This thread contains excerpts from Part VI of “How We Got Here.” This part addresses the personalization of politics and the need to instead focus on systems and ideas to achieve justice.
“Another fundamental problem in our political discourse, which spans the political spectrum but also applies to the progressive movement, has been the conflation of person and idea.”
“We can hate a person's speech without hating the person. In fact, we can hate a person's speech even while loving the person. Our discourse and debate must fundamentally revolve around ideas, not persons.”
“First, by denigrating the source of the disliked language or position, we alienate him or her, which only makes it more likely that the speaker will respond with further defensiveness.”
“Second, by stating that the speaker ‘is’ a certain characteristic and affixing a corresponding label, we cast that person in an immutable light. We thereby minimize the space and opportunity for the speaker to rehabilitate or to express remorse.”
“Over the past four years, progressives would have done better to focus on refuting Trump's ideas rather than Trump himself—and, not only doing that, but offering positive alternatives to those ideas.”
“The Trump character attacks have been particularly problematic because of the pathological loyalty that Trump has cultivated amongst his followers. Under such circumstances, character attacks against the leader only deepen the loyalty of the flock.”
“Most of all, these observations also apply to responses to hateful language: not only must we denounce such language, but we must actively defeat hate with love.”
“When we degenerate into shaming, we violate another person's rights to dignity and respect, fundamentally undercutting our moral cause—for we cannot defend the existence of some people by denying the existence of others.”
“For hateful groups, the perceived suppression involved in shaming tends to reinforce their conspiracy theories, confirming to them that powerful forces in society have aligned to block free participation in our social discourse.”
“We must remember that our fight is fundamentally about creating better systems—because systems, not individuals, are the ultimate source of injustice. To create more just systems, we fight against problems, not against people. We fight for ideas.”
“In contrast to these feeble approaches, moral ideas—which are inherently true ideas, transcending all individualities and identities—provide the most powerful weapon in the world.”
“Progressives and Democrats, however, have lost sight of these truths. By engaging in constant denunciation and vengefulness, they have contributed to a marked spiral in our political rhetoric and have failed to offer positive alternatives.”
“At the end of everything, the Democrats have only been left with a 2020 campaign platform that essentially amounts to ‘not Trump.’ This platform is woefully, perhaps fatally, lacking.”
U.S. society is collapsing. The social fabric is being torn apart. The political system is fracturing. The country is headed toward civil conflict.
Now, more than ever, we must come to terms with the multiple factors driving this implosion.
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The choice for our society is stark: a collective future, or a collective death.
Thus far, our failure to address the complex dynamics underpinning the country's collapse has amounted to choosing societal suicide.
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If we ever wish to reverse course, we must adopt a different approach — which, most fundamentally, means that we must first come to more fully understand the many causes of our social collapse.
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In public health, nothing is more sacrosanct to us than the trust of the populations we serve. That trust — so hard to gain, so easy to squander — underpins all of our efforts to eradicate disease.
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It makes the difference between well-being and illness, between life and death.
Our work is scientific. It is not political. It is not judgmental. Our only task is to stamp out disease wherever it may be.
We meet the people we serve where they are, however they come to us.
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That is why we should all be disturbed by this recent statement at a White House press briefing.
The statement — perhaps the most illustrative of many similar comments throughout our society — is antithetical to public health.
Over the past fifteen years plus, nuance and depth have vanished from our social discourse, and scientific evidence and rational thought have been displaced by video clips, soundbites, and one-line blips.
This trend has proven perilous.
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With each day that passes, the decay of our social and political conversation — the replacement of thoughtfulness with reactivity, of civility with disrespect — poses a greater threat to the continued existence of our society.
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Many people know this.
But even as the threat shows no signs of receding, few show any willingness to confront the cultural decay head-on — and to address our role as active participants in the process.
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Today, as we commemorate twenty-seven years since the horrifying acts of the Rwandan genocide, and as we continue the fight to both prevent and stop atrocity around the world, I would like to recount the heroism of Mbaye Diagne.
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A soldier in the Senegalese Army, Diagne served as an unarmed military observer in Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, first working under the Organization for African Unity and then under the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda.
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On this day in 1994, after Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her husband were murdered in their home at the start of the genocide, Diagne risked his life to rescue their five children, who remained in hiding.
As I wrap up my PhD dissertation—which centers on matters of governance, accountability, and health—I would like to share one woman’s story that has inspired much of my work.
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For some of my followers, the story might stretch the boundaries of the imagination.
But the common threads of humanity transcend all boundaries—and stories like this one have informed my work on everything from African healthcare systems to U.S. democratic restoration.
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The story takes place back in 2012, on the day that PHP, the health and human rights organization that I co-founded, was launching the Omukazi Namagara Program, its expanded maternal and neonatal health initiative in the Ankole Region of Uganda.