NNadir
NNadir's JournalDon the Con with his Friends the Falwells.
Jerry Falwell Blames His Fall From Grace On His Wife.
I certainly would not wish to be a fly on the wall in a room with these sybaritic heathens.
Shelia's Party, there's a case in point; the right wing hooey sure stunk up the joint.
In honor of the national hate festival for corrupt stupid people.
Phosphate Immobilization in Wastewater Using MgO-Modified Industrial Hemp-Stem-Driven Biochar.
The paper I'll discuss in this post is this one: Strong Immobilization of Phosphate in Wastewater onto the Surface of MgO-Modified Industrial Hemp-Stem-Driven Biochar by Flowerlike Crystallization
One almost cannot be a member of my generation without having a generalized knowledge of the effects of marijuana use, which I oppose. Before everyone jumps down my throat - this happens quite a bit - this does not mean that I support criminal sanctions against marijuana, but I oppose its use, and to be frank, its open sale in the equivalent of liquor stores.
Over the years, of course, I've heard all kinds of arguments about why marijuana is good for this or that, some arguments being quite tortured frankly, but one hears them anyway. I generally don't buy them; and I've generally been dismissive of all of them.
One of the more tortured arguments I've heard - thankfully far less so recently - since I spend a lot of time thinking about climate change, is that hemp is the key to removing carbon dioxide from the air, more hemp, less climate change.
Sigh...
The world's "bad boy and bad girl" fascination with marijuana of course, has indeed, despite my distaste for the subject, resulted in some very good science however. Notably, this is true of the elucidation of the cannabanoid receptor system, which has implications far beyond their psychological effects.
For a nice brief discussion of areas of interest in this receptor system, there is in a paper about a privileged structure acting upon it, an introduction giving an overview. It's this paper: Polycyclic Maleimide-based Scaffold as New Privileged Structure for Navigating the Cannabinoid System Opportunities (Alessandra Bisi*Alessandra Bisi , Alì Mokhtar Mahmoud, Marco Allará, Marina Naldi, Federica Belluti, Silvia Gobbi, Alessia Ligresti*, and Angela Rampa* ACS Med. Chem. Lett. 2019, 10, 4, 596–600) The introduction discussing the cannabanoid systems "opportunities" is this:
However, the presence of CB2-positive cells in the brain during injury and in inflammatory neurodegenerative disorders might provide a novel strategy for cannabinoid-mediated intervention against stroke-induced neurodegeneration, without the unwanted psychoactive effects related to CB1R stimulation.(7) CB2Rs are also detected in glial cells, and in particular, they are overexpressed in A? plaque-associated microglia, suggesting a crucial role in Alzheimer’s disease (AD).(8) Indeed, several studies have shown that A?-mediated activation of microglia induces the production of various proinflammatory mediators that cause neuronal dysfunction and cell death, suggesting its involvement in AD.(9)...
God bless the memory of Jerry Garcia, I guess...
The paper under discussion here - NNadir should be made to eat his words as often as is possible according to some people (to whom, regrettably, I can't listen owing to the expansion of my wonderful "ignore list" here - is about how hemp can participate in addressing a problem that really, really, really troubles me, the implications of the phosphorous cycle, a cycle which is decidedly not closed, but will need to be so in a sustainable world. It's a very serious matter.
