Category: National Politics

Here you are.

Rick Scott (R-FL) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) inexplicably block the administration’s nominees to oversee American aid to Ukraine. They clap for Zelenskyy on Wednesday and stab him in the back on Thursday. Putin couldn’t ask for more compliant bastards.

Dear Congressman Jacobs:

You are a disgrace to your district, your constituents, and everything for which you purport to stand. You dishonor your office and its oath. You waited until the last possible moment to issue this statement on January 6, 2021 :

Was this you paying Trump back for his support of your candidacy? Do you really believe a word of that statement? Was this you pretending to be a tough MAGA guy for all your supporters out in the country, around whom you look so awkward? We’ll never know. I called your Washington office and expressed my outrage over your anti-American, anti-democratic abrogation of your oath of office. Your participation in this idiotic and manufactured soft coup came quietly and late.

Literally just moments after I made my call (at 1:34 pm, for the record), your people – your MAGA Trump people invaded the Capitol. They defiled it. It was as violent and lawless a mob as anything anyone saw last summer, but last summer people were enraged by the mistreatment of Americans at the hands of lawless police officers – what exactly are you and your cohorts enraged by? Losing an election?

We cannot have a democracy if your side refuses to accept loss and the peaceful transfer of power. Your abrogation of your oath of office and your participation in this vile charade will not be forgotten.

By 4:30 – just three hours later – you sent this to the Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremski:

Too little, too late.

No, this current behavior has no place in a democracy. Trying to manufacture a procedural coup to steal the election from Joe Biden has no place in a democracy. The President inciting a riot has no place in a democracy. Trump throwing gasoline on the fire he set has no place in a democracy. Your army of MAGA snowflakes storming the Capitol has no place in a democracy.

Eternal shame on you and your family name for this. Not only did you eagerly participate, but you tried to have it both ways and delay your announcement of the participation. You and the entire western New York Republican committee heirarchy – all of you supported Trump and Trumpism with breathless and instantaneous enthusiasm – you all own this coup attempt, this riot.

You are a disgrace to western New York and your family name. You have no honor. You have no courage. You have no moral authority. You are a shell and a puppet, moistening a seat you haven’t really earned.

I urge your interns and employees to abandon your office immediately. None of this is worth the stain on your resumes. Get out while you can. There’s more to life than doing the bidding of coup plotters.

I fully support Congressman Cori Bush’s proposed resolution:

I fully support it. You defile your office like your supporters defiled the People’s house.

Someone in the Trump campaign is an excellent student of history.

The campaign has been very effective in stoking fear and resentment for political gain. Chris Christie, who was reduced on Super Tuesday to being a grotesque caryatid standing behind the new leader, said that Trump was heading up a “movement“. Trump is a leader, indeed, of a movement fueled by a propaganda machine that attracts the white working class by – not in so many words – appealing to family, faith, and folk.

The white nationalist fuse has been lit. The Republican establishment that is trying so hard now to extinguish it has only itself to blame.

“Make America Great Again” is a facade; a subtweet.

How do we know this to be true? Suggesting that “black lives matter” is, astonishingly, a point against which many argue. People are stabbing each other with flagpoles at Klan rallies. Muslim Buffalo schoolgirls wearing hijabs have eggs hurled at them at a bus stop. African-American students in Valdosta are escorted out of a Trump rally although they had done nothing wrong. In Louisville, meanwhile, at least one African American anti-Trump protester was subjected to assault and battery by Trump supporters while leaving the premises. A Secret Service agent throws a Time photographer to the ground in a chokehold at a Trump event.

This isn’t new. As far back as November, Trump supporters assaulted and battered a protester.

Typically, political campaigns will be subjected to protests. Typically, these are handled with boos, chants, and security escorting the protesters out of the venue. It is atypical for the crowd to become a violent mob and put its hands on someone yelling a slogan at a campaign rally.

Kicking out a protester is one thing. Kicking out someone who happens to be Black is another.

Kicking a person out of a rally is one thing. Assault and battery on her is another.

“I was called a n—– and a c–t and got kicked out,” said Shiya Nwanguma, a respected student at the University of Louisville to a local interviewerin a video posted on Facebook.

“They were pushing and shoving at me, cursing at me, yelling at me, called me every name in the book. They were disgusting and dangerous.”

Another demonstrator, Molly Shah, watched as Heimbach tried to recruit other attendees.

Heimback refers to a neo-Nazi who was at the Trump rally.

