If I were in Joe Biden’s shoes planning to address Americans today, I might say something like this.
“Hello, America!! Hello to all of you, emerging from your homes, emerging from lock-downs, suffering from the pandemic and missed graduations and proms and parties and funerals; suffering from police misconduct and racial and social injustice, struggling in these difficult and uncertain times.
Today is the beginning of a new day in America, and I want each of you and all of you – Democrats, Republicans, Independents, all voters – to join me, to join the new “Team America” in bringing our country, not just back to life, but creating a new version of America and the American dream for our time and for the next century. This will be hard work, but we have no choice and it is clear from the events of the last several months and weeks that all of us as Americans are now ready for this task, this challenge.
Every generation and every nation is called upon to overcome some unique, dangerous and frightening challenges, from world wars to economic disasters, to the challenge of sending men to the moon. As the world becomes more complex, the challenges are coming faster and getting harder. America can only meet the challenges of our time and overcome them if we are united, if we are prepared and if we work together for the good of all.
They say bad news comes in threes. First, we had the pandemic. Second, we had the police murder of George Floyd. Third, we learned that billions of dollars of money meant to help struggling small businesses suffering from the pandemic has gone to big corporations, hospitals and management, already awash in cash, as they lay off front-line workers and cut workers’ salaries while the wealthy executives at the top reap millions. This is too reminiscent of the TARP travesty in 2008 and 2009 when huge bailouts were paid to banks and bonuses to senior executives while Main Streeters lost their homes and life savings and no banker went to jail and no one was held accountable. We can’t let this happen again!
America is facing a multitude of crises at once and we must address them all at once, because any one of them can bring our country to its knees.
If Americans continue divided, selfish and greedy, our future is bleak. If we unite and work together for the common good of all, we have a good chance to right the American ship of state, a nation foundering on the shoals of grid-lock, inequality, injustice and divisive and destructive leadership.
Now is the time for a new beginning for America.
Now is the time when we feel a new energy in the streets. We can feel the nation tiring of divided and destructive leadership and we are beginning to feel the beginnings of an upsurge of hope, that this time will be different.
If we are to save our experiment in democracy, this time must be different. Perhaps now more than ever before we have a chance for a new beginning. When asked when the politics of grid-lock and destruction might end, former Republican candidate for President and Trump supporter Governor Chris Christie said it will end “when Americans become exhausted.”
We seem to have reached that point when our nation is exhausted by the politics of personal and national destruction, dishonesty, lies, deceit, inaction and avoidance of any responsibility by the current team in the White House and their enablers. Our nation is poised and hungry for inspired and hopeful leadership and a transition from Democracy 1.0 to democracy 2.0, where we affirm the principles and values of our founding fathers, but upgrade and update them for the 21st and 22nd centuries.
No longer can we tolerate “business as usual.”
No longer can we tolerate “life as usual.”
No longer can we tolerate inequality, injustice, unfairness and inaction as usual.
We think we are better than this. Are we? Are you?
Now is the time for each of us to step up to the plate and show that “Yes we are” better than this. “Yes we can” overcome the challenges before us. “Yes we will” renew the American spirit and rebuild the American Dream.
Now is the time to better understand our society’s shortcomings, heal our local and national wounds and build a better America for tomorrow.
Now is the time for all Americans to unite in support of the founding values of our democracy which, through sharing of responsibility and sharing of reward, have inspired the Unites States to rise to every challenge in reliance on the courage, strength, creativity, generosity and team-work of all Americans.
Now is the time to remember that we are each stewards of our planet and stewards of each other. Each of us is “our brother’s keeper.” If we live that, if we breathe that, we will once again become that: stewards of all Americans and stewards of America.
So where do we start?
First, we have to deal with the pandemic. We have to find a way to keep Americans safe and healthy even as they return to work. And we have to get our economy humming again. This doesn’t mean just letting people get back to their old jobs. It means changing how we work and what we make and where we make it. It means focusing not just on the weaknesses of the moment but the opportunities for the future that are just around the corner and that are on or over the horizon.
Second, we have to deal with racism and injustice at all levels of our society. This means ending racism against blacks in policing, hiring, housing, health care, education, free speech and voting rights. Many similar indignities and deprivations of rights are suffered by other minorities. This includes struggling, working-class white Americans and others who have lost their jobs to off-shoring, technology or the scourge of opioid addiction, broken families, depression and despair. We have to address and end those conditions while we seek to make racial and social and economic injustice things of the past.