Biological,(3) chemical,(4) ion exchange, and adsorption(5) treatment methods have commonly been used for phosphate removal. Biological processes, including activated sludge(6) and biofilm(7) techniques, are widely adopted in many countries. However, due to the sensitivity of microorganisms to water qualities,(8) including temperature and pH, this method shows limited phosphate adsorption efficiency within ?30%. Chemical precipitation and flocculation(9) are common physical–chemical processes, which have an outstanding capacity for phosphorus removal. However, large amounts of chemical sludge and byproducts have also been produced simultaneously. The ion-exchange method applies a strong anion-exchange effect to the selective removal of phosphate, but resin is often easy to poison.(10) Compared with these methods, adsorption has been considered a promising technique, because it provides higher treatment efficiency and a faster removal rate.(11) The common adsorbents, such as biomass,(12) zeolite,(13) hydrotalcite,(14) hydrogel,(15) and montmorillonite,(16) have been used in experiments. Nowadays, biochar is an eco-friendly potential adsorbent due to various beneficial properties, low cost, abundance, lower pollution, and the possibility of regeneration.(17)
Biochar is a carbon-rich solid formed by pyrolysis of biomass wastes at relatively low temperatures under limited oxygen. A large specific surface area, abundant pore structure, and considerable functional groups are the basis of biochar as a potential adsorbent for pollutant remediation. Unfortunately, the surface of biochar with permanent electronegativity has limited phosphate adsorption capacity, so it is of great significance to modify the biochar for enhancing its adsorption efficiency. Recently, various modification methods have been investigated, such as cationic surfactant modification, metal ion surface modification (magnesium,(18) aluminum,(19) calcium,(20) and so on), and rare-earth metal modification (lanthanum,(21) zirconium(22)). However, compared with those of the other two modification methods, metal ion surface modification has a stronger adsorption ability and larger adsorption capacity. Yao et al. obtained MgO nanoparticles derived from anaerobically digested sugar beet tailings, which showed that the maximum adsorption capacity was 133 mg/g.(23) Ming Zhang et al. used porous MgO/biochar nanocomposites to remove phosphate and used Langmuir adsorption capacities as high as 835 mg/g for phosphate...(24)
...However, the phosphate is easily separated from the adsorbent surface due to the unstable structure after adsorption. Therefore, it will be of great importance for the stable immobilization of PO43– in wastewater.
In this work, the Mg
PO4)y·zH2O crystallization effect has been used for stably anchoring the adsorbed P onto the biochar surface, which has been paid little attention, as before. Specifically, the biochar was driven from an industrial hemp plant waste by pyrolysis at relatively mild conditions...The following cartoon shows how the authors make their MgO impregnated hemp stem biochar:
The caption:
Different conditions utilized and the effect on phosphate uptake efficiency are shown in the following table:
The MgO impregnated biochar was characterized by TEM (transmission electron microscopy), XRD(X-Ray Diffraction) , IR (Infrared Spcectroscopy, BET (the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method for surface area using N2 gas), and SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy.)
XRD and IR of two samples:
The caption:
The effect of pH on absorption:
The caption:
Figure 3. (a) Effect of initial pH on the removal of phosphate (C0 = 300 mg/L, at dosage = 1 g L–1, time = 12 h). (b) Equilibrium pH after adsorption of phosphate.
Adsorption science is generally viewed, in a number of applications, by certain kinds of plots, one of which, that Langmuir parameter having earned Irving Langmuir the Nobel Prize. These plots are called "isotherms":
The caption:
Kinetics:
The caption:
Some images:
The caption:
The caption:
Changes after adsorption of phosphate:
The caption:
A cartoon about how the process works.
Some remarks from the conclusion:
PO4)y·zH2O crystal. The maximum phosphate adsorption capacity was 233 mg/g with the Langmuir model at 25 °C, which outperformed many other adsorbents. Phosphate adsorption was feasible and spontaneous through the study of thermodynamics and kinetics. MgO/biochar had a good reusability, and there was still a 90 mg/g absorption capacity after five cycles. Phosphate removal was mainly controlled by electrostatic adsorption, crystallization, and the inner-sphere surface complex. In conclusion, MgO/biochar was a promising adsorbent for phosphate removal, with a high adsorption capacity and the cost of hemp, as an agricultural waste, being low.OK, OK, OK...After many decades of hearing about the wonders of pot/hemp/weed/whatever, this potentially represents an important use for the stuff.
I still don't recommend smoking the stuff. It's not good for you.
Biochars, by the way, represent sequestered carbon, perhaps trivial in this application, but it is carbon removed from air.
I trust you're having a safe and enjoyable Sunday afternoon.
