What if the President went to the people in the coming weeks and as FDR did layout to America what was happening across the globe and the need to end the fear being peddled by the Republicans ad-nausea nightly on the news.
Think of the impact he could make in the election on Nov 4th.
... It is a talk on national security, because the nub of the whole purpose of your President is to keep you now, and your children later, and your grandchildren much later, out of a last-ditch war for the preservation of American independence and all of the things that American independence means to you and to me and to ours.“Arsenal of Democracy” (December 29, 1940)
Franklin D. Roosevelt
As a granddad, I had help my wife care for the grand-kids when we watched them to allow their parents a little free time. This led to a bound that grandparents enjoy; the asking of help, advice and to share our knowledge. When one of the youngest grandchild (there were a total of 15 in our blended family) asked for help on a history project I was more than happy to help.
I had expected that it would cover the Vietnam war, or the Nixon failed presidency or even the Reagan decimation of the middle class. All of which took place during my life time.
Instead he brought up October 30th 2014. The night the President addressed the American public that was reminiscent of FDR.
While the media ran by the oligarchs had painted the President as a bumbling fool, a narrative spun throughout his presidency solely base an the Presidents race, generated a panic around a medical emergency called Ebola. Combined with the preceding six years of a obstructionist Senate and a do nothing House of Representatives fighting him at every opportunity. All more motivated by the desire to show the president as ineffectual rather than the loyal opposition.
On that day, the President addressed the nation, specifically on the issues of Ebola and a new threat in the Middle East from a extremist group called the Islamic State of Syria. The President had the hard task of easing the fears created by the Oligarchs on these subjects. Because his speech was so effective in ending the fears Americans where harboring there was a change on the following election day that was the beginning of the end of the oligarch’s takeover of our government.
The grandson’s history book referred to the speech as a turning point that ended the politics of the religious intemperate, the duplicitous supreme court, and the ongoing racism that was griping the nation.
“On the night of Oct 20th 2014 President Obama spoke to the nation on the threat presented by the new terrorist group called the Islamic State, “… that the struggle that would be costly in lives and cash” He also spoke on the medical threat posed by Ebola and noted that while the infection rate in America”… hasn’t expanded beyond a one in 300 million chance, the nation can not stand by and allow an illness to dominate the worlds economies…”
“Mr. Obama’s address was based on telling the American people that the fear created by the opposition party was not effectively fighting either the medical crisis or the threat to the security of America or the rest of the world. ”FDR famously said ‘we have nothing to fear but fear its self” was a direct commentary on the basic fear of hunger, housing and good health. The opposition is using this fear to keep you from the polls on Nov. 4th. But to fight these and other threats to America we need to have every American show up and vote. And I’m asking you, my fellow Americans to give me a congress that will work with me to make our nation secure…”
The following election swung the House of Representatives to a workable intuition, and ended the standing filibuster in the Senate. The president was able to fund the fight against the IS and to find a cure for the medical emergency.
(From American History published by Simon and Schuster 2026 edition)
I remember that night and the following election. A major change in the physique of America took place. Over the next months more and more Americans stopped fearing the made up emergencies of the oligarchs. The Republican party which had become so imbedded to the religious intemperate was replaced by the American Conservatives Party (ACP) allowing a workable government to form.
The invention of the new political party broke the strangle hold on politics that the two party system had on the House of Representatives.
My grandson and I talked and discussed the causes in society that lead to the speech. Not having to live in the world that the oligarchs was creating he didn't quite understand the dangers that was being imposed on Americans. He wrote a report that earned him another A in history class. He graduated high school and college with high honors and is a professor at Yale.
Well guess what, the President never made that speech and we entered the middle of the new 100 years war in the middle east. The middle class disappeared, and poverty rampant across the world. The one percent was able to survive but those million and billionaires the were created during the oligarchs rise to power were among the hardest hit.
War it turns out was the only form of employment left, it did reduced the population of the earth, allowing the changing climate to feed the peoples off the world. At least there was more food.