Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I'm so eager to speak with you tonight and so grateful that you came.
I want to start out by telling you a little something about my childhood. My parents were married over 50 years. They loved each other. They were a good marriage. But I think, and looking back today, we might have thought of them as a bit of an odd couple. My mother came not from a wealthy family, but from a well-to-do family. She grew up among certain, you know, they, they had nicer things, not wealthy-wealthy, but they had nicer things. My father grew up in deep poverty, deep poverty. And had a hard life. And he then was educated, given scholarships, he went into the Army. He up my mother, and he became a successful immigration lawyer.
Now growing up with both of those parents, because of my mother, because of the life that my father's profession afforded us, I grew up with a familiarity with a nice life. But my father would always be like this. We go somewhere, we'd be at some dinner or some family situation with my mother's family, etc. My father would say, “Kids, come here. Let me tell you what's really going on here.” And that's why my father always was -- my father was even someone when the teacher told me in the seventh grade, I came home and told my family told my parents that the teacher had said, my social studies teacher said that “We have to fight in Vietnam, because if we don't fight in Vietnam, we will be fighting on the shores of Hawaii. It was called the domino theory.” I said, my father stood up, he said, “sweetheart,” to my mother, “get the visas, we're going to Vietnam.”
Because in his words, the military industrial complex would not eat my kids’ brains. And so he took us to Saigon to show us what war was. My father, never let us forget to really see, he would always say, don't just look, really see, I remember once when we were young, my parents were world travelers and they took us many places. And I remember when we were in Hungary before -- when Hungary was still behind the Iron Curtain -- and when we were preparing to leave -- the young man -- I was a child, but the young man who had been our guard our guide, as we were leaving, I saw my father very surreptitiously put his business card in the young man's hand, and I heard him whisper, “You make it out of here. I'll take -- I'll take care of you the rest of the way.” And I saw the look in that young man’s eyes. So I was young, I was seeing this as a child, but I understood -- I understood in that moment. I understood what those tears in that man's eyes meant the gratitude he felt for my father. And I knew in that moment what it meant for him the very idea of getting out and getting to America.
So I was always brought up to see what was going on in some deeper way beyond the surface of things. Then I was very much a child of the 60s very much a child, the 60s and the 70s, when we would read Ram Dass and Alan Watts in the morning, and go to anti-war protests in the afternoon.
So at that time, in the 60s and the 70s, the idea of both spiritual and cultural and sexual and musical, all of that stuff, change was happening at the same time. You know, the 60s, Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, the anti-war protest, so that was always for me, a very easy combination. It's my comfort zone. It is where I've always lived. My father would say you gotta go out there, you gotta fight the bastards, gotta fight the systems, you gotta bring justice. This was the way I was brought up. But I came to believe that the ultimate revolution was love. I came to believe that the ultimate revolution was the spiritual check. My father saw that. And certainly I had to live my life in ways where my entire career, my entire life's work has been around the changes that we make inside ourselves.
But certainly with Project Angel Food, AIDS activism, etc. There was never a sense that we were ignoring other things that were happening. And then something began to change. And I heard a story that a Protestant theologian wrote -- and it was about the Good Samaritan -- and for me, it's like the transition from the Good Samaritan to the Conscious Samaritan -- The story of the Good Samaritan is a Good Samaritans walking down the road and sees a beggar and gives the beggar alms. So then that story goes that the Good Samaritan can see the beggar gives the beggar alms, then continues down the road, sees another beggar, and gives the next beggar some alms. And then the Good Samaritan continues down the road and sees another beggar and gives that beggar some alms. And then it continues down the road and about the fifth or the sixth time it occurs to him. Why are there so many beggars? That's when the Good Samaritan becomes a Conscious Samaritan. It's like when you look on television shows these days. And you see these stories about some young person who escaped poverty. She used to live in a car, she used to live in a homeless shelter, and now she's going to an Ivy League school. Or you read another story about some young person who lived in the most dire circumstances, but they escaped. They escaped poverty. And now they're living a wonderful life. We are American and we need to ask ourselves, why are there so many millions of children in America who have to escape? What is going on in America, that it's so difficult for so many millions of children. And I having been trained by my father, and having been trained as a metaphysician, I used to say to people during the AIDS crisis, the physician knows about your disease. The metaphysician knows about that, which boosts your immune system.
