STATE OF THE (DIS)UNION: The state of the union is tribal!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2026

What's going to happen this fall? After last night's public event, our own assessment would have to be this:

The state of the union is tribal.

More precisely, the state of the union is deeply tribal. Indeed, "if we've learned anything from history"—there's little reason to assume that we have—this deeply tribal state of affairs is also deeply dangerous. 

Despite instant reassurance from today's Morning Joe, we invite you to ponder this:

We the people have no idea what will happen this fall. We have no way of knowing how far the current administration will perhaps be willing to go.

We have no way of knowing if anything resembling normal elections will take place in November. If it seems like large segments of the population have been scared away from the polls, we have no way of knowing how Blue America will (or should) react.

Also, incipient war with Iran? We have no way to know about that!

Having made those observations, let's return to the current state of the union. The current state of the union is tribal, but it goes well beyond that.

The state of the union also seems to be delusional—and for those who believe in medical science, we mean, in some cases, that in the clinical sense.

The state of the union seems to involve the types of syndrome which were once known as "mental illness." 

(According to the leading authority, that language has fallen into disfavor within the global medical realm. The nature of the problem remains.)

The standard groaning misstatements were present last night, with one side of the famous chamber lustily cheering them on. We'll have more on this in the next few days, though we'd have to say that the widespread dislocation afflicts our own Blue America too.

Does the president believe the things he says? That has never been clear to us, one way or the other. 

But then, there's the counter reaction from our own Blue American elites. Mediaite presents a report on the instant reaction to last night's event from our own tribe's "cable news" entity:

‘Violence Porn’: Maddow Says Trump ‘Luxuriated’ In Describing the ‘Goriest Things’ In History of The SOTU 

Rachel Maddow called out President Donald Trump for “violent pornographic riffing” in his State of the Union address, claiming his speech “luxuriated” in gory details of brutal events.

Maddow characterized the president’s demeanor during the address on Tuesday as “wound up and weird,” playing a clip from early on in the speech to characterize her point. The MS NOW host called Trump’s repeated claims of a thriving economy “lies,” telling viewers that the president’s pacing was an important area of focus.

“The president didn’t seem very invested in the lies that he was telling about the economy, but he did list a whole bunch of them right off the bat. But as I say, some of the takeaway there, I think, is mostly going to be his pace and his freneticism,” she said.

And so on from there.

For the record, it's true! The president was weirdly frenetic at the start of last night's address. Just a guess:

He's accustomed to his performance style at his rallies, where he's free to make any claim which enters his head. He's also accustomed to his performance style at his Oval Office / Air Force One press events, where he simply insults any reporter who poses an unwanted question. 

Given the setting, he was perhaps a bit unsure of himself at the start of last night's address—but before long, he was back in the saddle again. As Maddow later noted, the "freneticism" disappeared.

That said:

When Maddow refers to the president's "lies," she assumes he knows that his wildly inaccurate statements are false. Medical realities being what they are, we can't say that we ourselves are totally sure about that. 

But as she continued—Mediaite presents healthy chunks of text and tape—we'd say that Maddow majorly missed the point of the president's enduring appeal within the streets of our flailing nation's Red America.

On this morning's Morning Joe, at exactly 6:03 a.m., Joe Scarborough, who's very sharp, offered the standard dodge about those "gory" matters. We Blues! We've fallen in line behind the sorts of (well-intentioned) people who call their podcasts names like this:

The Best People

The best people! In such ways, we reinforce everything that's ever been said about ourselves—and we help freeze the president's support in place. 

We Blues! We exult in the way his approvals seem to have dropped below 40 percent. But that's enough to maintain the state of play which may lead to disaster this fall. 

(As we've noted in the past, we exist in a state of undeclared secession. You see that in the way one half of the chamber applauded each of the president's obvious howlers last night. We've reached a state of undeclared tribal warfare—tribal war all the way down.)

Regarding the gore, let's say this:

We Blues care about some of those who have lost their lives in the nation's streets. We don't care about some of the others, about those who have been sexually assaulted and then brutally killed. 

We don't care about those otherwise honored dead; indeed, we invent dodges to whisk them away. That's part of the nature of tribal division, but we've made our disinterest clear.

(Full disclosure: Correctly, Maddow noted an unusual misstatement by the president about the vicious killing of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte last summer. It's true! The young refugee wasn't killed by someone "who came in through open borders"—but Maddow glided past an obvious point. That killing represents a second way we Blues stand accused all through Red America. In those precincts, we stand somewhat credibly accused of perhaps being "soft on crime.")

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we Blues are fallible humans too. We're skilled at reassuring the choir, less adept at understanding the ways we may appear to tens of millions of Others. 

It's been quite a few years since we first blurted this:

It's all anthropology now!

We meant there would be no happy ending to this dangerous state of affairs, no easy resolution delivered to us by our rational / empathetic qualities. Years later, the state of this struggling nation is dangerously, deeply tribal.

We've suggested that you "pity the child," but how far will the sitting president perhaps be willing to go? Urged on by the Millers, the Vances, the Hegseths and Gabbards, how far might the gentleman take it?

None of us has the slightest idea, and we aren't even willing to travel the roads which give us the chance to ask!

This afternoon: Lawrence and Gutfeld and Noem oh my! Studies in human behaviors

Tomorrow: A hockey game versus the dead! How well do we understand others?