Professor Reich, this is one of the most endearing texts I ever read.
Looking at those little kids, I think about my four year old and hope he grows up to become as brilliant as you are and, who knows?Perhaps even president one day.
We are immigrants, but he was born in this amazing country.
Thank you for being the keynote speaker in my graduation at Berkeley in 2015.
I is interesting to see the growth and ideas each of the 4 people mentioned took different paths. All but one had the idea of building America and helping with different routes for sure. One privileged person became a menace and cheat his whole live with only his own personal gain in mind. He has set loose on America a flood of beliefs which will be hard to turn back. We must use every effort to make sure the tide does turn or our democracy will fail.
I’m not so jaded or shortsighted as to blame your entire generation for everything we face now (even Trump) seems to me every generation has its hero’s and villains.
It’s now up to my generation (millennial) and those born after me to make sure the ideals of American Democracy survive.
Few of us have been successful in making this a better world than what we entered, but you have done more than most. The three Presidents born around you were fair, to middling, to the worst ever. Bill Clinton was the best President of the lot. BUT, he also ushered in a bad system of cheating the neediest among us of a chance for a decent life (the only good thing to come from the welfare act of 1996 was the welfare to work, during the very short time it lasted - 1998 to 2001). I was working for a County Department of Social Services, as an Eligibility Worker, then Employment and Training Counselor. It did bloody little to help the neediest - those who were of the lowest intellectual ability. the chemically dependent, and the mentally ill. Too many of my coworkers in Employment and Training were poorly educated and trained themselves and thought they were successful if they got their clients working in fast food for 16 hours a week (Yeah that was a great idea, with 1 to 4 children to feed). Bill also favored corporations too much. George W, while a decent human being was about as intelligent as an average 16 year old, he reminded me of Charlie McCarthy (although he closely resembled Alfred E. Newman, Mad's "what me worry"), only with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, pulling the strings. Of the trumpster, he is the most evil person to ever hold Government office. So I'd say, Dr Reich, you have "done your parents proud"
Your essay really strikes a chord with me and once again its most appreciated.
How all these paths intertwine. I have to add my father and his family were from a farm family in Scranton and he ended up attending Princeton University on the GI Bill. Later my father would be one of the "mad men" working on Madison Avenue in NYC and raising his family in Greenwich Connecticut. My understanding was It was an economic high point in the 60s and 70s and the over riding sense was anything was possible and that "natural resources" were limitless (as long as you didnt listen to hippies and take the talk about a possible gas shortage seriously). At this point in my life (60) its clear this attitude regarding nature and the idea of nature as a resource has done a good deal of damage to the USA and the western world. What I keep coming back to in my work and life - the philosopher Martin Heidigger wrote at the close of WW2 - ""the reduction of the the natural world to resources for production and consumption is THE CRISIS of modernity. Its consequences include a loss of the sacred, the violation of nature, and the destructioin of our home". Ultimately it is whats been called "the dream of the western world" which many of us live by - that success is measured in money and property and materialistic wealth.
America has its problems and the Democrats have their problems just read where it all started with An Indigenous History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - this was our starting point (and none of it was taught in US schools to my generation). We are still coming to terms as a nation with these issues.
We are a generation living through a tragedy (both politically and culturaly and environmentally) unlike anything our parents or grandparents experienced. In my opinion its a kind of reckoning, a kind of lesson, to the way we have treated eachother and the way we have treated the earth. Ultimately
I predict we will succeed politically and culturaly and environmentally though it will be at a massive cost (as Charles Eisenstein writes) "when we realize the importance of those things we'd related to a low priority: the mangrove swamps, the deep aquifers, the sacred sites, the biodiversity hotspots, the virgin forests, the elephants and the whales...all the beings that in mysterious ways ,invisible to our numbers, maintain the balance of our living planet. Then will we realize that as we do to any part of nature, so inescapably, we do to ourselves." Hopefully we will all of us get through and learn (and dare I write transform) from all of the above and become better human beings for it.
Well, of the four of you, you are the only one I admire at all.You are the one who apparently really thinks about the effect of your actions on the people whom you are serving. Thank you for continuing to give your care and ideas to the American people.
it's interesting to read a little about your personal history and the coincidence of your birth with those who have done so much to help or to harm the nation. thank you for sharing.
