Floating beyond the SOTU

I’m usually glued to the TV when a president, sitting justices, and members of Congress come together in one room—separate branches in one hallowed space, a time capsule played forward from men in powdered wigs.

I’m still blown away that revolutionaries from 250 years ago had the emotional intelligence to predict demagogueries of the future. The complex checks and balances they built, intelligent reflections on hardships long suffered, were nothing short of genius.

The drafters mapped out an interconnected web of limited government powers with one overarching goal: the advancement of liberty. Centuries before our intellects were stunted by algorithm, while living under a self-serving monarch who rejected the will of the governed, they wrote a brilliant roadmap for how to contain a destructive force like Trump, a roadmap Republicans today have all but abandoned.

Everyone knew what was coming

But for this SOTU, since Trump posts like an angry teenager about who insulted him, who he hates, and who he wants to ‘destroy,’ there was no room for mystery. We already knew Trump would call the U.S. the “hottest” country in the world, his favorite metric-free claim signifying nothing. We already knew he’d bleat out that everyone was “winning,” with false claims about the economy and all the wars he’s ended.

Going into the SOTU, people outside the Fox News bubble expected all spectacle and no substance. Since that’s exactly what we got, what could anyone, including me, say about it that hasn’t already been said?

Clocking Trump’s nonstop nontruths, knowing that 38% of the country still supports him because all they consume is Fox/Sinclair propaganda, is redundant already. So this year, to commemorate Trump’s SOTU, instead of reaching for insights as the speech played out, I resolved to look within. I decided to meditate.

Meditating to transcend the noise

Before I turned off the SOTU, I cut the sound and watched in silence. Trump kept lying, evidenced by his moving lips, while Mike Johnson & Co. clapped like trained seals. The quiet uniformity of their subservient expressions somehow made it more clear that Republicans are chasing raw power, and the journey, to them, matters less than the destination.

Disgusted, dispirited, and more than a little depressed that human evolution seems stuck, toggling 2 steps forward then 1.9 backward, I turned off the TV, all the lights, and sat in silent darkness.

I started the slow breathing exercise that, with some practice, coaxes the mind to be quiet. Eckhart Tolle teaches that we are not our thoughts; our parasitic mind only wants us to think we are. Breathe in, feel the blood carry oxygen to the feet, toes, thighs, up the abdomen to the chest, arms, throat and face. Breathe out. After a few of these, slowly, all thoughts, fears, and judgment about how ugly humanity could be subsided. In fact, all thought subsided.

In the quiet darkness, unforced and unplanned, I somehow found myself connected with the night sky.

The stars are our ancestors

In that nanosecond I not only saw the stars, I was among them, weightless, fearless, and blissfully judgment free.

In that momentary fraction of a flicker of grace, I understood that elements in the human body—minerals, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus—were forged billions of years ago inside ancient stars. We are literally made from the remnants of stellar explosions; when we crawled out of the sea we carried starstuff within us, the same DNA inside the fish we left behind.

Astrophysicists explain that every single atom in our bodies, including the calcium in our bones, carbon in our genes, and iron in our blood, was created in a star billions of years ago. Almost all the mass of our bodies— 97%— comes from the stars. They are our ancestors, the stuff of life. The science within them is our guidepost, not the barking idiot with access to the nuclear codes who, for whatever reason, sees his mission as one of planetary destruction.

A reminder that we are bigger than this moment

The night sky serves up human insignificance, yes, but there’s a deeper message— that our bodies are made up of atoms over 13 billion years old. It’s a message of endurance and hope.

MLK’s metaphor for transformation, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars,” hit me hard during Trump’s SOTU. America has entered a dark period indeed, possibly darker than we’ve ever seen. But it’s so dark our stars from 250 years ago are finally re-emerging.

Destructive forces like Trump will always live among us. Like random atoms, they will always be aggressive and loud, their malignant thoughts craving other minds to infect, their ignorant egos insisting they are special.

But the intelligence of the universe will always clap back. Even if Trump gets the bloody Civil war he so obviously wants, it will be a pivot, a reset. Our democratic principles will remain, with adjustments, and liberty will eventually prevail.

I wish I could offer a link for this sudden certainty, but I can’t. All I can say is that it’s written in the stars.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.