President Obama contrasted the 5 wealthy people who died in the Titan submersible with the 700 migrants who died in the Mediterranean.
OBAMA: Right now, we have 24-hour coverage. And I understand it, of this submarine, the submersible that tragically is right now lost at the bottom of the sea. At the same time, right here, just off the coast of Greece, we had 700 people dead – 700 migrants who were apparently being smuggled into here,” Barack Obama.
And it’s made news, but it’s not dominating in the same way. And in some ways, it’s indicative of the degree to which people’s life chances have grown so disparate.
It’s very hard to sustain a democracy when you have such massive concentrations of wealth.
And so, part of my argument has been that unless we attend to that, unless we make people feel more economically secure and we’re taking more seriously the need to create ladders of opportunity and a stronger safety net that’s adapted to these new technologies and the displacements that are taking place around the world – if we don’t take care of that, that’s also going to fuel the kind of mostly far-right populism, but it can also potentially come from the left, that is undermining democracy, because it makes people angry and resentful and scared.
Here is just 5 minutes part of the interview which lasted half an hour in direct talk. But you can’t get it anywhere online.
In real life here are the two tragedies that Barack Obama says the world right now is not capable of dealing with as grave human issues to be handled with an equal sense of loss and be fixed for the better for everybody in future.
Here are the 700 immigrants sinking to their deaths in the Greek waters towards landing.
And here is the Titan’s very tragic Submersible leading to the disappearance and death of five people.
Then Obama says what Obama says. It is up to us folks around the world to figure out where we are at with that and the other things he talked about in that interview.
Do we really as human beings value all human lives equally? We have been lying about that to ourselves for thousands of years of our entire existence on this earth and in all “civilizations” and even religions humans have endured and gone through.
Maybe we are missing something about ourselves? What could that be? Our very humanity? Don’t scare me now. Please.
