State of the Union Address 2016

Initially I was excited to keep track of social media for this topic. My mindset in government has been swayed to sit at a neutral position because I have learned that being one person in Utah my voice in politics doesn't matter, in fact I have learned that the only way my voice can be heard is if I become an elector or a politician and I have no interest in either of those categories. The only problem about social media was that no one in my immediate circles even commented on the subject of the State of the Union Address. So I was forced to search and follow #SOTU and this was disappointing as well.

This State of the Union Address was expected to be different, I believed it would be a lot of President Obama doing and saying whatever he felt like because after this he is done. However,  to me it sounded a lot like him boosting his own ego. He continually talked about how much he has "improved" the country. Now the internet had a few things to say about how he was lying for no reason because he already is the president and that won't change if he just admits that he screwed up or that he really didn't do that much good. I didn't promote any particular candidates and maybe in re-discussing his plan was that it would obligate the next president to follow through on his plans. But what really was happening is that he was trying to promote the idea of keeping him in office.

Now as many common tweets and Facebook posts were either for or against President Obama and his plans one that caught my attention was a tweet by a presidential candidate who has a notorious Twitter presence and that was Donald Trump's tweet which read: "The #SOTU speech is really boring, slow, lethargic - very hard to watch!" Now while we all have the right to our opinion, I think it was out of line for someone who plans to be the next president to "trash-talk" a current president publicly like that over a simple speech and not for a specific controversial topic he discussed.

Some good points that President Obama made were concerning foreign policy which surprised me when he discussed the fact that we cannot take over and repair other countries. I believe that is one of the best things he has said within his presidency because it is the first time he is trying to get back to the basic principles the country was founded upon. This topic had the most positive rhetoric and feedback on social media it also had quite a bit of mocking but the good outweighed the bad and I agreed with those who liked this statement. No topics discussed on social media swayed my original opinion a lot of the speech seemed very straight forward to me and unpersuasive and more factual.