One protester recalled,

…one disturbing chant, which was lead by the white supremacists, “You’re scum, you’re time will come. You’re scum, you’re time will come.”

It wouldn’t take much for Donald Trump – a billionaire who relies on his last name’s goodwill – to not only condemn, but work to prevent these outbursts of violence. It wouldn’t take much for Donald Trump – someone who has quick condemnations for Mexicans, Muslims, and the Pope – to as quickly condemn white nationalists, the Klan, and the neo-Nazis attracted to his campaign like termites to wood.

But he doesn’t, and from his silence we can only infer assent.

If you don’t think this hearkens back to Germany in the 30s, you need to brush up on your history. We’re just replacing brown shirts with red ballcaps.

Bizarre Twitter rants? Megalomaniacal, aggro-narcissistic behavior, diva complex, a toddler’s petulance, victim complex – but enough about Kanye West.

This is why cults of personality are horrible. People are following Donald Trump around for millions of reasons, but for some reason his almost Kanye-level childish behavior is a turn-on for them. These two mononyms – Kanye and Trump – share myriad parallels. For instance, they’re both entertainers. They’ve both had money problems – Kanye begs for Zuckerberg to bail him out like the Saudis bailed Trump out. 

Kanye is famously beefing with America’s sweetheart, Taylor Swift. 

But Trump is the ultimate petulant rapper. While he freestyles on the campaign trail, he’s beefing with the Pope.

On Thursday, while Pope Francis was on a flight back to Rome from Mexico, he was asked about immigration issues facing Mexico. Then, a reporter asked Pope Francis about immigration in the US and the rhetoric surrounding the southern border. The Pope said this:

“A person who only thinks about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.”

The right wing freaked out. Donald Trump freaked out. How dare the Pope question Trump’s faith? The Pope is a hypocrite – the Vatican is surrounded by walls!

Here is the exchange in full:

Phil Pullella, Reuters: Today, you spoke very eloquently about the problems of immigration. On the other side of the border, there is a very tough electoral battle. One of the candidates for the White House, Republican Donald Trump, in an interview recently said that you are a political man and he even said that you are a pawn, an instrument of the Mexican government for migration politics. Trump said that if he’s elected, he wants to build 2,500 kilometers of wall along the border. He wants to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, separating families, etcetera. I would like to ask you, what do you think of these accusations against you and if a North American Catholic can vote for a person like this?

Pope Francis: Thank God he said I was a politician because Aristotle defined the human person as ‘animal politicus.’ At least I am a human person. As to whether I am a pawn, well, maybe, I don’t know. I’ll leave that up to your judgment and that of the people. And then, a person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel. As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.

Do you get that? It’s ok for Donald Trump to accuse Pope Francis of being a “pawn” of the Mexican government, but it’s horrible for the Pope to suggest that people be kind to one another. This is at the heart of this freak-out. Maybe Mr. Trump just needs a safe space to say what he pleases without fear of argument or contradiction.

Yet just a week or so ago, Donald Trump questioned Ted Cruz’s faith. “[N]ot too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, okay.” And here, “[h]ow can Ted Cruz be an evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest?” Is that “disgraceful“, too?

Now – the Vatican walls. Believe it or not, Pope Francis didn’t build them, nor is he suggesting heightening, strengthening them, or pulling them out into St. Peter’s Square. After all, the Vatican is a 100-acre medieval city-state, and all of those had walls. And gates. I knew Trump was regressive, but I didn’t know he’d make America great again by sending us back into the economic heyday of 12th century feudal Europe. Tax cuts for nobles, cut off the serfs, and beef with the clergy.  Trumpamagne.

But re-read the Pope’s microaggression that so hurt Donald Trump’s and the right’s tender fee-fees. “A person who thinks only about building walls”. Well, here’s a picture of the Italian/Vatican border:

There are no customs checks, no passport controls, and no immigration checks (Vatican citizenship is unique in the world where there is no citizenship by either jus sanguinis or jus soli – only jus officii; granted when you are recruited to do the work of the Holy See). There’s a knee-high gate with two access points on either side of the square.

Donald Trump is talking about building 2,000 miles of wall to keep out Mexicans and Central Americans, but also to forcibly expel 11 million people, including their American-born kids. This is next-level xenophobic authoritarianism, and not remotely comparable to the Vatican’s medieval walls, which date to the 16th and 17th centuries.

SNL didn’t make Kanye’s stage exactly the way he wanted, and he flipped out like a toddler.

The Pope said that people should be kind to one-another, and the right wing freaked out like babies.