And so I began to see something change in this country back in the 80s -- it started in the 80s, I started writing about it in the 90s -- That made me feel like as much change as we could make in our own internal selves. At a certain point, one of the internal changes that you make within yourself is that you will not be silent, you will not be quiet, you will not be non-active, you will not be passive when you see the very things in the entire society that make a mockery of love.
Back in the 1980s, something began to change in this country. There was a man named Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys, out of out of Chicago School of -- University of Chicago, I think. And it was this economic theory and it began to have devastating effects in our country. Because when I was growing up, you see, it was understood that a corporation had more than just fiduciary financial responsibility to its stockholders, it was understood that a corporation also had a moral and ethical responsibility to its workers and to the community and to the environment. But something began to change. When the entire society began to be propagandized about this trickle-down economics. And the idea you see was that all a corporation should have to do is to answer to the fiduciary interests of its stockholders. Now, the idea of there being more stakeholders and just the stockholders means a lot of people have a stake in this. The environment has a stake in it, the community has a stake in it, the workers have a stake in it. But no, we were all told, as long as market forces -- unfettered market forces -- as long as market forces untethered to any kind of ethical consideration, as long as short term profit maximization for these huge multinational corporations take precedence, that will be good you see because then they'll get richer, and then the money will trickle down to everyone else.
This has been going on since the 1980s. And it has created something devastating in our society. A person who has no remorse, a person who has no conscience, a person who has no ethics, a person who has no compassion is a sociopath. And an economic order which does not have a conscience, which does not have ethics, which does not have compassion, and which justifies its amorality by saying, “well, all that our responsibility is to accrue money for this small group of people who are our stockholders,” That is a sociopathic economic system. And that sociopathic -- that sociopathic economic system has become an economic tyranny in the United States of America.
We are now living at a time where huge corporate conglomerates whether it's oil companies, fossil fuel companies, chemical companies, agribusiness, big pharma, health insurance companies, military-industrial complex, our government has become a system of legalized bribery. Especially since the Citizens United case where the nefarious influence of money is so great that our government now acts mainly as a handmaiden to these corporate forces. Our own government does more to advocate for the short term profit maximization of the huge corporate conglomerates. Than it does to advocate for the people of the United States to even care about the people of the world, or the planet on which we live. This is perilous, this is dangerous. It is perilous to our democracy and possibly, if we are not careful, it will be perilous to the survivability of the human race. This is not democracy. As Louis Brandeis -- late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, “You can have large amounts of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or you can have democracy. You cannot have both.”
Our country, our country was founded on the idea that all men are created equal. Our country was founded on the idea that God gave inalienable rights to life and to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness to all men, and the governments are instituted among men to secure those rights. And Lincoln came along later and said that this has to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. But those principles have to be more than just inscribed on marble walls, they have to be more than just written on parchment, they have to live inside our hearts, or they have no moral force. What has happened in this country is that huge forces who don't really wish us ill, they just find democracy inconvenient to their financial purposes. They have now instigated passive and active assaults on our democracy, there has been a massive theft from the Public Treasury. Money that has been systematically removed into the hands of a very few into the hands of that 1 percent of 1 percent. While this country does not have universal health care, while we do not have a $15 an hour minimum wage, while there are millions and millions and millions of people living in chronic economic despair. Millions of Americans who are going home, “What am I going to do if I get sick? What am I going to do one of my kids get sick? What am I going to do? How am I gonna pay for my kids go to college? How am I going to pay for these college loans?” I have seen this despair. I have seen it growing. I travel around this country. That is what I do. And I've seen it over and over and over. And I'll tell you something, a lot of people were so surprised by the election of Donald Trump. I was shocked. But I was not surprised. And any political establishment on left or right, that was gobsmacked by Donald Trump was only because they weren't looking at what's most important, because they should have seen. They should have seen all that economic despair, they should have realized it was there. And so much of that economic despair was there that there was going to be a cry of populace despair. It was going to be an authoritarian populism or it was going to be a progressive populism, but it was going to come up from the bottom of things.