While you, Prof. Reich, were obtaining an Ivy-league education, I, who was born in 1947, was at U.C. Berkeley getting an essentially free but nonetheless extraordinary undergraduate education. Berkeley was different back then. Many of my friends never left Berkeley and still live up in the hills. A much younger Noam Chomsky was there for a year and spoke to huge anti-war crowds in Sproul Plaza. He also taught linguistics and engineering courses. I was on the plaza when a helicopter flew low to spray tear gas on student protestors. I saw Eldridge Cleaver say to a student crowd as big as Chomsky’s, “The only reason you’re against the war is that you don’t want to get your hides blown off,” which stung because it was more true than we cared to admit. The Berkeley campus humor magazine, the Pelican (which I assume is long defunct?) wasn’t quite up to the level of the Harvard Lampoon, which during the 60’s and 70’s was staffed by real geniuses, but sometimes it came pretty close. One 1967 Pelican editorial-type cartoon stuck with me. It was just a drawing of a U.C. Berkeley diploma. No caption. The diplomas are signed by the President of the entire U.C. system (or at least were back then) and the Governor of California. The President’s signature was that of the highly regarded Clark Kerr, who was near the end of his tenure, written in an elegant hand. The Governor’s signature was not cursive, rather it was printed in the shaky block letters of a second-grader: Ronald Reagan. This is what your diploma will be worth, it said, quite loudly, even without a caption.
I was born August 14, 1945, the day World War II ended. I’m an activist for democracy, one of many. I’m trying to do my share. I won’t claim I’m doing it brilliantly, of course.
But it’s very interesting that you, Robert, were born very, very close to the time three recent Presidents were born—Bush, Clinton and Trump. What a combination! I had no idea that you were all so close in age. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it.
Anyway, I’m very interested in what you have to say.
I was three years old. My father had put his dissertation aside and joined the fight against the Axis powers, where he was killed flying night recon missions over Germany. My mother had returned to college to do her Masters in Biology at Smith. My paternal grandmother, Smith '09, had come along to baby-sit. The world appeared promising, seen through the lens of the "Hundred Acre Wood" and the "Wind in the Willows." Then reality crept in on cat feet, and the cat was hungry.
So much opportunity after the war. But not the best years for many people of color. While serving their country should have been an equalizer, many returned to the same racism they left behind. Isabel Wilkerson tells those stories in “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” and “Caste” the system Black Americans left behind, helped fight in Europe and returned to after coming home. And still exists today.
Thanks Robert, very enlightening.....I was born a few years later but further away in a Europe under reconstruction..... I think we as a prewar generation build up something very good and most of us benefitted greatly from it.......however, if i now see what we are leaving behind for our children and grand children, if feel far less proud.......I am now trying to figure out now where did we fail.......
Professor Reich, this is one of the most endearing texts I ever read.
Looking at those little kids, I think about my four year old and hope he grows up to become as brilliant as you are and, who knows?Perhaps even president one day.
We are immigrants, but he was born in this amazing country.
Thank you for being the keynote speaker in my graduation at Berkeley in 2015.
I will never forget that.
I is interesting to see the growth and ideas each of the 4 people mentioned took different paths. All but one had the idea of building America and helping with different routes for sure. One privileged person became a menace and cheat his whole live with only his own personal gain in mind. He has set loose on America a flood of beliefs which will be hard to turn back. We must use every effort to make sure the tide does turn or our democracy will fail.
I’m not so jaded or shortsighted as to blame your entire generation for everything we face now (even Trump) seems to me every generation has its hero’s and villains.
It’s now up to my generation (millennial) and those born after me to make sure the ideals of American Democracy survive.
Few of us have been successful in making this a better world than what we entered, but you have done more than most. The three Presidents born around you were fair, to middling, to the worst ever. Bill Clinton was the best President of the lot. BUT, he also ushered in a bad system of cheating the neediest among us of a chance for a decent life (the only good thing to come from the welfare act of 1996 was the welfare to work, during the very short time it lasted - 1998 to 2001). I was working for a County Department of Social Services, as an Eligibility Worker, then Employment and Training Counselor. It did bloody little to help the neediest - those who were of the lowest intellectual ability. the chemically dependent, and the mentally ill. Too many of my coworkers in Employment and Training were poorly educated and trained themselves and thought they were successful if they got their clients working in fast food for 16 hours a week (Yeah that was a great idea, with 1 to 4 children to feed). Bill also favored corporations too much. George W, while a decent human being was about as intelligent as an average 16 year old, he reminded me of Charlie McCarthy (although he closely resembled Alfred E. Newman, Mad's "what me worry"), only with Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, pulling the strings. Of the trumpster, he is the most evil person to ever hold Government office. So I'd say, Dr Reich, you have "done your parents proud"
Dear Mr. Reich,
Your essay really strikes a chord with me and once again its most appreciated.
How all these paths intertwine. I have to add my father and his family were from a farm family in Scranton and he ended up attending Princeton University on the GI Bill. Later my father would be one of the "mad men" working on Madison Avenue in NYC and raising his family in Greenwich Connecticut. My understanding was It was an economic high point in the 60s and 70s and the over riding sense was anything was possible and that "natural resources" were limitless (as long as you didnt listen to hippies and take the talk about a possible gas shortage seriously). At this point in my life (60) its clear this attitude regarding nature and the idea of nature as a resource has done a good deal of damage to the USA and the western world. What I keep coming back to in my work and life - the philosopher Martin Heidigger wrote at the close of WW2 - ""the reduction of the the natural world to resources for production and consumption is THE CRISIS of modernity. Its consequences include a loss of the sacred, the violation of nature, and the destructioin of our home". Ultimately it is whats been called "the dream of the western world" which many of us live by - that success is measured in money and property and materialistic wealth.