A nice little table of the technologies utilizing the lanthanide elements.
I am not going to fully cover the paper from which this graphic comes, because it is on the subject of recovering elements from flowback water from the "fracking" industry in China.
The paper is this one: Rare Earth Elements Occurrence and Economical Recovery Strategy from Shale Gas Wastewater in the Sichuan Basin, China (Liu et al., ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. 2020, 8, 32, 11914–11920)
As I have made clear, many times, I oppose all dangerous fossil fuels, the mining of all dangerous fossil fuels, and frankly, any technology which attempts to claim to mitigate the tragedy, because all of these attempts have and will prove trivial as compared to dangerous fossil fuels.
One of the huge waste profiles of dangerous natural gas - which many people who believe that so called "renewable energy" ignore based on their toxic fantasy that dangerous natural gas is "transitional" - is flow back water, the chemical and mineral laced water that is used to hydraulically shatter rocks permanently in the earth's crust so our generation can work to get the last molecule of methane burned and its waste, carbon dioxide, dumped into the planetary atmosphere, this at the expense of all future generations.
Many putative "green" technologies actually depend heavily on lanthanide elements, the overwhelming majority of which are mined and processed in China, often under decidedly dirty conditions that are hardly "green."
These elements, once thought as laboratory curiosities - I don't think we spent more than 5 minutes discussing them in my high school chemistry class when I was a child - are now key to many technologies.
This graphic from the paper shows how things have changed in my (long) lifetime, and how many technologies rely on access and purification of these elements which are, in general, not "renewable."
The caption:
With the exception of scandium (Sc) (which could in theory be made via the neutron irradiation of calcium) all of the elements listed in this table up to (and more or less including) gadolinium (Gd) are present in used nuclear fuels, although some of them would require fairly long cooling before being available for non-nuclear applications and/or applications in closed systems. (Some closed system applications would be improved by using the radioactive forms of these elements rather than the stable form, but that's not current practice.) Others, such as yttrium, lanthanum, praseodymium, neodymium, would require very short (or no) cooling times, cerium only moderate cooling times. However the same energy to mass ratio that makes nuclear fuels superior in a purely environmental sense to all other forms of energy, means that the amounts available would more or less be trivial when compared to those available from the ores we are working so hard to deplete.
One of the elements listed, promethium, does not occur on earth except in minuscule amounts, from spontaneous fission in uranium ores. It has no stable, non-radioactive isotopes. Pm-147 can, and has been isolated from used nuclear fuels, but its use in signage, lighting and batteries has been limited because regrettably, nuclear fuel recycling has been limited.
I knew of most of these applications, but it was nice to see them all in one place, and I thought I'd post it.
I hope you're having a wonderful weekend.
Covalent surface modifications and superconductivity of two-dimensional metal carbide MXenes
The paper I will discuss in this post is this one: Covalent surface modifications and superconductivity of two-dimensional metal carbide MXenes (Vladislav Kamysbayev, Alexander S. Filatov, Huicheng Hu, Xue Rui, Francisco Lagunas, Di Wang, Robert F. Klie, Dmitri V. Talapin, Science 21 Aug 2020: Vol. 369, Issue 6506, pp. 979-983)
My son decided that he wanted to go into materials science while still in high school, and as such, we visited the Materials Science Departments of the various universities during the touring process. I attended the majority of them, but my wife took my son to Drexel University where, I learned afterward, the great Egyptian-American scientist Michel Barsoum actually came to speak to the prospective students, this, ironically on the very day I had acquired access to his book, MAX Phases: Properties of Machinable Ternary Carbides and Nitrides
Of course, if I had attended, any effort on my part to have engaged Dr. Barsoum would have distracted from his mission, which was to convince promising students to come to Drexel where, according to my wife, he promised, if they worked hard, even freshman undergraduates could be invited to work in his lab.