Now in this country, we have a history. We have a history of pushing back against tyranny. We have a history of pushing back. We had slavery in this country. But then we had the abolitionist movement. We had the suppression of women in this country. But then we had two waves of feminism. And we had the birth of the suffragette movement. We had institutionalized white supremacy and segregation. But then we had the civil rights movement. We had child labor laws, and we had antitrust laws. And we had unions. What is it with this generation, it is time for us to rise up, it is time for us to rise up the way other generations have risen up. They have risen up in their time, sometimes people so cynical these days, as if other generations owed us something. Cynicism is just an excuse for not helping and whining is not an option. And getting well-traumatized about how bad things are -- we are not porcelain dolls, we need to identify the problems in this country, but we need to identify with the problem solvers.
Now what I have seen, what I have seen in my career, is what happens when people fall down. People don't usually come to me because things are going well. By the time somebody ends up on my couch, talking to me about what's going on in their life, it's after they've already talked to all the people who could fix it on the outside. And they are ready. They've gotten to a point in their life, when they are ready to transform things from the inside out.
And all that a country is, is a group of people. So the same psychological and emotional, and moral and spiritual principles that prevail within the journey of an individual, prevail within the journey of a nation. Each and every one of us have to remember that if something's going wrong in our lives, we have to look to ourselves for what part we played in all this. Everything that we're talking about here tonight, in terms of the problems of America, are like opportunistic infections, they could not have happened, had we had a stronger immune system. Each and every one of us is an immune system. You can't complain that the thieves of democracy are at the door when we left the windows open, and we left the doors open. Too many of us were too cool to care, too many of us thought well, I'm just not really political, too many of us actually use a -- an ersatz version of spirituality, to justify political disengagement. Too many of us felt “Well, other people will be political, and other people will take care of it.” Let me tell you, they've taken care of it plenty, they've taken care of it to the point where millions of American children go to schools that do not even have -- meet minimum safety requirements. There are -- there are millions of American children who go to school in classrooms where there are not adequate school supplies, to enable the teacher to reasonably be expected to teach that child to read. And if that child cannot read by the age of eight, the chances of high school graduation are drastically decreased. If that child cannot learn to read by the age of eight, the chances of incarceration are drastically increased. But because those children do not work, they are not there. They have no economic leverage in Washington, they're not old enough to vote. So they're not a constituency. So how can they possibly compete with the clout of corporate lobbyists that are flooding our Congress and our White House every single day?
I'll tell you what that is. This is a moral problem. This is a spiritual problem. This is collective child neglect. These millions of American children who have no chance, we have simply normalized their despair. These millions of American children are living in situations that should be considered a national emergency, they should be considered a humanitarian crisis. Who's going to speak for these children, if not us? We live at a time where we're not planning on long term economic vibrancy. If we were planning on long term economic gain, we wouldn't be just giving all of the money to a small group of people who essentially are leaching from the system. Do you want to take care of your economy 20 years from now you take care of your 10-year-olds today. You want to see this country be amazing 10 years from now, 15 years from now, 20 years from now, you do a massive real life amount of investment in the direction of young people, particularly those eight years old and younger.
