A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
Prologue. Americans were dying in a foreign war we had no business fighting. Cities burned as peaceful protests turned into race riots. The National Guard was mobilized because the police could not keep order. Fear of civil unrest caused hard-working white suburbanites to embrace the politics of law and order while rejecting social programs they saw as transfers of their wealth to black people who had books of matches and vials of drugs but no jobs.
Along came a Republican who wanted to be President. Standing before a cheering crowd of thousands, he said:
For a few moments, let us look at America, let us listen to America to find the answer to that question.
As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame.
We hear sirens in the night.
We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad.
We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home.
And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish.
Did we come all this way for this?
Did American boys die in Normandy, and Korea, and in Valley Forge for this?
Listen to the answer to those questions.
It is another voice. It is the quiet voice in the tumult and the shouting.
It is the voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans — the non-shouters; the non-demonstrators.
They are not racists or sick; they are not guilty of the crime that plagues the land.
They are black and they are white — they’re native born and foreign born — they’re young and they’re old.
They work in America’s factories.
They run America’s businesses.
They serve in government.
They provide most of the soldiers who died to keep us free.
They give drive to the spirit of America.
They give lift to the American Dream.
They give steel to the backbone of America. They are good people, they are decent people; they work, and they save, and they pay their taxes, and they care.
Like Theodore Roosevelt, they know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in.
This I say to you tonight is the real voice of America.
Will we again hear these words in 2016?