October 20, 2017

This MSNBC montage highlights the unusual phenomenon of two former Presidents delivering a speech on the same day to send the same message.

Clearly they're concerned. It's only a shame that those with ears to hear won't hear them.

Obama: "Here is one thing I know. If you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you're not going to be able to govern them."

G.W. Bush: "We've seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty."

Obama: "We've got folks who are deliberately trying to make folks angry, to demonize people who have different ideas."

G.W. Bush: Argument turns too easily into animosity.

Obama: Why are we deliberately trying to misunderstand each other and be cruel to each other?

G.W. Bush: At times it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together.

Obama: Folks don't feel good right now about what they see. They don't feel as if our public life reflects our best.

G.W. Bush: Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry and compromises the moral education of our children.

Obama: We're at our best not when we're trying to put people down, but when we're trying to lift everybody up.

G.W. Bush: Bigotry seems emboldened, our politics seems vulnerable to conspiracy theories and out right fabrications.

Obama: Some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed. It's the 21st century, not the 19th century.

G.W. Bush: We know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.

Thank you, MSNBC, for weaving this video montage of two presidents from two parties delivering two speeches on the same day saying the same thing. It's a remarkable thing to see side-by-side like that.

Unfortunately, those who need to hear this, won't. Unless Fox News puts it on loop for a day right alongside Fox Business, people who most need to hear these messages will simply ignore them.

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