Barack Obama
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And on the other side, there has always been the idea that, no, no, we the people means something very particular.
And so at each stage, and look, this led to ultimately Civil War, but even after Civil War, you got Jim Crow and Reconstruction and the Klan and you...
There's always been this fight over what is the true story of America.
And I believe deeply in this story that, yeah, if we can pull this off, if we can actually treat everybody with decency and respect and compromise and make democracy work, it shines a light for the entire world.
And the other path of tribe and...
A zero-sum game and everything's dog-eat-dog and a competition and you try to take advantage of the other person because they're going to try to take advantage of you.
And if they don't look like you and they don't believe what you do and they have a different faith than you that they're a threat to you,
That is the path that leads to things like World War II and the Holocaust and slavery and Pol Pot and Rwanda.
We see how that plays out.
And so the question is โ
You know, can the better, in my mind, can that better story win?
And I think that after World War II, you and I are basically the same generation.
We grew up in a monoculture.
And as flawed as it was, with TV and Walter Cronkite, we were all watching the same things.
We were seeing the same things.
We were listening to the same things.
There were groups that weren't represented.
There was bias in it.