Drexel made my son a decent offer but the university he ultimately attended made him a great offer, and anyway, my son really found the idea of attending a university located right in a major metropolitan area distasteful, which is why he refused to even look at NYU, Columbia or MIT, not that any of these universities would have made him an offer we could have afforded to accept, or for that matter, even admitted him. So he didn't go to Drexel, and he didn't get to work with Michel Barsoum, even though his father had been discussing the MAX phases with him for some time.
In my opinion, however, Dr. Barsoum is one of the most important scientists of our time. He did not discover the MAX Phases, but he recognized them for what they were, greatly expanded on the knowledge of their chemistry and properties, and as published with scientists all over the world on the subject.
The MAX phases (which Dr. Barsoum named) have many of the important features of ceramics, resistance to high temperatures, resistance to harsh chemicals, while possessing some of the important properties of metals, specifically, machinability, as they lack the brittle nature of ceramics. I came across them in connection with my interest in high temperature materials and chemical resistance given my interest in nuclear reactors as well as in thermochemical carbon dioxide and water splitting using them in order to make for a sustainable world, something that we are no closer to doing than when I was a child; in fact we are living in a less sustainable world than the one into which I was born. (History will not forgive my generation, nor should it.) In any case, structurally, MAX phases consist of layers of atoms in a fairly precise arrangement, and this, as Dr. Barsoum and others have taught the world, leaves them capable of offering new opportunities in materials science in many areas.
One area in which Dr. Barsoum has further pioneered the applicability of these materials is in their use in preparing "MAXenes" which are two dimensional layered materials having a single molecule thickness. Although the MAX phases are notable for their chemical resistance, there are some which do react with chemicals. The most famous MAX phase - there are many, but the most famous - is Ti3SiC2. If this phase is treated with hydrofluoric acid, the silicon in them can be dissolved, leaving a two dimensional series of layers of Titanium carbide. The invention of the FFC Cambridge process should make titanium metal readily available in the future at reasonable prices, and the properties of its carbides (and indeed, the already widely used nitride) are very, very, very, exciting.
Much of what is written today on the subject of two dimensional materials these days relates to graphene and graphene nitride. MAXenes open up a much larger segment of the periodic table to these types materials.
Modification to MAXene titanium carbides is the subject of the paper under discussion and it extends the elements of the period table to two dimensional materials to the halides.
From the introduction to the paper:
The surface of MXene sheets is defined during MAX phase etching. Electrochemical and hydrothermal methods have been recently applied for etching MAX phases without resorting to HF solutions, but the use of aqueous solutions introduces a mixture of Cl, O, and OH surface groups (12, 13). The etching of Ti3AlC2 MAX phase in molten ZnCl2 and several other Lewis acidic molten salts above 500°C results in Ti3C2Cl2 MXene with a pure Cl termination (14, 15). Because etching of MAX phases in molten salts eliminates unwanted oxidation and hydrolysis, we used a variation of this method for synthesis of Ti3C2Cl2, Ti2CCl2, and Nb2CCl2 MXenes in CdCl2 molten salt (figs. S1 to S5). Moreover, the use of Lewis acidic CdBr2 allowed us to extend the molten salt etching route beyond chlorides to prepare the first Br-terminated Ti3C2Br2 and Ti2CBr2 MXenes (Fig. 1, B and C, and figs. S6 and S7)...
Figure 1:
The caption:
(A) Schematics for etching of MAX phases in Lewis acidic molten salts. (B) Atomic-resolution high-angle annular dark-field (HAADF) image of Ti3C2Br2 MXene sheets synthesized by etching Ti3AlC2 MAX phase in CdBr2 molten salt. The electron beam is parallel to the [21¯1¯0] zone axis. (C) Energy-dispersive x-ray elemental analysis (line scan) of Ti3C2Br2 MXene sheets. a.u., arbitrary units. HAADF images of (D) Ti3C2Te and (E) Ti3C2S MXenes obtained by substituting Br for Te and S surface groups, respectively. (F) HAADF image of Ti3C2⬜⬜2 MXene (⬜ stands for the vacancy) obtained by reductive elimination of Br surface groups.