Neurologists tell us that everything happens in the first eight years. The capacity of a child under the age of eight, to actually learn things and retain information is so beyond -- You want to see entrepreneurial spirit? You want to see the generators of the economy, you want to see America going for it becoming something that all of us can be living lives where we saw in our happy, I'll tell you where you look, you look in any kindergarten, you help those kindergarteners and I'll tell you where you look, I'll tell you what our Economic Council should be filled with. Our Economic Council shouldn't necessarily be filled with what we think of as sophisticated economists, our Economic Council should be filled with elementary school teachers. And so all you've got in your political establishment is people who are coming around and saying that there will be a better version of the old. Politics in America today is stuck in a 1995 model. It is stuck in 20th century thinking, we need a moral and spiritual regeneration in this country. We need to realize that if we do not address a spiritual rot, that is spiritual rot, that is underneath the fact that we are willing to not help these children. That is a moral and a spiritual rot that has led to political corruption that has led to an unmitigated disaster and human devastation. Our democracy has stage four cancer and all that the traditional politicians are offering is a topical ointment.
If all you're going to do -- you know back when the AIDS crisis came about -- before the AIDS crisis, we understood that we had to change our entire model of thinking about medicine. Because before then, it was all allopathic. You didn't take care of your body necessarily. You didn't take care of your nutrition, you didn't take care of exercise, you didn't take care of your lifestyle. And then when sickness pretty much inevitably arose, you just hoped that a doctor could suppress or eradicate the symptoms. That entire paradigm has changed. We've expanded, we understand now you have to cultivate health. sickness is the absence of health. Health isn't the absence of sickness. We need that same kind of integrative model when it comes to political situations, including war and peace. We spend so much money preparing for war Donald Rumsfeld even said we need to learn to wage peace. James Madison said if you're not going to fund the State Department, I'm going to have to buy more ammunition. In other words, we have to see peacebuilding -- peacebuilding as equal partner in preparedness for war. If we want to have anything like peace on this earth 50 years from now, or 100 years from now. Our model -- and that includes in our domestic war zones -- because those children that I was talking about, neurologists and psychologists say that the PTSD that they suffer is no less severe than the PTSD that is suffered by returning veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan. Although returning veterans from Iraq or Afghanistan, we call it post-traumatic stress because they are no longer in the war zone. These children, these millions of American children, take the word post out, because this -- this, this trauma, this chronic trauma that they experience is triggered every day and re-triggered every day, these children are in our midst, and this thing is going to blow. Not only do we not take care of really planning for an economic future by helping America's children, but we do not plan for peace on this earth. Peace has to do with proactive peace-building measures. If you want peace on this earth, the factors that the most important have to do with expanded economic opportunities for women and expanded educational opportunities for children and ameliorating unnecessary human suffering.
We should see large groups of desperate people as a national security risk, because desperate people do desperate things, and people living in desperate situations -- people living in desperate situations are more vulnerable to prey, they are more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces, whether those psychotic forces are gangs here, or terrorist groups somewhere else. This kind of thinking, this kind of integrative thinking, where we realized that we have to address the moral issues, the moral issue involved in acquiescing to a sociopathic economic system. If you want to deal with a systemic injustice at the core of our economic system, you don’t just need somebody who goes to Washington, who knows how Washington works. And you need somebody -- and you need somebody, maybe a mother, I think we need a mother in the White House. You can take that however you want to. We need somebody who's gonna say “no, we're not going to abandon those children. No, we're going to not neglect those children.” And we need more. Yes of course, we need -- we need -- we need free preschool. Of course, we need free college. Of course, we need to cancel extend these college loans. We need to do all of those external things that any good progressive Democrat wants, or any good progressive wants. But we need to go lower because of all you do, for instance of all you do is defeat this president, this president -- there are so many lined up behind him. The political establishment thinks it’s so sophisticated, it is so naive. There are so many lined up behind that one. If all we do is defeat that one, there's another one in 22. There's another one in 24, we need a new burst of freedom. We need a whole uprising of consciousness among the American people, who know that we're not going to acquiesce to a to an economic system, which puts short-term profit maximization for these corporations before advocacy for people and planet. Why? Because it's wrong. It's not democratic. It's not a human value. And we're not going to take the fact that children millions of American children are trapped in these situations. So many American children living in chronic trauma. No, no, no, we're not going to stand for that. Why? Because it's wrong. And we're going to address the fact -- we're going to recognize it for a nation just like an individual.