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines teaches us that any headline ending with a question mark demands the answer, “no.”

Donald Trump easily won New Hampshire’s Republican primary Tuesday night. That’s not surprising – he was leading for weeks. What was surprising is that Ohio Governor John Kasich came in second, Texas Senator Ted Cruz finished third, and Marco Rubio’s brief post-Iowa momentum collapsed. Granite State Republicans picked a coarse celebrity populist, and followed him up with literally the only sane Republican candidate left standing.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders utterly destroyed former Secretary of State, First Lady, and Senator Hillary Clinton 60-38. That’s a humiliating defeat for Clinton, whose own inevitability seems to be getting the better of her in 2016 as it did in 2008. Sanders makes a far more compelling argument to frustrated left-of-center voters than Clinton; her poor showing is her own fault.

It’s time now for Fiorina, Carson, and Christie to leave the race. Christie bet everything on New Hampshire and couldn’t break double-digits percentage-wise. Carson is now a punch line, and Fiorina is simply not a contender, and never was.

A lot of pundits argue that Trump and Sanders are two sides of the same anti-establishment coin—that they are the figureheads of movements that are sick and tired of politics as usual. All of that takes place before a backdrop of politics as usual that will only outrage Sanders’ supporters—the Supreme Court enjoining the administration’s rules to address pollution and carbon emissions, and Congress’ refusal to hear the President’s budget. The latter is especially galling, because the behavior of Congressional Republicans towards President Obama has been little more than an 8 year-long temper tantrum, with the sole aim being to oppose and embarrass him. But in so doing, they beclown and disrespect themselves.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders voters are dissatisfied with the status quo, but there the similarities end abruptly. Donald Trump (and, frankly, Ted Cruz) are so pugilistically right-wing that they know exactly what they’re doing—they’re planning to fundamentally transform America, to coin a phrase. The America they envison, however, would be a horror not only for us, but for people around the world. They are literally battling over who can commit more war crimes once elected.

Cruz is unliked and has carefully crafted a reputation for being someone completely unreasonable, unthoughtful, rude, and unproductive. Remote are the chances that the American people would elect someone so fundamentally uncharismatic and unlikeable, and as many hard-right Republicans who love him for what they think are his “conservative” bona fides, the general electorate is much broader and politically diverse.

Trump’s rise is predictable because he’s a celebrity and he knows how to put on a show. He knows what to say to rile his crowd up, and he’s unapologetic about it. He lurches from bellicose point to crude threat and his followers eat it up. The fact that he has literally no idea or plan to actually carry out any of his empty diktats matters not.

It’s not just about rah-rah war crimes though.

But my God, Trump is a phony. He’s a guy who was born a millionaire, but pretends he’s Archie Bunker. He lives in a palatial high-rise, but talks like he lives in a modest one bedroom in Astoria. He has never not been a member of New York’s real estate and media elite, but he talks like a cab driver or a character in a Damon Runyan short story. All of this is a carefully crafted tactic because his whole schtick is to appeal to the angry, disillusioned older white male.

Trump’s almost Putinesque conspicuous, nouveau-riche glitz and consumption are attractive to people who would spend their money exactly like that if they hit the Powerball. The demographic appeal comes in as a direct reaction to a feeling that the country under Obama has changed into something they don’t recognize. They don’t like same sex marriage, they don’t like Planned Parenthood, they don’t like that we haven’t invaded Syria or “bombed the shit” out of ISIS. They don’t like Obamacare or Medicaid or TANF or SNAP or anything else that in any way helps the poor and underprivileged, thus unreasonably constraining the ability of the rich or big business to get richer or bigger.

Sanders’ supporters are also fed up with the establishment and status quo, but they are younger, more diverse, and don’t think Obama went nearly far enough in transforming America from a country that spends $600 billion on its military with a casual routineness—will invest a trillion dollars to completely de-stablize the Middle East, but then cries poverty when asked to help feed the hungry, care for the sick, or educate the young. Sanders supporters don’t want to roll back the rights of others, but seek to ensure that America return its power to her people, as the founders intended.

Trump appeals to hatred, division, scapegoating, and resentment. He is quick to resort to schoolyard bullying, calling opponents names and carefully affixing blame on people whom it’s easy for his constituency to hate: Muslims. Mexicans. Women. China. Obama. On the other hand, Sanders expands upon Obama’s own 2008 playbook. He calls for unity, hope, shared ideals, goals, and purpose.