Third, we have to address fundamental intolerance of “others” be they immigrants or people of different nationalities or religions, or rural or urban dwellers, or Southerners or Northeners, or from Main Street or Wall Street, from Red states or Blue states.
Every military needs officers and troops. Every business needs workers and managers, thinkers and doers, inventors and producers. Every leader needs ideas and visionaries and thinkers, planners and doers. Our diversity is one of the core strengths of America, to be celebrated and encouraged. We need to end the circular debates and enact solutions, even if imperfect, for dreamers, for the undocumented and those seeking to legally enter the U.S. today. We have to level the playing field so every person has a more equal chance to succeed, and so that the distance between the wealthiest and poorest among us is no longer unconscionably huge. We have to reward our workers not just our CEO’s. Corporate profits have to be shared with workers before shareholders and with shareholders before management. We as a nation, especially those who believe or pretend we are a “Christian” nation, need to remember the Biblical admonition that “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Fourth, we have to focus on the future and prepare for the challenges around the corner and on the horizon. This effort will cut across all aspects of our society as we bring reforms and new focus to fixing the problems of today to preparing to overcome the challenges of tomorrow. If we fail to do this, there will be no future for any of us, except to fight over who gets to be the last person to die as a result of our failure to live up to and apply our God-given talents and ingenuity to address the true facts of the world we live in today.
Fifth, and perhaps more important, as we address the many individual problems of policy, practices and processes, as we attempt to heal and reconcile the wounds of the past, we need to build a sense of national identity that brings us together and fosters mutual understanding, team-work and loyalty to our nation far ahead of any loyalty to any person, party, ideology or self-interest.
We are not first and foremost Republicans or Democrats, or Catholics, Christians, Muslims or Jews. We are all Americans, regardless of our faith, whether born here or immigrants. We are all part of “Team America,” which succeeds when each of us has a fair and just path to success, and which suffers when any one of us is mistreated, a victim of discrimination or injustice or falls short. Being part of “Team America” cannot simply be a nice fantasy we talk about. Every one of us has to feel it in our bones.” President Kennedy brilliantly achieved this when he made the race to the moon a challenge and goal that all Americans cared about and wanted to be part of and to win.
To help heal our wounds and bind us to each other we should establish a national service requirement for all citizens and immigrants. We need to establish some national projects and goals, our own “moon-shots” which inspire each of us to work selflessly to achieve them, such as ending racial and social injustice within five years or making our nation carbon neutral or welcoming to all lawful immigrants.
Our new national service – our “New America Corps” – might require citizens and immigrants at a young age to serve in the military or a domestic “Peace Corp” for a year. And it could require immigrants with the right to work in the U.S. to perform some national service periodically the way members of the military reserves or national guard do. There could even be a role for retirees to serve as teachers or counselors to small businesses and non-profits or community service organizations.
We need to instill in all Americans the sense of commitment and loyalty that we build among our troops in the military, where yes, they fight for their nation, but first and foremost when life is tough they fight for each other, to keep each other safe and healthy and able to serve each other and therefore our nation.
So how do we actually start to address all of these issues?
How do we turn rhetoric into concrete ideas and actions that actually start to heal the divisions and injustices that have tarnished our many successes as a people and a nation?
As in every crisis, there is opportunity, the chance to create something new and good. This is true with respect to the three crises that recently have come front and center on our national stage and which have caught the attention of people around the globe:
- the pandemic,
- the police murder of George Floyd, and
- the corporate greed effectively stealing money from struggling small businesses, just as the banks did during the financial crisis.
Coping with the coronavirus pandemic and the risk of others to come, means that we have to reinvent our struggling health care systems. This will mean a multitude of new jobs. Just as 9/11 resulted in the creation of the Transportation Safety Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, the pandemic has taught us that we will need a whole new group of workers to test, track and treat those among us who become ill and put others at risk. We may need a new Department or Secretary of Healthcare Security to help enact policies and join public-private partnerships to address these issues.
The pandemic has taught us that we need to bring manufacturing back to America in a big way. We are at risk if we continue to out-source our manufacturing capabilities and rely on our competitors and potential adversaries for our fundamental needs for health, safety and security. Bringing manufacturing back to America will also be a huge source of new jobs here at home.
The pandemic has opened our eyes to a multitude of new ways to work and to learn. In-person and face-to-face teaching, learning and working will always be essential, but not all the time or every day for every employee. More and more work, teaching and learning can be done remotely, which may free up a variety of resources and make academic education and job training and re-training more accessible and more affordable. In-person working and learning may become more effective as meeting size is reduced and meetings become more focused, personal and effective.