If you have a debt to pay. If you haven't cleaned up a past relationship, then you need to address it. And when it comes to race in America, I do not believe that the average American is a racist. But I do believe that the average American is woefully ignorant, undereducated about race in America. At the end of the Civil War, Tecumseh Sherman promised 40 acres and a mule to every former slave. With that 40 acres and a mule, those former slaves would have had a chance to be integrated into the economy as free people, most of them were not given it. Even those who were given it. It was then taken away.
Black Code laws were passed in the American South, which made sure that former slave populations would live in subpar economic and political and social circumstances. The lynchings, the Klu Klux Klan, the John Birch society. By the end of that century, white supremacy with institutionalized in the American South. Segregation was institutionalized. This lasted from the end of the Civil War in 1865, all the way until the 1960s, and Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. And yes, progress has been made. I don't want to minimize the sacrifice, the struggles or the progress of any of our ancestors. Much was -- much progress occurred with the Civil Rights Act with the Voting Rights Act. But we need to be aware that it's time to take the next step and to realize that in many ways when it comes to race in America, we're sliding back. When it comes to race in America, in 2013, this Supreme Court actually began chipping away at the Voting Rights Act, which is why all these voter suppression efforts are among us today.
Since WWII, Germany has paid $89 billion in reparations to Jewish organizations, they can't make the Holocaust not have happened. But those reparations have been an important part of reconciliation between Germany and the Jews of Germany and the rest of Europe. In 1988, Ronald Reagan signed the American Liberties -- Civil Liberties act, where every person who was surviving who had been interned in the Japanese internment camps during WWII, were given $22,000. We need more in our generation than small random acts of kindness. We need huge strategized acts of doing the right thing, there is still a debt to be paid, we need to pay reparations for slavery. We could pay 100 billion dollars to accounts of esteemed black leaders. $10 billion for 10 years to be dispersed as they see fit, to economic and educational projects, which will enable them as they see fit, to cause the kind of economic renewal that is a debt still to be paid.
If you look at the fact that WWII was over in 1945. And you look at young Germans today, young Germans today, you can feel it. A lot of the toxic, the toxic karma, it as though it's began to be flushed out. The Civil War was over in 1865. And we're still carrying this. And we're still taking this burden that this karma this toxicity generation to generation, other generations before us have done big things. Other generations have abolished slavery, other generations have given women's suffrage. Other generations have dismantled segregation and white supremacy in the American South.
Let us not forget, we are not the first generation who has had to push back against assault on our democratic values, push back against unfettered an ethical capitalism, and has had to push back against deep human values. Let's just not be the first generation to wimp out and not do the job. And it goes without saying, That's why I'm running for President. I got more to say. I want to talk, I want to talk, I want to talk. Let me talk. This is the deal. This is the deal. This is very serious business. And everything that I have said tonight might be exciting to you. But they are very, very strong forces whose attitude towards that is “Oh no, we're not going to be doing that.” This is not something where we can just get excited one night. You know, this is not the old paradigm leadership, which is what the traditional political establishment is. Politics has become a spectator sport. And if we elect that person, they'll go to Washington and make it happen. No, no, no, no. This stuff can't be fought. This stuff is too powerful. It has to be overridden. This is not something that one person can go and make happen. This is something that has to be an uprising, a new era of love for democracy. In the Jewish religion, it says every generation must discover God for itself. Every generation has to fall in love with democracy for itself. This is not something that any one person can go to Washington and just make happen. New Paradigm leadership is not about saying “I'll do it. Send me to Washington,” New paradigm leadership is where the leader is holding the space for the brilliance of others.