Here is a excerpted brief discussion of the chemical processing of these phases:
MXene surface exchange reactions typically require temperatures of 300° to 600°C, which are difficult to achieve using traditional solvents. We instead used molten alkali metal halides as solvents with unmatched high-temperature stability, high solubility of various ionic compounds, and wide electrochemical windows (17–19). For example, Ti3C2Br2 MXene (Fig. 1B) dispersed in CsBr-KBr-LiBr eutectic (melting point: 236°C) reacted with Li2Te and Li2S to form Ti3C2Te (Fig. 1D and figs. S8 to S10) and Ti3C2S (Fig. 1E and fig. S11) MXenes, respectively. The reactions of Ti3C2Cl2 and Ti3C2Br2 with Li2Se, Li2O, and NaNH2 yielded Ti3C2Se, Ti3C2O, and Ti3C2(NH) MXenes, respectively (figs. S12 to S16). The multilayers of Ti3C2Tn MXenes (T = Cl, S, NH) were further treated with n-butyl lithium (n-BuLi) resulting in Li+ intercalated sheets (fig. S17) with a negative surface charge (Fig. 2A and fig. S18)
A graphic on delamination of the MAXenes:
The caption:
(A) Schematic of delamination process. (B) Photographs of stable colloidal solutions of Ti3C2Tn MXenes (T = Cl, S, NH) in NMF exhibiting Tyndall effect. (C) TEM image of Ti3C2Cl2 MXene flakes deposited from a colloidal solution. (Inset) Fast Fourier transform of the circled region, showing crystallinity and hexagonal symmetry of the individual flake. (D) XRD patterns of multilayer MXene and delaminated flakes in a film spin coated on a glass substrate.
There is considerable discussion in the paper of various means and results of characterization, including a discussion of the electrical properties of these materials.
measured on cold-pressed pellets of Nb2CTn (T = ⬜, Cl, O, S, Se) MXenes (fig. S41), all synthesized by the procedures described above. Figure 4A also compares the conductivity of the parent Nb2AlC MAX phase with that of Nb2CCl2 MXene. Above 30 K, both MAX phase and MXene samples showed similar specific resistivity, which decreased when the sample was cooled. This temperature dependence is often associated with metallic conductivity. The ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS) confirmed nonzero density of electronic states at the Fermi energy EF (fig. S42), which is also consistent with a metallic state.Figure 4:
The caption:
(A) Temperature-dependent resistivity for the cold-pressed pellets of Nb2AlC MAX phase and Nb2CCl2 MXene. (Inset) Magnetic susceptibility (i.e., ratio of magnetization to magnetizing field strength) of Nb2CCl2 MXene as a function of temperature. FC and ZFC correspond to the field cooled and zero-field cooled measurements, respectively. emu, electromagnetic unit. (B) Temperature-dependent resistivity for the cold-pressed pellets of Nb2CTn MXenes. (Inset) Resistance as a function of temperature at different applied magnetic fields (0 to 8 T) for the cold-pressed pellets of Nb2CS2 MXene.
I never get too excited about applications of niobium, since niobium is a monoisotopic (A = 93) element that is subject to depletion of resources and which cannot be obtained from used nuclear fuel owing to the long half-life of its parent, Zr-93.
In any case, the authors continue:
In the conclusion the authors suggest a breakthrough in MAXene processing:
It's a cool paper on what I regard as an important area in the future of materials science.
I trust you are having a pleasant weekend and enjoying the excitement over our outstanding virtual Democratic Party and are filled, as I am, with feelings of hope.
Five charts that will change everything you know about mud
The current issue of Science, has a number of articles, and a cover, devoted to mud.
Special Issue: A World of Mud
They are news items, not research papers.
One is called, as the title here indicates: Five charts that will change everything you know about mud (By David Malakoff, Nirja Desai, Xing Liu, Science, August 21, 2020.)
(One may need a subscription to open the paper, I'm not sure.)
