say, any person who was not a Republican—in their chairs must have been heroic.

All involved had to pretend that Donald Trump makes sense as a president, that his administration makes sense as a government, and that his first State of the Union address made sense as either a description of national policy, or as a rhetorical summons to national unity. All involved had to pretend that his thoughts were coherent, that his words made sense, and that the complete and universal collapse of civic responsibility that propelled him onto the podium was not the most singularly destructive event in the history of American democracy since the Civil War. Everyone had to pretend that a freak show was Shakespeare, and that a rumbling, stumbling geek was Lincoln, and that the whole tableau unfolding before the Congress was somehow made noble despite the obvious fact that the whole event was an endless procession of lies and half-truths, and that the only truly remarkable thing about the speech was that it was such a perfectly round and complete crock of shit.

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I don’t know how long the institutions of the republic can sustain this much pretense. Over my lifetime, the American presidency has tested what were believed to be the outer limits of counterfeit grandeur, but now we see that there is a vast universe of untruth and malignant fantasy of which we were painfully unaware. It is a burden to maintain the masquerade. It is beyond the strength even of the sturdiest democracy to be led by such a vanguard of unreality. Why anyone showed up on Tuesday night is a mystery to me.

I don’t know how long the institutions of the republic can sustain this much pretense.

Did he “call for bipartisanship”? Of course he did, the way a carny barker calls for suckers. Did he call for “unity”? Of course he did, the way a tent-show preacher howls for Jesus with a statue bleeding glycerine from its eyes. Are we supposed to pretend that we believe him, that we have faith in his desire to lead the entire nation, that he won’t be acting like a jackass on Twitter again by Valentine’s Day? Are we supposed to compliment the White House medical staff for finally getting the dosage right? How much pretending can we do before the national psyche, bloated on pretense, finally collapses of its own weight? How big a crock can be fashioned out of the ruins of the American experiment?

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I will have more about this later today, but I wanted to pick out a specific passage in the speech because it is so utterly truthless, so completely ghastly in its contempt for the intelligence of its audience, and so pure in its essential charlatanism that it stood out from the rest of the address like a diamond on black velvet.

The fourth and final pillar protects the nuclear family by ending chain migration. Under the current broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives. Under our plan, we focus on the immediate family by limiting sponsorships to spouses and minor children. This vital reform is necessary, not just for our economy, but for our security, and our future. In recent weeks, two terrorist attacks in New York were made possible by the visa lottery and chain migration. In the age of terrorism, these programs present risks we can no longer afford.

How does eliminating family reunification in the immigration system protect the nuclear family? “Chain migration” is a racist term of art contrived over the last few years because it sounds ominous. And then, later, while celebrating the triumph of a Korean refugee named Ji Seong-Ho, who fought through the perils of hell to get to South Korea, the president* said:

"Seong-ho traveled thousands of miles on crutches across China and Southeast Asia to freedom. Most of his family followed."

Do you think he even was aware of how perfectly he had contradicted himself? Do you think he even was aware that his current and proposed immigration policies will send young people back to war zones and into the loving arms of narcotrafficates? Do you think he’s aware that his immigration policies, aimed at MS-13 on Long Island, will send people back to the MS-13 bureau in El Salvador? Do we all have to pretend? How long do we have to pretend? Do we all have to pretend until there’s nothing left but the masquerade, empty and sterile and dead? God help us all.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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