This is Brooklyn vs. Queens; left vs. right; love vs. hate; red vs. black; unity vs. division; help vs. harm; thought vs. reaction.

There’s one very critical thing separating Trump’s movement from Sanders’: evil. Donald Trump is sinister, and he isn’t just inciting an angry mob, he’s handing out the pitchforks and torches. Ezra Klein boils the danger of Trump down perfectly,

Trump is the most dangerous major candidate for president in memory. He pairs terrible ideas with an alarming temperament; he’s a racist, a sexist, and a demagogue, but he’s also a narcissist, a bully, and a dilettante. He lies so constantly and so fluently that it’s hard to know if he even realizes he’s lying. He delights in schoolyard taunts and luxuriates in backlash.

But before you demean Trump as just another carnival barker,

He’s not a joke and he’s not a clown. He’s a man who could soon be making decisions of war and peace, who would decide which regulations are enforced and which are lifted, who would be responsible for nominating Supreme Court Justices and representing America in the community of nations. This is not political entertainment. This is politics.

Do you think that Donald Trump would run a thoughtful administration? While Sanders preaches equality, access, change, fairness, thoughtfulness, democracy, and reinvigorating the middle class, Trump preaches hatred, misogyny, war, racism, resentment, and anger. The whole thing is based on resentment and anger, but if Trump wins the nomination, there simply aren’t enough angry, resentful, xenophobic white people available to win. He is a populist demagogue and a textbook reactionary. Klein goes on to explain, accurately, that Trump addresses anger with anger, and is completely without scruples or shame.

Bernie Sanders takes hits for being an old socialist hippie with disheveled hair and lefty ideas. Indeed, his amazing showing in New Hampshire isn’t because he’s from the neighboring state of Vermont, but in spite of it. But there is a fundamental goodness in him and his proposals that, at least in part, informs his support across almost every demographic. Call it democratic socialism or social democracy, all of it is just words, and as awful as the right-wing attacks on Sanders will be if he’s the nominee, most people agree that he has identified the correct problems, even if they disagree with his solutions.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, would “make America great again” by ruling like an African dictator—an intemperate strongman who would lead through fear and threats—things that are decidedly ungreat and un-American.

The establishment is under attack, and that’s good. That’s how peaceful political revolutions work at their core, by shaking up the status quo when the people become dissatisfied. Our system doesn’t allow for you to take up arms against dysfunctional government; it gives you the power to effect political change, if you want it.

If Sanders and Trump win their respective parties’ nominations, the choice will be very clear: empower the average American, or transfer power to an even more exclusive, less temperate, one-man elite? Trump isn’t a joke and he isn’t a clown. Sanders wants to feed the hungry whom Trump dismisses. Sanders wants to ensure that people who need it get health care, while Trump would repeal Obamacare and replace it with vaporware. Sanders wants to educate the youth while Trump quite literally ran a for-profit online college that is accused of massive fraud. On top of all of this, there’s not a whole lot of Democrats nostalgic for the 90s.

This is real life, and it’s time people took it all seriously. Sanders and Trump aren’t two sides of the same coin. Sanders has one side of the coin, and Trump has junk bonds.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are essentially tied at 49% and change, each. As of Tuesday morning, Clinton appears to have a minimal lead. It’s somewhat inexcusable, since Clinton has been running for President since 2007 and lost Iowa in 2008. One would expect her to learn from the 2008 primary, and would have used the following 8 years to anticipate how to deal with a surge from a surprise candidate like Bernie Sanders. Clinton is five votes ahead, and has one more delegate than Sanders, so far.

Can someone explain why O’Malley was still in the race at this stage, given his ridiculous showing?

Make no mistake, though, Democrats. You might be rooting for Sanders, you might be rooting for Clinton. You might be in Sanders’ camp because of Clinton fatigue – getting past the 90s, for instance. You might find Hillary Clinton untrustworthy, unlikeable, susceptible to attacks based on scandals old and new. But never forget this fundamental truth:

Even among those who don’t believe in the phony scandals, there is, as there was in 2008, a desire for someone new, who they imagine won’t bring out all that ugliness. But of course they’re wrong: if Sanders is the nominee, it will take around 30 seconds before Fox News is nonstop coverage of the terrible things he supposedly did when younger. Don’t say there’s nothing there: a propaganda machine that could turn John Kerry into a coward can turn a nice guy from Brooklyn into a monstrously flawed specimen of humanity in no time at all.

It will take 30 seconds before Fox News whips out the mothballed red stars and hammer and sickle graphics, because smears are the name of the game over there.

