As a hobby, I enjoy reading “The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century Speeches” and writing down some good speeches in my notebook.
Today I wrote down famous speeches of John. F. Kennedy ‘A New Frontier’ and ‘The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans’
The Kennedy era was the period of the “Cold War”.
I remember in my childhood that Americans seemed not to have been confident on their own power and the coming future at that time, and to have worried about lots of problems such as increasing immigrants, racial conflict and tough scientific competition against Soviet Union.
JFK told to the audience that ‘For I stand tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier. From the lands that stretch 3000 miles behind me, the pioneers of old gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build a new world here in the West’
Then he declared ‘But I tell you the New Frontier is here, whether we seek it or not’.
(Los Angeles 15 July 1960, when he was nominated as a Democratic candidate for the presidential election)
He also declared on the Inauguration Day in his speech of “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans” that ‘And so, on my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country’. (Washinton DC, 20 Jan. 1961)
Sixty years after his speeches, now America is fighting against China.
In other words, it looks that President Trump is attacking China as an enemy because he seems to determine that China is unfair of steeling advanced technologies from America and restore nothing to America and Western society.
I do not have firm confidence on what Trump and his fellows insist, but it seems to me that they are fighting against Globalism constructed on the fact that China is the factory of the world by utilizing its cheap manufacturing cost.
While people in the world are trying to control COVID-19, it becomes clearer for people in America how China is dominating world-wide supply chain and increasing its power in the world without fair competition.
And so, Trump Administration is probably trying to help Hongkong and Taiwan, and blaming WHO, especially to Director General Tedros who comes from Ethiopia which has been greatly supported by China.
However, different from President Kennedy who talked even to Soviet Union with clear but decent tone of speeches for collaboration instead of collision, President Trump merely takes an offensive action by not respectable selection of words, and does not talk any future dreams to Americans, I feel.
I like JFK more than Trump because JFK’s speeches were leading America and the world, but Trump’s speeches and twitters look only to be reflecting opinions and emotions of his supporters.
The presidential election in November would reveal what Americans really believe and what they want to do in the future, I suppose.