A.I. as Abraham Lincoln, offering an opinion on today's state of the union, then answers a pertinent question. (UII w/Claude)

DM

Please assume the person and role of Abraham Lincoln, then offer your assessment of U.S. state of the union presently.

My fellow Americans,

Standing here in this year of our Lord 2025, I find myself both troubled and hopeful as I survey the state of our Union. The events that have transpired—from protests in our great cities over immigration enforcement to the bitter divisions in our halls of Congress over spending and the very debt of our nation—remind me of that time, not so long ago in the span of history, when this house divided against itself seemed destined to fall.

Yet what strikes me most profoundly is that four-fifths of our citizens believe their fellow Americans cannot agree even on basic facts. This troubles me more than any policy dispute, for a republic cannot long endure when its people inhabit separate worlds of truth.

We have become, it seems, not merely divided in our opinions—which is natural and healthy in a free society—but separated in our very reality.

I observe with grave concern the erosion that has befallen our democratic institutions, the rising political extremism, and the growing use of violence and intimidation as tools of political influence. When citizens threaten election administrators for doing their duty, when members of Congress face intimidation for their votes, we witness something antithetical to the very spirit of self-governance our founders bequeathed to us.

Yet I am not without hope. I see states and localities working together across party lines to address the housing crisis that affects rich and poor alike. I witness the continuing strength of our civil institutions, our free press, and the determination of local officials to serve their communities despite the storms of national politics.

The nation that emerged from our great trial by fire to become a dominant power in the world possesses resources both material and spiritual that can overcome these present difficulties.

But this will require what it has always required: that we choose the better angels of our nature over the darker impulses that would divide us.

DM

President Lincoln, do you agree that our democracy is quite functional presently; however, it is our republic which is increasing dysfunctional, if not effectively absent?

My friend, you have touched upon a distinction that weighs heavily upon my mind and one that our founders understood with painful clarity.

Indeed, I fear you speak a troubling truth.

Our democratic machinery—the casting of ballots, the counting of votes, the peaceful transfer of power—these mechanisms continue to function, though not without strain. The elections themselves remain generally free and fair, and the people's voice is still heard at regular intervals.

In this sense, democracy persists.

But a republic—ah, that is a more delicate creature entirely.

A republic requires not merely the right to vote, but institutions that can deliberate, compromise, and govern in the long-term interest of the whole people. It demands representatives who see themselves as trustees of the public good, not mere delegates of faction. It requires that constitutional norms and the rule of law hold firmer sway than party allegiance or personal ambition.

When I observe Congress struggling with narrow majorities that leave little room for principled dissent, when I see the very enforcement of federal law becoming a source of constitutional crisis between state and federal authority, when the debt ceiling becomes a weapon rather than a responsibility—I see the sinews of republican government under severe strain.

The founders feared pure democracy as much as they feared tyranny, for they knew that democracy without republican constraints could become mob rule.

But they feared equally a republic without democratic legitimacy, which would become oligarchy. We seem to have preserved the forms of both while losing the substance of republican governance.

What troubles me most is not that we disagree—republics thrive on reasoned disagreement—but that we seem to have lost the capacity for the kind of deliberation that transforms competing interests into sustainable policy.

When everything becomes immediate, partisan, and zero-sum, the patient work of republican government becomes nearly impossible.

The question that haunts me is whether we can restore republican virtue and constitutional governance before the democratic elements themselves begin to fail.

For history teaches us that when republics collapse, they rarely take democracy with them into a graceful grave—more often, they drag it into something far darker.

Your servant, A. Lincoln