Presidential speech on race shocked the nation in 1921 (2016)

I think today Harding would be categorized as advocating for equity over equality which has gained popularity among people who self-identify as progressives but hasn’t gotten much wider adoption. My, very biased, perception of this is that policy based on equality is easy, it’s a rote application of “you get this — alright, everyone gets this” but equity requires deep understanding of the struggles and needs of each individual community. And I hate to put it in these terms but when you have a population of elected officials who are overwhelmingly wealthy cis het white men there’s a huge barrier to understanding the needs of … well basically all Americans. The only real thing that changes is just how many times over are our elected officials out of touch. It’s definitely possible to people to grok the experiences of people unlike themselves but for the most part they just don’t put in the effort. This is why there’s so much public emphasis on just listening to the experiences of various communities, because for all the problems that come with blind trust you end up closer to reality than the current system of people who think they know better being like “well I imagine they need blah blah blah.”

I’m sad there really aren’t good answers to any of this because our whole govt is designed to elect people who are part of the ruling class and that isn’t gonna change any time soon.

100 years later and we're still struggling with this. One politician had a worthy solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMaZYCIR1bg

Am I the only one who feels like words have lost all their power in the political realm? There once was a time when speeches could be grand and alter the nation's consciousness. Words used to matter more. JFK's inaugural address is remembered as one of the greatest speeches in American history. That wasn't such a long time ago. Can the same be said of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, or George W. Bush? Ironically enough, Trump's inaugural address, despite the fact that Trump is a terrible public speaker, will be more famous than those of his immediate successor and predecessor, because of the "American carnage" line. No one remembers what Joe Biden said in his inaugural address.

Everyone is so fazed, cynical, tired, and disillusioned these days that they wouldn't care if the president made the greatest speech ever. On the opposite side of the coin, Trump broke about every single rule in the book about what politicians shouldn't say, and he won 74 million votes.

Americans don't care about words anymore. No one can change anyone else's mind anymore.

(2016)