I had a dream last night, a possible dream, a dream now less than 16 months away. (One of the Eyeball series, available on DVD via Paypal.)
It was Inauguration Day, unusually warm for Washington in January. The swearing in is done and the new President steps to the microphone.
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Friends, countrymen, countrywomen.
I wish to begin today by quoting from a great Republican President, Gerald Ford, who passed away recently after a long and honored life.
Here is how he began his Presidency:
A noble sentiment. But he made a great mistake. It's a mistake I will not make. So let me say this briefly to my predecessors. George Walker Bush. Richard Bruce Cheney. You are under arrest, for treason, and for crimes against humanity.
That may be all the news you're told tonight, about the new beginning we must make. But let me continue anyway.
September 11, 2001, a date which will live in infamy. The United States was suddenly and deliberately attacked by religious extremists then based in Afghanistan.
We were all frightened that day. But like President Ford, we made a great mistake. We surrendered to our fear. Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
In the name of fear we invaded and occupied Iraq, which had nothing to do with those events, and allied ourselves with Saudi Arabia, 15 of whose citizens flew those planes.
In the name of fear we tortured. In the name of fear we destroyed the great writ of habeus corpus. In the name of fear we broke our great Army in a civil war we had no business starting.
In the name of fear we stifled dissent. In the name of fear we spied on one other, we created our own Gulag, and we ignored treaties we helped write, including the Geneva Conventions.
In the name of fear we let our bridges collapse, we let a great city drown, we denied our children health care and we called one another traitors.
Our leaders told us to fear all Muslims. Then they told us to fear our black neighbors, who were shiftless and criminal. They told us to fear our Hispanic neighbors, who were stealing our jobs. They told us to fear our gay neighbors, who were threatening our marriages. They told us to fear the Chinese, who were poisoning our toys, and any patriot who dared point all this out.
Today the reign of fear ends. The terror ends. We will find Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen, wherever they are. We will bring them to justice. We will leave Iraq to the Iraqis, Iran to the Iranians, and give to them the freedom to make their own mistakes, the freedom we have always demanded for ourselves.
Now, where does our country stand?
My fellow Americans, we're broke. Our dollar is worth less than a Canadian Looney. We continue piling debt upon debt. We continue to buy more from abroad than we sell. We have turned our own homes into money machines, and lost them as the bubble we created burst before us.
Our health care system is broken. Our education system is broken. Our roads and bridges are broken. Our levees have been breached. We are cooking our planet with oil, while our bravest men and women are dieing to get us more of it.
These are terrifying problems. But we stand together on this day and remember that our forefathers faced much worse.
From this place we were once pulled into Civil War with one another, to make this nation one Union and to end the stain of slavery. Brother slaughtered brother in 10,000 places, whole cities were destroyed. We survived it.
Our forefathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor for self-evident truths, inalienable rights. Most of the men who signed that document lost everything in that war. Our great cities were destroyed or occupied. We survived it.
Our own parents, who were told not to fear from this spot 76 years ago, had much to fear that day. One third of American families had no income. Banks were closing, life savings' lost. Millions were living in shanties, children were hungry. Our system lay on the verge of collapse.
Much credit will go to the man who on that day locked his braces, rose from his wheelchair, and stood on this spot to show he was unafraid. But far more credit should go to the American people who heard him.
Instead of giving in to fear, we united. Our mothers and fathers refused to despair. They built our great park systems, by hand. They brought electricity to the South and to the West. Just as they seemed to be getting out of the red, with the World of Tomorrow before them, they faced threats far greater than Osama Bin Laden, or Al Qaeda, or Saddam Hussein. They faced Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Tojo's Japan. They faced Pearl Harbor.
Our parents still did not despair. They volunteered. They fought. They died. Our mothers built the planes, tanks, and ships of Victory. Our fathers suffered on the battlefields of the world.
Today we face our own rendezvous with destiny. Today begins the Time of Repair.
We must repair our nation. We must repair our roads, and bridges, and levees. We must repair our health care system, and our schools. We must repair our air, and replace the War for Oil with a War Against Oil, harnessing the miracles of wind, and water, of the Earth's heat, of sunlight, and hydrogen.
We must repair our economy, and become exporters again. We must repair our souls, and trust one another again. We must repair our reputation, and live up to our own creed again.
I can't do these things. With God's help and your prayers I can try to lead. But no President has the power to do what needs to be done.
You have the power.
You have the power to turn this around.
You have the power to turn swords into plowshares.
You have the power to come to a consensus on the questions dividing us.
You have the power to harness the Sun, the wind, the energy of the Earth, the power of technology, the chemistry of life.
You have the power to win the War Against Oil, to reform our health care, to rebuild our economy, and to begin paying down our debts.
We begin, here, with the great words of the past. We begin, here, to seek the better angels of our nature. We begin here, to ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
We begin here to hear again the great poetry in our American soul.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.Let us begin, now, with celebration of what has come before, with hope, with confidence, to bind up our world's wounds, to repair what fear has torn apart, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Let us begin.
And then I woke up.
What are you doing to make this dream, or something like it, a reality in our lifetime?
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