America has its problems and the Democrats have their problems just read where it all started with An Indigenous History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz - this was our starting point (and none of it was taught in US schools to my generation). We are still coming to terms as a nation with these issues.
We are a generation living through a tragedy (both politically and culturaly and environmentally) unlike anything our parents or grandparents experienced. In my opinion its a kind of reckoning, a kind of lesson, to the way we have treated eachother and the way we have treated the earth. Ultimately
I predict we will succeed politically and culturaly and environmentally though it will be at a massive cost (as Charles Eisenstein writes) "when we realize the importance of those things we'd related to a low priority: the mangrove swamps, the deep aquifers, the sacred sites, the biodiversity hotspots, the virgin forests, the elephants and the whales...all the beings that in mysterious ways ,invisible to our numbers, maintain the balance of our living planet. Then will we realize that as we do to any part of nature, so inescapably, we do to ourselves." Hopefully we will all of us get through and learn (and dare I write transform) from all of the above and become better human beings for it.
Well, of the four of you, you are the only one I admire at all.You are the one who apparently really thinks about the effect of your actions on the people whom you are serving. Thank you for continuing to give your care and ideas to the American people.
it's interesting to read a little about your personal history and the coincidence of your birth with those who have done so much to help or to harm the nation. thank you for sharing.
While you, Prof. Reich, were obtaining an Ivy-league education, I, who was born in 1947, was at U.C. Berkeley getting an essentially free but nonetheless extraordinary undergraduate education. Berkeley was different back then. Many of my friends never left Berkeley and still live up in the hills. A much younger Noam Chomsky was there for a year and spoke to huge anti-war crowds in Sproul Plaza. He also taught linguistics and engineering courses. I was on the plaza when a helicopter flew low to spray tear gas on student protestors. I saw Eldridge Cleaver say to a student crowd as big as Chomsky’s, “The only reason you’re against the war is that you don’t want to get your hides blown off,” which stung because it was more true than we cared to admit. The Berkeley campus humor magazine, the Pelican (which I assume is long defunct?) wasn’t quite up to the level of the Harvard Lampoon, which during the 60’s and 70’s was staffed by real geniuses, but sometimes it came pretty close. One 1967 Pelican editorial-type cartoon stuck with me. It was just a drawing of a U.C. Berkeley diploma. No caption. The diplomas are signed by the President of the entire U.C. system (or at least were back then) and the Governor of California. The President’s signature was that of the highly regarded Clark Kerr, who was near the end of his tenure, written in an elegant hand. The Governor’s signature was not cursive, rather it was printed in the shaky block letters of a second-grader: Ronald Reagan. This is what your diploma will be worth, it said, quite loudly, even without a caption.
I just have to say that you, Bob Reich, are the cutest of the 4 toddlers. In fact I think that may be the cutest toddler photo I have ever seen.
I was born August 14, 1945, the day World War II ended. I’m an activist for democracy, one of many. I’m trying to do my share. I won’t claim I’m doing it brilliantly, of course.
But it’s very interesting that you, Robert, were born very, very close to the time three recent Presidents were born—Bush, Clinton and Trump. What a combination! I had no idea that you were all so close in age. I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around it.
Anyway, I’m very interested in what you have to say.
Little runt? You didn’t be o e President but did you grow in stature or Only in intellect. Keep on, and thanks for all you do.🤗
I was three years old. My father had put his dissertation aside and joined the fight against the Axis powers, where he was killed flying night recon missions over Germany. My mother had returned to college to do her Masters in Biology at Smith. My paternal grandmother, Smith '09, had come along to baby-sit. The world appeared promising, seen through the lens of the "Hundred Acre Wood" and the "Wind in the Willows." Then reality crept in on cat feet, and the cat was hungry.
So much opportunity after the war. But not the best years for many people of color. While serving their country should have been an equalizer, many returned to the same racism they left behind. Isabel Wilkerson tells those stories in “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration” and “Caste” the system Black Americans left behind, helped fight in Europe and returned to after coming home. And still exists today.
Thank you Minnie, Mildred & Ed! For the record, I’d be the first in line to vote Robert Reich for POTUS.
I can’t wait to hear more!
Thanks Robert, very enlightening.....I was born a few years later but further away in a Europe under reconstruction..... I think we as a prewar generation build up something very good and most of us benefitted greatly from it.......however, if i now see what we are leaving behind for our children and grand children, if feel far less proud.......I am now trying to figure out now where did we fail.......