If you ever needed definitive proof that the American political experiment has devolved into a reality television show written by a roomful of monkeys on typewriters who have all recently suffered strokes, look no further than the recent 'anniversary' press conference held at the White House. The summary of the event provided by the polite, lobotomized scribes of the mainstream press describes the President’s performance as 'wide-ranging' and 'often rambling.' This is, of course, the journalistic equivalent of describing the Hindenburg disaster as a 'thermal reconfiguration event.' It is the gentle euphemism employed by a media class that is terrified of admitting that the emperor isn’t just naked, but is actively trying to wear his own skin inside out while shouting at a cloud.

Let us dissect the very concept of this event. An anniversary press conference. Traditionally, anniversaries are reserved for weddings, employment milestones, or the remembrance of tragic historical events. In this case, it appears to be a fusion of all three. It is a celebration of the unhappy marriage between a populace that craves entertainment over governance and a leader who treats the nuclear codes with the same gravity one might afford a coupon for a discount spray tan. It is a milestone of endurance, marking yet another year where the wheels of the state have spun frantically in the mud of narcissism without actually going anywhere. And, inevitably, it is a tragedy—a tragedy of syntax, logic, and dignity.

We are told the speech was 'rambling.' This is the sort of understatement that makes me want to drink rubbing alcohol. To call the President’s rhetorical style 'rambling' is to imply there is a path from which he has strayed. It suggests a deviation from a norm. But there is no norm here. There is only the noise. The President does not speak in paragraphs or even sentences; he speaks in emotional impulses, firing neurons like a failing hard drive trying to boot up Windows 95. He covers everything and nothing simultaneously, a quantum superposition of grievance and self-aggrandizement. He touches on the economy, not with data, but with feelings; he discusses foreign policy, not with strategy, but with personal anecdotes about who likes him and who doesn't. It is 'wide-ranging' only in the sense that a shotgun blast is wide-ranging when fired blindly into a crowded room.

The media, those feckless vampires in cheap suits, sat there and absorbed it all, scribbling in their little notebooks as if they were deciphering the Rosetta Stone. Watch them. Look at their faces. They feign shock, they feign outrage, they feign confusion. But deep down, in the dark, calcified cockles of their hearts, they are ecstatic. They love the ramble. They need the ramble. A coherent President discussing tax bracketing or infrastructure logistics is poison to their ratings. They need the carnival barker. They need the chaos. The 'rambling' allows them to spend the next forty-eight hours dissecting the nothingness, bringing in panels of 'experts' to interpret the grunts and gestures of a man who likely forgot the beginning of his sentence by the time he reached the period. It is a symbiotic relationship of parasites feeding on a dying host.

And what of the content? The summary tells us he took questions. This is a farce. In this administration—and frankly, in the modern era generally—questions are not inquiries seeking information; they are prompts for performance art. The reporter asks a question to signal their virtue to their specific demographic; the President ignores the question to signal his disdain to his specific demographic. No information is exchanged. No truth is uncovered. It is two dogs barking at each other through a fence, and we, the idiotic public, stand around betting on which dog is louder. The Right hears a symphony of strength, a man unbowed by the constraints of teleprompters or facts. The Left hears the incoherent babbling of a madman. Both are wrong. What we are hearing is the sound of a civilization that has simply given up on meaning.

The tragedy isn't that the President rambles. Old men ramble. It’s what they do. They sit on porches and complain about the weather and the neighbors. The tragedy is that we have elevated this specific brand of incoherence to the highest office in the land, and then we pretend to be surprised when the output is garbage. We treat this press conference as 'news' rather than what it actually is: a diagnostic test for national decline. We analyze the 'highlights' of a speech that had no structure, looking for policy clues in a word salad tossed by a man who views the presidency as a branding exercise for his ego.

So, happy anniversary, America. You have successfully endured another year of the spectacle. You have watched the man 'ramble' and you have nodded along or screamed at your television, convinced that your reaction matters. It doesn’t. The machine grinds on, fueled by the stupidity of the governed and the greed of the governors. The speech was wide-ranging because the void is infinite, and we are all just staring into it, waiting for a commercial break that never comes.