The pandemic has taught us that we are all on the same team since we are all at risk if we allow this pandemic to grow and spread unchecked. We all are safer if we flatten the curve, if we stop the cycle of transmission of the virus, if we each take responsibility for minimizing our own risks of becoming ill, if we try our best to protect ourselves and each other.
We all benefit when we flatten the curve of this pandemic and the ones to follow.
We all benefit when we flatten the curves of racism and racial and social and economic injustice.
We all benefit when we accept that the old world of “us versus them” is behind us and that we have entered a new realm where we are all at risk and where it is essential that we share facts and knowledge on a timely and transparent basis.
We all benefit when we work collaboratively to understand and overcome new dangers and challenges as they arise.
We all benefit when we finally accept in our hearts and minds that “we are all in this together” and that united we stand and divided we fall, and that only united will each of us and our children and grand-children have a real chance to breathe.
Can we achieve any or all of these changes in our society in the current political climate?
Can we achieve any meaningful and lasting reforms with the current leadership of dishonesty, division and destruction in the White House and if Republicans and Democrats refuse to work together and compromise for the common good? You, the voters of America know the answer. You must turn out in great numbers in November and let us know your answer, which must be clear and decisive.
All of these thoughts and other ideas about how to heal our nation will quickly die unless we agree on some basic principles and rules for the conversation and the effort to find common ground. We must agree to deal in facts instead of fiction. We must agree that words and language matter. We must agree that truth matters. If a huge number of people are persuaded that the world is flat, because it has been reported to be flat a zillion times on TV, that does not make it true or factual that the world is flat. Belief is not the same as truth and fact. There are no such things as “alternative facts” just because a zillion people believe a falsehood to be true.
Unless we bring back common decency, honesty, integrity, morality and moral courage and all of the unwritten rules of civilized discourse and conduct which historically have enabled our nation and the world to prosper, we will continue to live in a divided and grid-locked nation as we spiral into a cauldron of despair and defeat.
All of these thoughts and other ideas about how to heal our nation and restore confidence in our Government will die unless we again believe and commit ourselves to follow the principles and values of democracy established by our founding fathers as we upgrade them for the complexities of our current times.
All of these thoughts and other ideas about how to heal our nation and restore confidence in our Government will die unless we once again believe that compromise and bi-partisanship are not dirty words or words that have been banished from the English language and the hallowed halls of Government.
All of these thoughts and other ideas about how to heal our nation and restore confidence in our Government will die unless we agree, as John Kennedy suggested in 1958, that we work together across the aisle, not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Indeed, in these highly complex times no one really knows and no one can really know, “the right answer” to some of the extreme and unprecedented issues we face such as climate change, or just how tomorrow’s technological innovations and products will affect the work-place, our educational needs and the exchange of information or the opportunities for our enemies or adversaries, at home and abroad, to disrupt our society, to hack our cyber communications, platforms, electric grids and elections, or to poison the air we breathe or the food we eat.
The best we can do, and what we need to do to move our nation and the world forward, is to agree upon “the best answer” based on the facts and science in front of us, viewed through the lenses of history and common sense, as we set our course for the destination indicated by the best bi-partisan or non-partisan answer we could agree on. As our journey on that course proceeds, affected by the weathers of change and new data and new ideas and discoveries, we can modify our course or re-commit to our chosen journey, until we see what path and modalities actually seem to be closest to helping us achieve our common goals. Then we can again reset our course and persevere, comforted in the knowledge that we are seeking to do our level best through every mile and minute of our journey with the talents and gifts we have been granted for our short time on this earth.
NOW, is the time. Not tomorrow. Not after coronavirus is under control. Not after the next election.
NOW, is the time.
Now is the time for a new day in America.
Join us.
We are all in this together.
United we stand and now is our time to stand united.
Now is the time to build a New America.
Now is your time to build a New America.
Now is our time to build a New America.
Now is the time for all Americans of every class and political bent to come together and unite for our common good.
If ever there was a time, it is now.
Now is the time to preserve and rebuild this country that we love, this country that has served for nearly 250 years as the beacon of hope and inspiration for people seeking freedom and justice around the world, this country which once again needs to be the beacon of hope, liberty, equal rights and justice for all of our citizens, not just a privileged few.
Now is the time join our new “Team America.”
Now is the time!
Now!!