WEBVTT

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June 29, 2016.

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My dear fellow citizen,

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I write to you today,

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to you who have lost in this era.

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At this moment, in our common life

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when the world is full of breaking

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and spite

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and fear,

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I address this letter

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simply to you,

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even though we both know

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there are many of you

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behind this you,

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and many of me behind this I.

NOTE Paragraph

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I write to you because at present,

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this quaking world we share scares me.

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I gather it scares you too.

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Some of what we fear, I suspect,

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we fear in common.

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But much of what we fear

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seems to be each other.

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You fear the world I want to live in,

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and I fear your visions in turn.

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Do you know that feeling you get
when you know it's going to storm

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before it storms?

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Do you also feel that now,

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fellow citizen?

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That malaise and worry

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that some who know

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feel reminds them of the 1930s?

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Perhaps you don't,

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because our fears of each other

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are not in sync.

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In this round, I sense
that your fears of me,

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of the world that I have insisted
is right for us both,

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has gathered over a generation.

NOTE Paragraph

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It took time for your fears
to trigger my fears,

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not least because at first,
I never thought I needed to fear you.

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I heard you,

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but did not listen,

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all these years when you said

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that this amazing new world

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wasn't amazing for you,

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for many of you,

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across the industrialized world,

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that the open, liquid world I relished,

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of people and goods and technologies

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flowing freely, going where they pleased,

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globally,

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was not, for you, an emancipation.

NOTE Paragraph

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I have walked through your towns

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and, while looking, failed to see.

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I did notice in Stephenville, Texas,

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that the town square was dominated

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by one lawyer's office after another

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because of all the people
rotating in and out of the prison.

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I did notice the barren shops

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in Wagner, South Dakota,

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and the VFW gathering hole

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that stood in mockery

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of a community's dream to endure.

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I did notice

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at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania Walmart,

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that far too many people

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in their 20s and 30s

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looked a decade or two from death,

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with patchy, flared up skin,

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and thinning, stringy hair,

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and browning, ground-down teeth,

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and a lostness in their eyes.

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I did notice that the young people
I encountered in Paris,

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in Florence, in Barcelona, had degrees

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but no place to take them,

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living on internships
well into their 30s,

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their lives prevented from launching

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because of an economy
that creates wealth, just not jobs.

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I did notice the news about
those parts of London

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becoming ghost quarters

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where the global super-rich

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turn fishy money into empty apartments

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and price lifelong residents of a city,
young couples starting out,

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out of their own home.

NOTE Paragraph

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And I heard that the fabric of your life

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was tearing.

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You used to be able to count on work,

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and now you couldn't.

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You used to be able
to nourish your children,

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and guarantee that they would climb

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a little bit further in life than you had,

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and now you couldn't.

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You used to be made to feel dignity
in your work, and now you didn't.

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It used to be normal for people like you
to own a home, and now it wasn't.

NOTE Paragraph

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I cannot say

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I didn't know these things,

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but I was distracted

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creating a future in which
we could live on Mars

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even as you struggled down here on Earth.

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I was distracted

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innovating immortality

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even as many of you began to live
shorter lives than your parents had.

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I heard all of these things,
but I didn't listen.

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I looked

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but didn't see.

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I read, didn't understand.

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I paid attention only when you

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began to vote and shout,

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and when your voting and shouting,
when the substance of it

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began to threaten me.

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I listened only when you moved

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toward shattering continental unions

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and electing vulgar demagogues.

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Only then did your pain

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because of interest to me.

NOTE Paragraph

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I know that feeling hurt

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is often prologue to dealing hurt.

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I wonder now

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if you would be less eager to deal it

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if I had stood with you

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when you merely felt it.

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I ask myself

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why I didn't stand with you then.

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One reason is that I became entranced

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by the gurus of change,

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became a worshipper of the religion
of the new for novelty's sake,

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and of globalization and open borders

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and kaleidoscopic diversity.

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Once change became my totalizing faith,

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I could be blind.

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I could fail to see change's consequences.

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I could overlook the importance

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of roots, traditions, rituals, stability,

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and belonging.

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And the more fundamentalist I became

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in my worship of change

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and openness,

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the more I drove you
towards the other polarity,

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to cling, to freeze,

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to close, to belong.

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I now see as I didn't before

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that not having the right skin

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or right organ

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is not the only varietal of disadvantage.