An excerpt from the introduction:
Earth has been a muddy planet for 4 billion years, ever since water became abundant. But how it forms and moves have changed dramatically. About 500 million years ago, the arrival of land plants boosted the breakdown of rock into fine particles, slowed runoff, and stabilized sediments, enabling thick layers of mud to pile up in river valleys. Tectonic shifts that gave rise to mountains, as well as climate changes that enhanced precipitation, accelerated erosion, and helped blanket sea floors with mud hundreds of meters thick. Over time, many mud deposits hardened into mudrock, the most abundant rock in the geologic record, accounting for roughly half of all sedimentary formations.
Now, humans are a dominant force in the world of mud. Starting about 5000 years ago, erosion rates shot up in many parts of the world as our ancestors began to clear forests and plant crops. Even more sediment filled rivers and valleys, altering landscapes beyond recognition. In some places dams and dykes trapped that mud, preventing fresh sediment from nourishing floodplains, deltas, and tidal flats and causing them to shrink (see graphic below). And industrial processes began to produce massive quantities of new forms of mud—mine and factory waste—that is laden with toxic compounds and often stored behind dams that can fail, unleashing deadly torrents...
A few of the five charts:
An interesting read, these news items.
Something about my EKG is freaking medical people out.
Twenty-seven years ago, after an EKG, and echocardiogram, a stress echocardiogram, and finally an angiogram, my cardiologist at the time - not the most pleasant guy in the world, truth be told - told me that every time someone took my EKG, they were going to freak out and send me for all kinds of tests, if not hospitalize me. (This actually took place after two hospitalizations, one involving a stay in an ICU.)
So I just went through my third or fourth - I can't remember how many more - stress echo.
Now I just tell this story with every EKG freak out, and nobody gets excited, but they do get "concerned," with far more class than Susan Collins could ever muster.
However in the most recent freak-out my general physician did tell me that I'm older now, fatter now, with (managed) high blood pressure (why, oh why, do I ever post in E&E here) and that my EKG had "changed," and I should get it checked out.
So I went again.
A good time was had by all; wonderful nice techs, a very friendly and warm cardiologist. I got to get injected with a lipid formulation of the greenhouse gas SF6 as a contrast agent, got to talk a little about the chemistry of the gas.
"Looks good," the cardiologist told me. (Usually they don't tell you on the spot, but this is the first one where a cardiologist was in the room.)
I do have - I learned about 3 or 4 years ago when I'd developed a murmur - a mild mitral prelapse, this from a "normal" (non-stress) echocardiogram but no big deal.
I should lose weight, and I probably should stop talking about energy, engineering and climate change, especially in E&E.
But a good time was had by all.
Life is wonderful and then you die.
I will die - as my angiogram physician told me in a deadpan example of bad bedside manner, adding, after a pause, "but almost certainly not from heart disease."
Again...
A good time was had by all.
Life is wonderful and then you die.
He's on fire. Period, a President who can actually speak in complete sentences. Go Joe!!! n/t.
Obama's Speech Will Stand in the Pantheon of the Great Presidential Speeches from which He Drew.
I actually wept when I heard it not just the power, the sober emotion, but the brilliant way he drew upon the great speeches of other Presidents.
This speech, Obama's greatest, will live in history as one of the great American orations.
I consider that Lincoln made four of the greatest Presidential Speeches ever; obviously the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural, but I feel - as do others - that the Cooper Union address (made before he was President) and the often overlooked First Inaugural (which included the line - attributed to Seward - of "better angels of our nature" ) stand near the other two.
Then there is F.D. Roosevelt's first inaugural - "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" - as well as his "four freedoms" speech in early 1941.
Another great (post-Presidency) speech in what I regard the great Pantheon is Theodore Roosevelt's "Citizenship in a Republic," and to these we may add, perhaps on a slightly lower level, but still among the great speeches, Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech, Washington's Farewell, and perhaps Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural: "We are all Republicans; we are all Federalists."
