Reconciliation
Healing the Divide!
The last several years have seen many suggestions that the US could be on the brink of a second ‘Civil War’. We really do live in especially polarized times and the rising stress of multiple potential existential threats – political, environmental, AI, etc. - really isn’t helping to calm things down.
Americans are strongly divided on political, religious, financial, technological and medical issues – to name just a few!
One side has been labelled ‘deplorables’ while those on the other side are derided as being ‘sheeple’.
The nation and its people have so many resources at hand and so much potential but that vast potential is squandered when we’re constantly obsessing about the faults of “the other side”.
How much of this division is real and how much is intentionally manufactured’ by those interests that would keep the mass of the American public divided amongst ourselves?
'Divide and conquer' is one of the most effective of classic military strategies and this approach appears to have been well-applied to the citizenry of the United States. In its current fractured and even self-despising condition the populace of the US has indeed reached a quite divided and weakened condition.
But Robert Kennedy Jr. is standing up and asking us to recognize the “broad moral agreements beneath our divisions”. While Mr. Kennedy holds strong positions about today’s most divisive issues from guns to abortion and immigration, he acknowledges that both sides have legitimate concerns and meaningful moral perspectives.
“Everyone wants their children to be safe. No one wants more abortions, nor do they want to force women to undergo unwanted pregnancies. Everyone wants safe streets, yet few wish for millions of people to languish in prison.”
"My aim is to convince every Democrat that you're not a Democrat, and every Republican that you're not a Republican."
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Although both the Republican and Democrat parties have and continue to make (often) spurious attacks on his character Bobby’s committed to refraining from responding with similar attacks – instead treating each side respectfully, focusing on the positive and when necessary, making rational and well-reasoned criticisms.
He’s set out to be an example of respectful dialog, real listening, understanding and ultimately forgiveness in order to open the way to national and individual healing and reconciliation.
“Kennedy will draw on the broad moral agreements beneath our divisions. He will model careful listening, and create conditions where each group can hear the stories of the other. He will lead the way toward national reconciliation, respectful dialog, and willingness to change, to grow, and to forgive.”
‘These commitments to respect and unity start right now, in the campaign. In Kennedy's own words,
“Every nation, like every individual, has a darker side and a lighter side. The easiest thing for a politician to do is to appeal to our greed, to our anger, to our fear, to our xenophobia, our bigotry, all of the alchemies of tribalism. I will appeal instead to our generosity as a people, our goodness, our kindness, and our courage.”’
“Today, powerful undemocratic forces have a death grip on our nation. There is only one way to break that grip and restore power to the people. That is a broad popular movement that unites left and right, Black and White, urban and rural, young and old, and working people of all ethnicities.”
“This populist uprising is not defined by its enemies. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recognizes that even the elites have become prisoners of the system they have created. Many of them no longer believe in it, despite the wealth and power it gives them. They too are welcome to defect to the movement of people power.”