Here’s what happened on the Republican end:

All you Trumpistas – bored with winning yet? Because America’s own African dictator lost to the far better organized and exponentially more unlikeable Ted Cruz, with Marco Rubio coming up right behind him. That translates into a big win for Cruz and Rubio; the former for obvious reasons, and the latter because he out-performed expectations.

“No one remembers who came in second.” – Walter Hagen

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2013

Trump, on the other hand, is a loser, looking now for New Hampshire voters to bail out his campaign much like a Saudi prince bailed out earlier failures. What happened? From the Washington Post:

Donald Trump may have been hampered by two unexpected factors: Weaker than expected performance among new voters and a late surge by Marco Rubio. In the last Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll in Iowa, Trump led Cruz among first-time caucus-goers by 16 points. On Monday night, Trump’s margin among this group was closer to half that. Rubio earned about as much support from new voters as did Cruz, and was the preferred candidate of about 3 in 10 Iowa Republicans who made up their minds in the last week.

The article goes on to say that fully 45% of Republicans made up their minds in the last week. Just 14% of them went for Trump. Cruz won among evangelicals and movement conservatives.

It’s not over for Trump, though. Cruz will do poorly in New Hampshire, where his brand of obnoxious, Christianist brand of conservatism won’t play as well as in Iowa. Recall that Huckabee won Iowa in 2012, and Santorum won in 2008. This last week, they sheepishly shared a stage with Trump at his “screw you, Fox News” rally.

Polling in New Hampshire shows Trump at 33%, with Cruz, Bush, and Kasich trailing at 10 – 11%, and Rubio at 9.5%. Expect Iowa to give Rubio to get a bounce, and a second look from New Hampshire voters. Trump’s lost his sheen of invincibility, and that might hurt him with the low-information crowd who find his boasting about poll numbers to be substantive and compelling.

After New Hampshire come Nevada and South Carolina, where the results will be much more interesting to watch.

Trump Chickens Out

Republican frontrunner Donald Trump – which is a phrase that really speaks volumes – has declared that he won’t participate in an upcoming Fox News debate because he can’t handle questions from Megyn Kelly.

Let that sink in for a second – Donald Trump is too chicken to answer questions from a right-leaning reporter on an ultra-right-wing news network because she had the audacity to ask him some tough questions at his first debate. This guy is the right’s macho man? This is the WWE wrestler type guy who’s going to be Randy Savage and Ronald Reagan reincarnated all at the same time?

This racist multiple-bankrupt – and, to quote the late Bob Grant, “fake, phony, fraud” would have you believe that he would erect a wall to keep Mexicans out and get Mexico to pay for it, but he can’t answer a few questions about politics and policy from Megyn Kelly. Fox trolled Trump about it,

We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president. A nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings

This heavily coiffed Paladino clone will “kick ISIS’ ass” but he can’t handle a tough question from a reporter FROM FOX NEWS. Hey, Rus, how you like Trump now? Hey, Carl, this is the best you could do? A coward?

I know that a lot of conservatives are having a hard time dealing with the fact that Donald Trump is little more than a parrot, willing to say whatever the right wing wants to hear, regardless of his actual opinions or beliefs. This fundamental act of sheer, unadulterated cowardice should make even his most hardcore fans shudder.

Donald Trump is a coward. He was a coward when it was his turn to go to Vietnam, and he’s a coward now. He’s trying to Twitter-block Fox and Kelly in real life, but ends up looking like a milquetoast who can’t take the heat.

Oregon Cretins Engaged, Arrested

It looks as if the dildo-and-snack fueled “occupation” of the Malheur National Wildlife Reserve may soon be over. Ammon Bundy and some other morons were taken into federal custody after some sort of shootout. Hopefully, no one from law enforcement was hurt.

Just remember: the same people who support Bundy and his band of dummies and their weeks-long occupation of land that belongs to all Americans would have you believe that Eric Garner just should have complied.

President Obama’s final State of the Union address Tuesday really captured the zeitgeist. The media have been so consumed in Trumpgasm and measuring the Republican horserace while ignoring the battle for the Democrats’ soul, that a simple reminder was needed; and Obama delivered.

We don’t need to make America great again; America is great now.

The victory lap was muted. There was no grand legislative goal on which President Obama asked Congress to act. This was, to a certain degree, legacy building, but it was also a stinging rebuke of the pathetic, xenophobic fearmongering that has infected our politics thanks to the virus of Trumpism.

