Over the course of a week, I talk to a lot of people. I don’t run marathons anymore, but I do usually walk about five or six miles every day. Usually the length of Broadway and around the South End and back home in South Boston. Before the coronavirus pandemic, my wife, Kathy, and I would walk to St. Anthony’s Shrine in downtown Boston to attend Mass. We don’t have a car, so we either walk or take the T to get around. Obviously, we talk to a lot of different people every day.
With so many out of work right now, that certainly increases the number of people we engage with daily. Our discussions are always interesting and usually about something in the news, which keeps me on my toes. For years, I had somebody drive me to City Hall or the Vatican every morning, but obviously that is no longer the case. Being with Kathy and my grandson Braeden adds a lot of fun to the conversations. Certainly, much of our discussions the last few months have been about the pandemic and Washington politics. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say I probably hear what’s on the mind of the average person more now than in the 50 years I was in government and politics at the local, state and national level.
But I would like to share with you some thoughts I rarely read or hear in the national media, but are often reflected in the views of the many informed citizens that I talk to regularly on the streets of Boston.
It goes something like this, “Ray, we never hear about Democrats and Republicans in Washington working together on important issues like crime, the economy and they even go at each other over the most deadly health crisis in America in 100 years. The press is equally partisan. Liberals control one side of the discussion while conservatives dominate the other side. But what about mainstream Americans, who speaks or fights for them?”
It wasn’t always this way. This division and partisanship is not good for our country. Average working class patriotic American families are not part of the left or right wing fringe of our elite and wealthy controlling political system, so these mainstream nonpolitical opinions and concerns often get ignored.
This will only change when concerned American voters speak out and get involved in the civic life of their community once again. We are at a political crossroads in America. Rioting demonstrations in our cities must end. And it is wrong for our tax-exempt and government-run educational institutions to promote that point of view in our classrooms. Too many good people over the years have sacrificed, worked hard and fought and died to make America the great country it is.
When it comes to the coronavirus pandemic, we must stand up and speak out for the policies and principles that concerned American medical experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci have advocated. America needs unity during this health care crisis, not political rhetoric.
Ray Flynn is the former mayor of Boston and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
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August 02, 2020 at 04:40PM
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What America needs right now: Unity - Boston Herald
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