The first few days of the Trump Administration set traditional and new media buzzing about “fake news” and “alternate facts”, but as important as the issues of empirical truth and press freedom are, there are larger issues which have been largely overlooked yet again as the two sides carp at each other about whether or not it rained in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2017.
In his inaugural address, President Trump offered this vision of the contemporary United States:
Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation. An education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.
And the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.
Contrast this dystopian landscape with the human landscape evident the following day across the country in the women's marches: caring, courageous, diverse, empowered and hope-filled. Oh, yes, also self-deprecating and witty.
President Trump's speech, even when he veers dangerously close to statesman-like language, consistently assumes that our world in all its endeavors and aspects is a large, zero-sum game. If we gain, others lose. All those who marched--walked--walk in a world where everyone can win if all collaborate and cooperate.
As a US diplomat in training during the Cold War, I participated in a nuclear negotiation game in which the zero-sum philosophy repeatedly led to nuclear annihilation while the belief that there is always an outcome which benefits all players to some extent led to survival, i.e., winning the game for all. Although I see the world as a mixture of zero-sum and non-zero sum games, I much prefer to work toward a world that is a non-zero-sum game, one in which every human being—in Russia, China, Togo or here--has an opportunity to live and to live with dignity, as a winner (to use one of President Trump's terms).
To that end, I have been and will continue to work to build an America that turns from militarism, racism, sexism and injustice at home and abroad. Please stay with us if you already are doing the same, and if not, please join us in advocacy, service to the vulnerable, and speaking truth to the powerful.
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