Obama's speech should stand among these. For points, I reproduce the text (as provided by CNN) and highlight in bold the points where Obama showed his profound scholarship, his love and knowledge of our country's history, and his drawing on great American evocations of the past to make a new and novel statement of the importance of our country and evoke some of the antecedents among great American speeches that he evokes and makes his own.
I'm in Philadelphia, where our Constitution was drafted and signed. It wasn't a perfect document. It allowed for the inhumanity of slavery and failed to guarantee women -- and even men who didn't own property -- the right to participate in the political process. But embedded in this document was a North Star that would guide future generations; a system of representative government -- a democracy -- through which we could better realize our highest ideals. Through civil war and bitter struggles, we improved this Constitution to include the voices of those who'd once been left out. And gradually, we made this country more just, more equal, and more free.
The one Constitutional office elected by all of the people is the presidency. So at minimum, we should expect a president to feel a sense of responsibility for the safety and welfare of all 330 million of us -- regardless of what we look like, how we worship, who we love, how much money we have -- or who we voted for.
But we should also expect a president to be the custodian of this democracy. We should expect that regardless of ego, ambition, or political beliefs, the president will preserve, protect, and defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched for and went to jail for; fought for and died for.
(FDR, The Four Freedoms: "I suppose that every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world–assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace." )
I have sat in the Oval Office with both of the men who are running for president. I never expected that my successor would embrace my vision or continue my policies. I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.
But he never did. For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't. And the consequences of that failure are severe. 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone while those at the top take in more than ever. Our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished, and our democratic institutions threatened like never before.
(Four Freedoms, as evoked above.)
Now, I know that in times as polarized as these, most of you have already made up your mind. But maybe you're still not sure which candidate you'll vote for -- or whether you'll vote at all. Maybe you're tired of the direction we're headed, but you can't see a better path yet, or you just don't know enough about the person who wants to lead us there.
So let me tell you about my friend Joe Biden.
Twelve years ago, when I began my search for a vice president, I didn't know I'd end up finding a brother. Joe and I came from different places and different generations. But what I quickly came to admire about him is his resilience, born of too much struggle; his empathy, born of too much grief. Joe's a man who learned -- early on -- to treat every person he meets with respect and dignity, living by the words his parents taught him: "No one's better than you, Joe, but you're better than nobody."
That empathy, that decency, the belief that everybody counts -- that's who Joe is.
When he talks with someone who's lost her job, Joe remembers the night his father sat him down to say that he'd lost his.
When Joe listens to a parent who's trying to hold it all together right now, he does it as the single dad who took the train back to Wilmington each and every night so he could tuck his kids into bed.
When he meets with military families who've lost their hero, he does it as a kindred spirit; the parent of an American soldier; somebody whose faith has endured the hardest loss there is.
For eight years, Joe was the last one in the room whenever I faced a big decision. He made me a better president -- and he's got the character and the experience to make us a better country.
And in my friend Kamala Harris, he's chosen an ideal partner who's more than prepared for the job; someone who knows what it's like to overcome barriers and who's made a career fighting to help others live out their own American dream.
Along with the experience needed to get things done, Joe and Kamala have concrete policies that will turn their vision of a better, fairer, stronger country into reality.
They'll get this pandemic under control, like Joe did when he helped me manage H1N1 and prevent an Ebola outbreak from reaching our shores.
They'll expand health care to more Americans, like Joe and I did ten years ago when he helped craft the Affordable Care Act and nail down the votes to make it the law.
They'll rescue the economy, like Joe helped me do after the Great Recession. I asked him to manage the Recovery Act, which jump started the longest stretch of job growth in history. And he sees this moment now not as a chance to get back to where we were, but to make long-overdue changes so that our economy actually makes life a little easier for everybody -- whether it's the waitress trying to raise a kid on her own, or the shift worker always on the edge of getting laid off, or the student figuring out how to pay for next semester's classes.
