Frankly, I was shocked to hear that even though the ratings for Obama’s final State of the Union address were at a near-record low, there were apparently 31,699, 999 people other than myself who tuned in for his last hurrah.

I know why I was there. It’s because I take my responsibility to ridicule liberals seriously and I am always seeking grist for my busy little mill. But what were all those other people thinking? Is it possible that 10% of Americans are masochists?

Where to begin? Well, for openers, I assumed that when I heard that his speech wasn’t going to be his customary list of future plans to destroy America, but, rather, a summing-up of his accomplishments, he’d have it all wrapped up in four or five minutes.

But, then, I had forgotten that the occasion calls for him to make a grand entrance, stopping every two seconds on his way to the podium to shake every male hand and kiss every female cheek.

As time-consuming as that was, everything took three times as long as it should have because, one, Obama paused two or three times during every sentence, as is his wont, in order to verbally underline each and every platitude he utters; and two, the puppets in the audience greeted 70 of those sentences with a standing ovation. Trained seals around the world could only look on in awe and envy.

Speaking of the pauses, it’s as if Obama thinks he’s delivering dictation, though not to a stenographer, but, rather, to a stonemason who’s carving his ill-chosen words into marble.

In case you’ve been waiting seven years to hear the man voice a regret, the wait is finally over. But instead of regretting the Affordable Care Act; his defense of the Black Lives Matter movement; his dismissal of Christians as “those who cling to their guns and their religion”; his ceding Iraq to ISIS; his lies about Benghazi; his idle threats to Assad; his doubling our national debt; his kowtowing to Putin; his providing Iran with $150 billion and a pathway to a nuclear arsenal; his subverting the Constitution; his major regret, we discovered, was that, in spite of his best efforts, there is greater rancor between the two parties than when he took office.

Now, if you’re done laughing, I’ll continue.

Inasmuch as he seemed to be at a loss as to the cause of this division, I would suggest it might have something to do with the fact that when he was ramming ObamaCare through Congress, he told the Republicans to sit down, shut up and get out of his way. Or perhaps it was when Sen. John McCain dared to suggest at a bi-partisan gathering that sending a check to low income earners who don’t pay income taxes is not the same as a tax cut and Obama cut him with a look and muttered, much as a Mafioso might have done: “I won.”

Or, again, maybe a portion of the mysterious rancor was the result of Nancy Pelosi’s referring to Tea Party members as “astroturfers” or Joe Biden’s comparing those who opposed the agreement with Iran to Iranian hard-liners or Obama, more than once, calling Republicans “unpatriotic” and likening his political foes to terrorists.

It was a foregone conclusion that during his address, Obama would make no reference to Iran’s capturing and humiliating 10 American sailors that very day, but perhaps the most revolting part of the speech came when Rev. Obama insisted that the answer to the problems facing America could be solved by unconditional love. Perhaps after he finally vacates the White House, he can become a pitchman for eHarmony.

But, frankly, listening to the most divisive president in American history prattling on about returning civility to political discourse was sheer torture. This is the man who based his re-election campaign in 2012 by lying about a video, insisting that al Qaeda was on the run, and creating divisions among the electorate between rich and poor, white and black, young and old, men and women — scapegoating half of us and sliming a decent man like Mitt Romney — all in order to win a second term. To me, it was a lot like listening to King Henry VIII deliver a lecture on table manners.

I know that a lot of pundits showered Gov. Nikki Haley with kudos for her response to Obama. Granted, in many ways, she out-shined him, but that is faint praise, indeed. At least she completed every sentence in the allotted time and didn’t keep pausing in order to provide her own clichés time to hit the floor before moving on.

Furthermore, Gov. Haley, to her everlasting credit, didn’t overstay her welcome. However, she didn’t sound all that different from Obama, Clinton or Sanders, when it came to immigration. It’s fine for the daughter of Indian parents who came here legally many years ago to remind us, once again, that we are a nation of immigrants.

However, at a time when millions of Latinos have snuck out of their country and onto our welfare rolls and thousands of Muslims have either over-stayed their visas or been flown in on our dime by Obama, who views them not as potential terrorists, but as potential Democrats, it’s time to stop pretending that “Send us the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” should constitute national policy.

You needn’t take my word for it. One merely has to look to France, Germany and Belgium, to see how well that form of lunacy has worked out for them.