The Pro Bono Speechwriter
by Kevin O’Malley
Just in case President Biden needs an extra speech, here’s one for him free of charge.
Good evening, folks.
I speak to you tonight with enough wake up calls ringing in my ears to fill a Marriott Courtyard. And if you want to label this a case of being “woke,” well, then that’s your problem. All that I am saying in my own fashion is that this country needs to wake the hell up. Pardon my French.
The opening bell?
Let us start out with the singularly, senseless murder of Mr. George Floyd. Preceded, of course, by countless others in the past. Maybe now we can begin as a country, as a union of states, as a community of cities, right down to the blocks we live on to make manifest the line from the second paragraph of our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal…”
Okay, I changed it a bit. But the founding fathers 1) weren’t all that socially alert to racial discrimination and injustice in the first place and 2) didn’t really hear about alarm clocks until 1787 (invented, by the way, by Lev Hutchins of Concord, New Hampshire - but he’s the only one whoever heard it - every morning at 4:00am).
Speaking of waking up in the union, is it going to take another 156 years (1865 to 2021) before all those Confederate statues are completely relegated to basement archival storage? What’s the hold up? Pretty sure the German equivalent to our Capitol Building isn’t housing any sculptures of Field Marshall Rommel (though it wasn’t until January 2020 when Robert E. Lee was finally wheeled back to some windowless room in Virginia).
To be sure, we do have another document called the First Amendment which protects your right to - for example - fly the Confederate flag off the back of your Ford 150 pickup truck whenever the fancy strikes you. Perhaps sooner than another 156 years into our future, people will get the message that displaying symbols of the insurrection of 1861 clearly communicates your preference for a system that sold other human beings into slavery rather than flying a real American flag that should just as clearly communicate your preference for that “all the people are created…” sentiment. Let’s set the alarm for that one a little sooner, shall we? How about 4:00am tomorrow morning.
Some more “for whom the alarm bell tolls.” It’s not just for John Donne anymore. It’s for all of us. When it’s raining in Greenland and it’s not one of those radical temperature reversals during the Quaternary Ice Age 100,000 years ago, then the bell is tolling for us. Do you know what convection is? I do. Sort of. When it rains on Greenland’s plateau (as it did a few weeks ago), the fresh water run-off (to the tune of 7 billion tons in 2 days) eventually spills into the Atlantic Ocean and disrupts the normal functioning of the so-called “conveyer belt” of ocean currents. Usually, warmer water dives and colder water rises in the process of oceanic convection. But when there is a more buoyant “lid” of fresh water run-off (and Greenland is a potential monster bathtub full of fresh water just waiting to run off), the whole system gets mucked up. And because we find ourselves in a state of global symbiosis, if it’s raining in Greenland, it will be burning in California. So, yes, the bells are ringing, folks. They are clamoring. They’re clanging. Pealing, chiming, tintintabulating, ding-donging. They. Are. Blaring. And when John Donne’s “no man is an island” guy asks what’s that bell ringing for? Our choice is that it's either a planetary funeral bell or a wake up call.
But will this even matter if we, the people, are not around to try and stop it? Which leads me to the final bell.
The most technologically advanced nation on the planet has 18.5% of the world’s covid cases and 14.5% of the world’s covid deaths. We have barreled past 700,000 covid deaths like so many road signs leaving our peripheral vision - a total that surpasses more than what America suffered in the pandemic of 1918. Can’t…won’t…sugarcoat these numbers.
A friend of mine from Delaware wrote saying he just got out of the hospital after major cancer surgery. He acknowledged that he was remarkably fortunate to even be admitted in the first place. As per hospital policy, he had been fully vaccinated and was tested 3 times before and during his 6 day stay. His roommate, however, was not vaxed, refused to be vaxed and insisted that his family members who visited every day didn’t need to be vaxed or tested either. And wearing masks? Sorry, no way. Equally remarkable, my friend was able to move to a different room a day after his surgery. But the doctors, nurses, maintenance crews, transportation crews, cafeteria workers, folks in the pharmacy and the clerical personnel didn’t have that same choice. Their choice was to come to work and try to help deal with and hopefully improve the health of their patients. Thankfully, my friend is doing better in recovery. His roommate, unfortunately, died the night before he was to have colon surgery.
We are Americans. We expect and then all too often take for granted our “the choice is yours” option. I am here tonight to say that if you are not part of the pandemic solution, the choice is no longer yours. You are the problem.
I will be signing an executive order mandating a national vaccination policy this evening.
Understand that your personal freedoms end at the threshold where they are affecting the lives and the deaths of others. This is not de Tocqueville’s “tyranny of the majority” from back in the America of the 1830’s. This has become the tyranny of the few.
This might fall under the heading of “for whom the bell trolls.” But what if your neighbor showed up with a pocketful of plutonium? Would you want him carpooling to work with you the next morning? Or eating at a nearby table in a restaurant? Or teaching your children? Or taking care of your grandmother in a nursing home? Or sharing your hospital room? Probably not. (And, FYI, according to New York State Department of Health, you are more likely to succumb from exposure to Covid than radioactivity by about a 700,000 to 560 margin or 0.0008%).
At any rate (or ratio), ask an immunologist and they will tell you that the most effective approach to controlling a disease vector - barring a vaccination - is isolation and immobilization.
If you refuse to be vaccinated, you will be sequestered in your own chosen personal quarantine. In the privacy of your home, you can elect to get infected to your heart’s delight. That is within the sphere of your personal freedoms. You will, however, be restricted from infecting others. While in your own private “time out,” perhaps you can reflect on what it means to be a participating member of a rational community. And while you’re at it, travel back to your 11th grade U.S. History class and review that opening line from the U.S. Constitution. The part that talks about “promoting the general Welfare.” Freedom is not absolute. Life and death is.
And it both saddens and infuriates me to say this: would that we had pathology alone to contend with. The toxic insanity of misinformation and outright lies on the internet, on social media, on mass media has to stop. Now. The pandemic will not end until it does.
Thank you for hearing me out. Let me know what you think and let me know how you can help. May God bless you all. Yes, all the people.