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The President said:
We turn on the TV or surf the internet and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners. Politicians calculate how to grab attention or avoid the fallout. We see all this and it’s hard not to think sometimes that the center won’t hold. And that things might get worse. I understand. I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair.”
We turn on the TV or surf the internet and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners. Politicians calculate how to grab attention or avoid the fallout. We see all this and it’s hard not to think sometimes that the center won’t hold. And that things might get worse. I understand. I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair.”
“I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem. And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds. I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life. What I’ve seen of this country and its people, their goodness and decency as president of the United States.
Obama took on the societal problem:
As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.
As a society, we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs. We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.
And then we tell the police, you’re the social worker, you’re the parent. You’re the teacher. You’re the drug counselor. We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs, and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience. Don’t make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind. And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over. We know those things to be true. They have been true for a long time. We know it. Police, you know it. Protesters, you know it.”
If there was an underlying theme to the President’s speech, it was that there is too little common understanding. The President asked Americans to try to understand each other’s experiences, and said, “Can we do this? Can we find the character as Americans to open our hearts to each other? Can we see in each other a common humanity and a shared dignity and recognize how our different experiences have shaped us? And it doesn’t make anybody perfectly good or perfectly bad; it just makes us human. I don’t know. I confess, I sometimes, too, experience doubt. I have been to too many of these things. I’ve seen too many families go through this.”
The President ended his remarks with a message of hope:
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