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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 behind this "you,"
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and many of me behind this "I."
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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
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.
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It took time for your fears
to trigger my fears,
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not least because at first,
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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
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 flowing freely,
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going where they pleased, globally,
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was not, for you, an emancipation.
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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
in Wagner, South Dakota,
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and the VFW gathering hall
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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 Wal-Mart,
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that far too many people
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,
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had degrees 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 --
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just not jobs.
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I did notice the news about those parts
of London becoming ghost quarters,
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where the global super-rich
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.
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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,
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and now it wasn't.
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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
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only when you 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
toward shattering continental unions
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and electing vulgar demagogues.
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Only then did your pain become of interest
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to me.
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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 worshiper 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 and openness,
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the more I drove you
towards the other polarity,
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to cling,
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to freeze,
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to close,
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to belong.
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I now see as I didn't before
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that not having
the right skin 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.
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I will not concede for a moment
that old privileges should not dwindle.
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They cannot dwindle fast enough.
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It is for you to learn to live
in a new century in which
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there are no bonuses for showing up
with the right skin and right organs.
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If and when your anger turns to hate,
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please know that there is no space
for that in our shared home.
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But I will admit, fellow citizen,
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that I have discounted the burden
of coping with the loss of status.
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I have forgotten
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that what is socially necessary
can also be personally gruelling.
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A similar thing happened
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with the economy 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
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 -- 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.
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Language is one of the only things
that we truly share,
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and I sometimes used
this joint inheritance
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to obfuscate
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and deflect
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and justify myself;
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to re-brand 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 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.
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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,
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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
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.
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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
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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in newspapers 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 think that I exaggerate.
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There may be even talk of war
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in places that were certain
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,
shallow redemption
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that comes through blather
about us all 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.
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We face, then,
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a problem not of these large,
impersonal forces.
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We face a problem
of your and my 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 have to let go of,
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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 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,
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your food,
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your schools,
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in places where you couldn't
get past security.
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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,
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chased various shimmering dreams
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at the cost of attention
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
to the dream of each other
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as the thing that matters
before every neon thing.
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Let us dare.
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Sincerely yours,
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a fellow citizen.
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(Applause)