And that is what I have done throughout my entire career. It has never been about me, it's about empowering you. It's about empowering all of us. If you really want to see this happen, if you really want there to be a presidential campaign that could lead in a competitive, be competitive to actually become a campaign that leads to a presidency in which the consciousness of the person sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office is someone who looks at things the way I have described, that we will be building democracy, that we will be helping people thrive. That's what the promise of democracy is.
Before this country was founded. Western Europe -- all of Europe lived under an aristocratic and a monarchical system in which it was deemed that God had given all the power to the king, to the queen, to the aristocracy. And they were the only ones who were deemed entitled to the land. They were the only ones who were deemed entitled to education, they were the only ones who were deemed entitled to wealth creation, everybody else basically served them. What has happened is that we have reverted to an aristocratic paradigm.
You can call it a corporatocracy, an oligarchy. But just as there were aristocrats at that time, who said that these little upstart colonists, were not going to be able to do things the way they wanted to. They have always been -- even FDR called them -- the economic royalists. I don't want to do this to waste my time. And I don't want to do this to waste your time. If we are going to do this, it is going to be a great adventure. It is going to be a grand and magnificent effort. But it can't be something that is just a sprint. It is a marathon. And I'm asking you to join with me. I'm asking you to join with me not just to elect me president, something bigger than that has got to happen, then just electing anyone president, I'm asking you to join with me. I'm asking you to look on my website, Marianne2020.com. Go online tonight. And I want you and I want you to study the issues. And I want you to read and I want you to form book clubs. And I want you to learn about American history. And I want you to learn about Jefferson, and I want you to learn about Martin Luther King, I want you to learn about the civil rights movement. I want you to learn about race in America, I want you to learn about the history of our -- of our country, I want you to become no longer people who, as Martin Luther King said, “Your life begins to end when you stop talking about things that matter.” I'm asking you to join with me for a year of talking about things that matter.
Let's talk about what it means to wage peace, and not just prepare for war. Let's talk about what it would mean to have a massive realignment of investment in the direction of America's children. Let's talk about what it would mean to actually wage economic and racial justice in this country. Let's talk about what it would actually mean to end mass incarceration. Let's talk about what it would actually mean to fight climate change. And let's take responsibility for the fact that none of that stuff's going to happen unless all of us rise up. All of us become the immune cells in this society and say that which is happening stops now.
You know, everybody in the higher conscious community knows what boundaries are. Well, sometimes, you know, you just have to say no, and you have a boundary. That's what we need to have right now. When it comes to certain forces in this country, and how they're behaving economically and criminally in every other way. It's just time for us to say, “Boundary. That stops. Right now.”
Everybody was applauding. I appreciate your applause. But I need your 20 bucks. To do this, we need money. You know, there was a Indian guru who once said he needed a lot of money for his ashram or something. And his disciples said, “Where's the money going come from?” And he said, “Oh, I dunno, wherever it is now.” We need millions and millions and millions of dollars. I'd like 2 million tonight, please.
If everybody -- if everybody who hearkens to this message -- who everybody, if everybody who feels that the traditional political paradigm is stuck in a 20th-century mechanistic model, you know I’m not running against anyone I'm running with everyone. And apparently 1736 people will be running for the Democratic nomination. I think that will be healthy for democracy. And I think it will be healthy for the Democratic Party. But I have to tell you something, ladies and gentlemen, the 20th-century political mindset got us into this ditch, the 20th-century political mindset is not going to get us out of this ditch. We need an integrated model. We need a model where the consciousness is such that we recognize that if you are not addressing issues of human despair, and if you are not addressing the the the character defects of your whole nation, if you are not addressing ways in which we have to change, then no matter what changes on the outside -- you can have low unemployment. But what does that matter? We talked about that the GDP being the -- waging the measure of our happiness. Really, meanwhile, we have the opioid addiction. So we have the chronic despair, we have the depression, we have the high suicide rates, we need to look beneath the waterline, If we're going to do that -- if we are going to have a campaign. And if we're going to have a campaign that is competitive, so that we could have a presidency that actually is aligned with the higher angels of our nature, where one person has harnessed fear for political purposes, we need to harness love for political purposes.
