After four years of chaos and division, an illness that even inflicted the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and politicians in other parties that sow division heard long-overdue healing words.
Without losing sight of the wars, CIA-inspired coups, and the human destruction brought on by the United States, it took a despot-inspired president like Donald Trump to give US’ exceptionalism a forceful blow.
The division and hatred sowed in the United States have long roots in the country’s history and are also present in Finland as our population becomes more diverse culturally and ethnically.
One party, the PS, has built its politics on sowing ethnic hatred, rage, violence, and bigotry on brown Finns and other people of color. Politicians in the National Coalition Party, Christian Democrats, and others have flirted with such toxic ideas.
President Joe Biden is correct in stating that we must not stand idle or be silent. “Uniting to fight the foes we face: anger, resentment, hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, and hopelessness. With unity, we can do great things, important things,” he said in his inaugural speech.
Are the same foes that Biden cites the same ones sowing discord in Finland?
I believe so.
A politician who spreads racism lives in constant conflict. How can he or she accept that some people have all the rights and others only on paper?
Twenty-two-year-old Amanda Gorman, the youngest inaugural poet ever, offered us today in Finland and the EU some sobering thoughts in her poem, The Hill We, Climb:”
“And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.”