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There is a subtler, quieter disadvantage

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in having those privileged traits

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and yet feeling history to be
moving away from you,

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that while the past was hospitable
to people like you,

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the future will be more hospitable

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to others,

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that the world is growing less familiar,

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less yours day by day.

NOTE Paragraph

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A similar thing happened

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with the economy

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that you and I share.

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Just as I cannot and don't wish

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to turn back to the clock
on equality and diversity

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and yet must understand

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the sense of loss they can inspire,

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so too I refuse

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and could not if I wished

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turn back the clock on an ever more
closely knit, interdependent world,

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and on inventions that won't stop
being invented.

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And yet I must understand
your experience of these things.

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You have for years been telling me
that your experience of these things

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is not as good as my theories forecast.

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Yet before you could finish
a complaining sentence

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about the difficulty of living
with erratic hours, volatile pay,

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vanishing opportunities,

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about the pain of dropping your children
off at 24-hour day care

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to make your 3am shift,

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I shot back at you

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before you could finish your sentence

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my dogma

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about how what you are actually
experiencing was flexibility

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and freedom.

NOTE Paragraph

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Language is one of the only things

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that we truly share,

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and I sometimes used
this joint inheritance

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to obfuscate and deflect

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and justify myself,

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to rebrand what was good for me

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as something appearing good for us both,

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when I threw around terms like
the sharing economy

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and disruption

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and global resourcing.

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I see now that what I was really doing

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at times

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was buying your pain

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on the cheap,

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sprucing it up,

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and trying to sell it back to you

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as freedom.

NOTE Paragraph

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I have wanted to believe
and wanted you to believe

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that the system that has been good to me,
that has made my life ever more seamless

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is also the best system for you.

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I have condescended to you

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with the idea that you are voting
against your economic interests,

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voting against your interests,

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as if I know your interests.

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That is just my dogmatic
economism talking.

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I have a weakness

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for treating people's economic interests

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as their only interest,

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ignoring things like belonging and pride

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and the desire to send a message
to those who ignore you.

NOTE Paragraph

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So here we are,

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in a scary but not inexplicable moment

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of demagoguery, fracture,

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xenophobia, resentment, and fear,

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and I worry for us both
if we continue down this road,

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me not listening,

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you feeling unheard,

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you shouting to get me to listen.

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I worry when each of us is seduced

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by visions of the future

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that have no place for the other.

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If this goes on,

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if this goes on,

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there may be blood.

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There are already hints of this blood,

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a newspaper every day.

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There may be roundups, raids,

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deportations, camps, secessions,

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and no I do not thing that I exaggerate.

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There may be even talk of war

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in places that were certain

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they were done with it.

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There is always the hope of redemption,

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but it will not be a cheap,

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shallow redemption that comes
through blather about us all

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being in it together.

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This will take more.

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It will take accepting that we both
made choices to be here.

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We create our others.

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As parents, as neighbors, as citizens,

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we witness and sometimes ignore each other

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into being.

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You were not born vengeful.

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I have some role

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in whatever thirst
you now feel for revenge,

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and that thirst now tempts me

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to plot ever more elaborate escapes

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from our common life,

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from the schools and neighborhoods

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and airports and amusement parks

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that we used to share.

NOTE Paragraph

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We face, then,

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a problem not of these large,

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impersonal forces.

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We face a problem of your and my

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relations.

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We chose ways of relating to each other

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that got us here.

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We can choose ways of relating

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that get us out.

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But there are things we might

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have to let go of, fellow citizen,

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starting with our own cherished
versions of reality.

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Imagine if you let go of fantasies

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of a society purged
of these or those people.

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Imagine if I let go

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of my habit

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of saving the world behind your back,

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of deliberating on the future

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of your work, your food, your schools,

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in places where you couldn't
get past security.

NOTE Paragraph

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We can do this only if we first accept

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that we have neglected each other.

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If there is hope to summon

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in this ominous hour,

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it is this.

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We have for too long chased

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various shimmering dreams

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at the cost of attention

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to the foundational dream of each other,

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the dream of tending to each other,

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of unleashing each other's wonders,

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of moving through history together.

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We could dare to commit

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to the dream of each other

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as the thing that matters

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before every neon thing.

NOTE Paragraph

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Let us dare.

NOTE Paragraph

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Sincerely yours,

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a fellow citizen.

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)