But that means it's on us. So that means that I need you to do more. And as much as I appreciate your applause, I need you to work with me, I need you to get down with me. I need you to really this year be everything that we need to be. I need you to learn more, I need you to be more involved, I need you to be more educated, I need you to think about this as something bigger than just electing me. It's so much bigger than electing one person. It's about an uprising of the American spirit. It's about the uprising of the Democratic spirit. That is what needs to happen now.
And so when you say support it, I need you to help me in every way. Mahatma Gandhi said that the Indian independence movement, the leader of the Indian independence movement was the small still voice within. And that's what's going to be the leader of this campaign too.
I want to look inside your own heart and want you to look at Marianne 2020, if you think it should exist, I want you to volunteer, I want you to be part of it. And I want you, yes, to give money to support it. Because if we don't have the money, there's no way that we can be competitive. But if you do, and I'm not asking you to exit your comfort zone either. But I am asking that you make contribution on a monetary level, part of how you show your support. For some of you, it's $10. And I'm so grateful for that 10, for that 15, for that 20, for that 50, for that hundred, I'm grateful to you to all of you have gone beyond that, for all of you who have given the $2700 maximum donation, I'm not asking you to do anything that doesn't feel right to you. But I am telling you that if we want this to happen, this is very serious business, the establishment isn't going to accept it, the establishment isn't going to want it. But you know what? The establishment are not supposed to be the gatekeepers. A political establishment is not supposed to be our political gatekeeper. And the media establishment is not supposed to be our gatekeeper. In a democracy, the people, we, the people are the ones that decide who is going to run and we're going to decide who's gonna win. Many of you know me -- many of you have known me for my entire career, 35 years. Despite whatever mistakes I've made in my life, whatever failures I've had, as well as successes, you know me enough to know that I'm a serious woman. And I've had a serious career. And I do my best. And when I fall, I get up. And people have been very good to me. You know who I am. And when I tell you, we're going to do something, I'm telling you, we're going to do something.
Many, many years ago, I went through a very tragic situation in my life. My parents came to see me, and I was lying in bed in my room. And my mother rushed over to me. And she started holding me and brushing my hair, and she got me tea, and she just held me and she was doing all those very motherly things. And my father then walked into the room. And at first, I saw the deep compassion on his face. And I saw that he loved me and I saw that he cared. Then I saw his face change. And this is what he said, “Get out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, and you get out there, you will not be felled by this.”
And so to you, I want you to know, our country's in trouble.Our democracy is under assault. We are in a situation which is as perilous as has been, any situation, any circumstance in American history. As Abraham Lincoln said, as our cases new we must think anew and act anew, he said, we would nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of Earth. Ladies and gentlemen, it's our time and I'm telling you this, we will not be felled by this.
To the women, I would like to say one thing: we know it's our time. But when they look back at as 100 years from now, I want them to more than say, Wow, they did it. Let them say we did it well. And to our entire generation, we have partied. And at a certain point, when you stay at the party too long, it becomes pathetic. You've heard me say before, we've had a crisis of adulthood in our society, too many men have acted like boys and too many women have acted like girls. This is a great maturation process. I think that if you would look at the panoply of history and the generations of Americans before us, you kind of wouldn't look at us and expect great things. But those who might not have expected great things, let us prove them wrong. Let us make history. Let us more than make history. Let us make this a more beautiful world. I'm ready for this. Ladies and gentlemen, please join with me. Let's lay this down. Thank you very, very much.