THE PROBLEM FACING THE GOOD MEN WHO'VE GOVERNED US IN THE 21ST CENTURY...:

In his final speech to the nation as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama offered a strong defense of American democracy and pluralism, telling the nation that its form of government relies on goodwill and tolerance. [...]

The president argued that the start of the 21st century, from 9/11 attacks to the Great Recession, and implicitly in Trump's election, had threatened to "rupture [the] solidarity" on which the country rests. The threat came from three corners, he said: unequal economic opportunity; racism and discrimination; and the retreat into bubbles of likeminded individuals.

He warned that indulging fear would endanger a society ordered by Enlightenment ideals of reason, tolerance, and justice. "That order is now being challenged--first by violent fanatics who claim to speak for Islam; more recently by autocrats in foreign capitals who see free markets, open democracies, and civil society itself as a threat to their power," Obama said. "The peril each poses to our democracy is more far-reaching than a car bomb or a missile." He asked the nation to come together in the work of rebuilding American democracy.

"That's what we mean when we say America is exceptional, not that our nation has been flawless from the start, but that we have shown the capacity to change."

But it is not just external threats such as these that pose a danger, he said--so does the temptation to shut out those with different outlooks. "For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or college campuses or places of worship or our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions," Obama said, connecting it to the advent of a media that is not only partisan but riddled with misstatements of fact--and a surfeit of maliciously false news. "We become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that's out there." [...]

[O]bama was not ready to let his own backers off the hook to slip into disconsolation. He called on them to engage with their fellow citizens, saying that while their faith would sometimes be disappointed, it would overall be affirmed. Early in his speech, he hailed the impending peaceful transfer of power to Trump, and scolded members of the crowd who booed or groaned.

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