Tag Archives: compassion

national news

POTUS-elect speaks to us … and for us

(AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

President-elect Joe Biden did it again.

At a time when the nation reels from a bizarre act of violence in a major city, the man who is set to become president spoke words that should be coming from the individual who’s already in the office.

A suicide bomber detonated an explosive device in downtown Nashville, Tenn., on Christmas Day. Police found his remains inside the recreational vehicle he used to carry the bomb. It’s a miracle there were no fatalities in the blast.

Where was Donald J. Trump? Hmm. Playing golf in Florida, more than likely. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the frightening event in Nashville.

President-elect Biden did speak to us today about what transpired. He offered his congratulations and thanks to local and federal authorities for the quick work they did in identifying the bomber.

Joe Biden makes FIRST comments on Nashville bombing – YouTube

What strikes me yet again, though, is that we are hearing from the man who hasn’t yet taken the presidential oath while the man who has taken the oath remains squirreled away in his glitzy south Florida resort. The silence from Mar-a-Lago is deafening.

A sense of compassion and empathy from the president has been missing for the past four years. President Biden will restore it. He will speak to us when the moment compels him to do so and he will speak to us in terms to which we can relate.

The role of Consoler in Chief is not written into the presidential job description. But it’s there to be carried out when moments present themselves. Granted, we suffered no loss of innocent life in Nashville, but a president who feels a community’s pain should be able and willing to speak to a nation whose citizens are demanding answers.

Donald Trump, as we have seen time and again for the past four years, simply is not wired that way. Joe Biden clearly has the compassion gene that Trump never received.

A nation that has been deprived of that presidential compassion should welcome it when it arrives in the form of President Biden.

national news

We need compassion, empathy from Oval Office

I’ve given you a wish list of things I hope a President Joe Biden would do were he to take office next January … but I have one more item to add.

We have witnessed a president who is fully incapable of expressing genuine, sincere empathy and sadness over the plight of Americans and Lord knows we have endured plenty of tragedy during Donald Trump’s tenure in office.

The pandemic. Repeated gun violence. The deaths of African-Americans at the hands of rogue cops. Natural disasters, such as hurricanes and tornadoes.

Where in the name of humanity has the compassion gone from the office of president? Donald Trump is incapable of exhibiting it.

I want the next president – and I do hope it is Joseph R. Biden Jr. – to return empathy to the office. I want the next president to lead a nation that is suffering.

Joe Biden isn’t uniquely qualified to offer such compassion and empathy. I mean, many of us have experienced tragedy in our lives. Donald Trump, for heaven’s sake, lost a brother to alcohol abuse, so he, too, has suffered grievous loss. Trump, though, just isn’t wired to convey that grief into meaningful and authentic mourning on behalf of others.

Biden, though, has gone through hell. His first wife and daughter died in a tragic automobile accident in 1972; his two sons were seriously injured. Young Joe had just been elected to the U.S. Senate and he considered giving it up to care for his sons. He decided to stay in office. He endured loss and powered through it, raising his sons as a single dad … until he met the next love of his life, Jill, who – as Biden has said – “saved our life.”

Then his older son Beau became ill with cancer. He would die and then force the vice president to bury a second child. As has been said many times already, that is a parent’s worst nightmare.

I want a president who is able to convey that loss in a way that translates across the land. The nation is hurting. Illness is sickening and killing too many of us. I want a president who’s been tested by intense grief and has learned the lessons of how to cope, to survive and to seek restoration of his own human spirit.

A president of the United States can use that knowledge to lead a nation out of its collective grief.