Remember “hope” and “change”? Obama sought to rekindle those flames. Hope – you don’t have to fear the future. The President reminded us that there’s no past glory for which we need to be nostaglic; on the contrary, every time we’ve undergone change in our society, we have overcome the fear that goes with it. We let our thoughts and actions mature, so that we as Americans made that change work for us. Our diversity, our optimism, our spirit of innovation, and the rule of law help to see us through tough times, and transformation. They are what we need to ensure our security and prosperity.

The President assailed Trumpism’s inherent cowardice by reminding us that it’s far better to face the future with confidence, rather than fear.

The speech focused on four questions:

1. How do we ensure that everyone gets a fair shot and opportunity in this new and changing economy?

2. How do we reignite our spirit of innovation, so that this economy works for us?

3. How can we best keep our people safe, and lead the world without becoming a global policeman?

4. How can we make our politics reflect what’s best in us as Americans?

As to question one, Obama took his somewhat muted victory lap, touting his record of job creation and saving the American auto industry after the great recession. He proposed that benefits and retirement savings should be simplified and portable, and that “wage insurance” might be offered so that people can pay their bills if they lose their jobs or go back for training or school. We should, he said, make sure that the system works for average people and small businesses, and not just for megacorporations.

On innovation, Obama alluded to climate change, noting that we were stunned in the late 50s when the Soviets beat us to space. We didn’t “deny that Sputnik was up there”, but in 12 years we developed our own space program and put a man on the moon. The President then called for a “cancer moonshot”, asking Vice President Biden to head it up, adding, “let’s make America the country that cures cancer”.

On the issue of security, the President explained that his priorities were keeping the US safe, and going after terrorist networks. No matter how many innocent civilians Daesh or al Qaeda slaughter, none of these terrorist groups poses an existential threat to the US, so we should stop elevating them to that level through our rhetoric. Sort of like how we shouldn’t call the Occupy Malheur crowd “terrorists”. Daesh are killers and fanatics – nothing more, and the President again asked Congress to authorize military force against it.

Appealing to our better selves: this was Obama essentially campaigning against Trump and Trumpism. The President called on Americans to reject any politics that targets people on the basis of race or religion. Diversity, openness, and mutual respect make us strong as a nation – not discrimination and name-calling. When people like Trump insult Muslims, they’re not “telling it like it is”; they are instead diminishing us in the eyes of the world and betraying who we are as a country. It weakens America maliciously to act in such a way.

Hatred and division won’t fix anything, and they’re un-American.

The most extreme voices get all the attention, and when you pair that with a sense that the system is rigged against regular people, in favor of the rich and powerful, you stand on a dangerous precipice. The President called for an end to gerrymandering; so that politicians can’t “choose their own votes”. We need to reduce the influence of money in politics. We need to make it easier for people to vote – not harder.

America is great already. We don’t need to be nostalgic for the good old days either because they weren’t that good, or they weren’t good for everyone. The President concluded,

They’re out there, those voices. They don’t get a lot of attention, nor do they seek it, but they are busy doing the work this country needs doing.

I see them everywhere I travel in this incredible country of ours. I see you. I know you’re there. You’re the reason why I have such incredible confidence in our future. Because I see your quiet, sturdy citizenship all the time.

I see it in the worker on the assembly line who clocked extra shifts to keep his company open, and the boss who pays him higher wages to keep him on board.

I see it in the Dreamer who stays up late to finish her science project, and the teacher who comes in early because he knows she might someday cure a disease.

I see it in the American who served his time, and dreams of starting over — and the business owner who gives him that second chance. The protester determined to prove that justice matters, and the young cop walking the beat, treating everybody with respect, doing the brave, quiet work of keeping us safe.

I see it in the soldier who gives almost everything to save his brothers, the nurse who tends to him ’til he can run a marathon, and the community that lines up to cheer him on.

It’s the son who finds the courage to come out as who he is, and the father whose love for that son overrides everything he’s been taught.

I see it in the elderly woman who will wait in line to cast her vote as long as she has to; the new citizen who casts his for the first time; the volunteers at the polls who believe every vote should count, because each of them in different ways know how much that precious right is worth.

That’s the America I know. That’s the country we love. Clear-eyed. Big-hearted. Optimistic that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. That’s what makes me so hopeful about our future.

We have challenges. Change is scary, and if you pair it with economic inequity, it makes people angry. But America is great because, among other things, we can sit here and debate all of this. America isn’t any one thing: America is the sum of our daily acts of citizenship.