Progressive leaders must convert the once-coherent United States into an unprecedentedly diverse society, Barack Obama told the Democratic Party’s national convention Tuesday night.
“No nation, no society has ever tried to build a democracy as big and as diverse as ours before, one that includes people that, over decades, have come from every corner of the globe,” he said.
In his vision of a very diverse society, he added:
Our allegiances and our community are defined not by race or blood, but by a common creed, and that’s why, when we uphold our values, the world is a little brighter. When we don’t, the world is a little dimmer, and dictators and autocrats feel emboldened, and over time, we become less safe.
Once progressives are firmly in charge of a diversified and domesticated United States they can lead the world towards progressive nirvana, according to Obama:
We shouldn’t be the world’s policeman, and we can’t eradicate every cruelty and injustice in the world, but America can be and must be, a force for good, discouraging conflict, fighting disease, promoting human rights, protecting the planet from climate change, defending freedom brokering peace. That’s what Kamala Harris believes, and so do most Americans.
“The rest of the world is watching to see if we can actually pull this off,” Obama said, hinting at the threat posed by Donald Trump’s rival vision — “Make America Great Again.”
In Trump’s vision, pro-American politicians and pro-American policies will Make America Great Again.
That vision is a blend of non-militaristic nationalism and displayed patriotism — both of which are viscerally denounced by Obama’s internationalist-minded progressives. Trump’s preferred tools are tariffs to rebuild American manufacturing, strong productive businesses to grow wealth and trade, strong borders to rebuild wages and families, and a strong military to protect Americans’ interests.
Trump’s vision reflects his origins. He was born in 1946, when America was the global colossus, with perhaps 50 percent of the world’s GNP. He was 34 when Americans landed on the moon in 1969, 43 when the Berlin Wall fell, and 45 when the Soviet Union crashed in 1991, leaving the United States as the sole superpower.
There was little immigration and little diversity in that successful society. In 1950, when Trump was five, 90 percent of Americans were of European origin, just like the military that had beaten Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan five years earlier.
Obama’s experience was far different as he grew up in the 1980s as a mixed-race son of a globalist-minded mother. He was aged 27 when he was feted in elite Harvard, and in his late 30s when he scrambled for election victories in Chicago’s race-skewed politics. Non-whites were a fast-growing minority at roughly 25 percent of society — and Obama has built his career on the demographic change.
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“In my mind, the fates of black and brown were to be perpetually intertwined [and would become] the cornerstone of a coalition that could help America live up to its promise,” Obama wrote in his 2006 autobiography, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.”
“At some point, there’s going to be a President Rodriguez, or there’s going to be a President Chi … its politics will reflect who we are,” Obama said during a 2014 interview at MSNBC/Telemundo interview. “That’s not something to be afraid of, that’s something to welcome,” he said.
The most powerful tool for Obama is immigration because it allows him to Make America Diverse.
That demographic change enriches his business allies — and it allows progressives to clear-cut native-born Americans’ thicket of traditions, norms, rights, politics, and civic rules that now inhibit progressive ambitions in state and federal elections.
In Obama’s dream of victory, his progressives clear-cut the wild forests of Americans’ society so they can efficiently manage vast fields of domesticated plants.
Their revolutionary project is far advanced: The federal government dominates the states, chosen “genders” are replacing unchangeable male-0r-female biology, enduring marriages become slight relationships, business enshrines diversity in the media, and the native-born citizens lose their place in work or politics amid the rising inflow of migrants.
Under President Joe Biden, and backed by wealthy business investors, Obama’s progressive allies have imported another 10 million legal, illegal, or quasi-legal migrants by opening myriad doorways through Americans’ borders. That progressive advance was won by one of Obama’s 2009 appointees, Alejandro Mayorkas, who is now Biden’s pro-migration border chief.
Unsurprisingly, growing pluralities and majorities of ordinary Americans reject this elite-imposed chaotic, wealth-shifting diversity. They voted for Trump’s MAGA vision in 2016 — and many will vote for it again in 2024.
Worse, Obama’s diverse coalition is attacking itself. For example, the Muslims imported by Obama are threatening Obama’s Jewish supporters.
Some of Obama’s allies recognize the colossal risk he is taking with the lives of 3330 million Americans. For example, Yasha Mounk, a pro-diversity author who is touted by Obama, admitted in a 2022 interview:
We have no real example of democracies that managed to sustain deep ethnic and religious diversity while treating people fairly, which is the aspiration that our society now has. And we have lots of examples in history of ethnic and religious diversity going wrong, both in democracies and in non-democratic societies leading to genocide, leading to civil war, leading to terrible forms of exploitation, domination like slavery. So, I think there is good reason to think that there is a special challenge to sustaining diverse democracy. And I think we can see some of that in our politics. We can see how fears about demographic change incite the cultural divisions that characterize the United States and many other democracies today.
But Obama is pushing ahead, even as he lamented the inevitable political and civic conflict that he is causing by aggressively diversifying Americans’ once-coherent civic ecosystem.
“I know these [progressive] ideas can feel pretty naive right now,” he sorrowfully told his Democrats just 74 days before an election where Trump holds a thin lead in many critical states:
We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, where the culture puts a premium on things that don’t last — money, fame, status, hikes, the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other, and in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other, to control each other, and fear each other.
So Obama ended his speech by promising many little things to voters in exchange for them giving him the big thing — political dominance over their nation, culture, and children’s lives:
But here’s the good news, Chicago, all across America, in big cities and small towns, away from all the noise, the [little] ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. We share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold because the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better, we want to be better, and the joy and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone.
The little things were good enough for the prior generation of little people, such as his mother and Michelle Obama’s mother, Obama suggested:
They didn’t obsess about what they didn’t have. Instead, they appreciated what they did. They found pleasure in simple things: A card game for friends, a good meal and laughter around the kitchen table, helping others, and most of all, seeing their children do things and go places that they would have never imagined for themselves …
I believe that’s what we yearn for: A return to an America where we work together and look out for each other, a restoration of what [President Abraham] Lincoln called — on the eve of civil war! –“Our bonds of affection,” an America that taps what he called “The better angels of our nature.”
“That is what this election is about,” he declared to his cheering corps of progressive politicians, donors, and activists.