Joe and Kamala will restore our standing in the world -- and as we've learned from this pandemic, that matters. Joe knows the world, and the world knows him. He knows that our true strength comes from setting an example the world wants to follow. A nation that stands with democracy, not dictators. A nation that can inspire and mobilize others to overcome threats like climate change, terrorism, poverty, and disease.
But more than anything, what I know about Joe and Kamala is that they actually care about every American. And they care deeply about this democracy.
They believe that in a democracy, the right to vote is sacred, and we should be making it easier for people to cast their ballot, not harder.
They believe that no one -- including the president -- is above the law, and that no public official -- including the president -- should use their office to enrich themselves or their supporters.
They understand that in this democracy, the Commander-in-Chief doesn't use the men and women of our military, who are willing to risk everything to protect our nation, as political props to deploy against peaceful protesters on our own soil. They understand that political opponents aren't "un-American" just because they disagree with you; that a free press isn't the "enemy" but the way we hold officials accountable; that our ability to work together to solve big problems like a pandemic depends on a fidelity to facts and science and logic and not just making stuff up.
None of this should be controversial. These shouldn't be Republican principles or Democratic principles. They're American principles. But at this moment, this president and those who enable him, have shown they don't believe in these things.
Tonight, I am asking you to believe in Joe and Kamala's ability to lead this country out of these dark times and build it back better. But here's the thing: no single American can fix this country alone. Not even a president. Democracy was never meant to be transactional -- you give me your vote; I make everything better. It requires an active and informed citizenry. So I am also asking you to believe in your own ability -- to embrace your own responsibility as citizens -- to make sure that the basic tenets of our democracy endure. Because that's what at stake right now. Our democracy.
Look, I understand why many Americans are down on government. The way the rules have been set up and abused in Congress make it easy for special interests to stop progress. Believe me, I know. I understand why a white factory worker who's seen his wages cut or his job shipped overseas might feel like the government no longer looks out for him, and why a Black mother might feel like it never looked out for her at all. I understand why a new immigrant might look around this country and wonder whether there's still a place for him here; why a young person might look at politics right now, the circus of it all, the meanness and the lies and crazy conspiracy theories and think, what's the point?
Well, here's the point: this president and those in power -- those who benefit from keeping things the way they are -- they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can't win you over with their policies. So they're hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote doesn't matter. That's how they win. That's how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That's how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That's how a democracy withers, until it's no democracy at all.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit."
FDR, Four Freedoms: "We must especially beware of that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests." )
We can't let that happen. Do not let them take away your power. Don't let them take away your democracy. Make a plan right now for how you're going to get involved and vote. Do it as early as you can and tell your family and friends how they can vote too. Do what Americans have done for over two centuries when faced with even tougher times than this -- all those quiet heroes who found the courage to keep marching, keep pushing in the face of hardship and injustice.
Last month, we lost a giant of American democracy in John Lewis. Some years ago, I sat down with John and the few remaining leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement. One of them told me he never imagined he'd walk into the White House and see a president who looked like his grandson. Then he told me that he'd looked it up, and it turned out that on the very day that I was born, he was marching into a jail cell, trying to end Jim Crow segregation in the South.
What we do echoes through the generations.
Whatever our backgrounds, we're all the children of Americans who fought the good fight. Great grandparents working in firetraps and sweatshops without rights or representation. Farmers losing their dreams to dust. Irish and Italians and Asians and Latinos told to go back where they came from. Jews and Catholics, Muslims and Sikhs, made to feel suspect for the way they worshipped. Black Americans chained and whipped and hanged. Spit on for trying to sit at lunch counters. Beaten for trying to vote.
If anyone had a right to believe that this democracy did not work, and could not work, it was those Americans. Our ancestors. They were on the receiving end of a democracy that had fallen short all their lives. They knew how far the daily reality of America strayed from the myth. And yet, instead of giving up, they joined together and said somehow, some way, we are going to make this work. We are going to bring those words, in our founding documents, to life.
I've seen that same spirit rising these past few years. Folks of every age and background who packed city centers and airports and rural roads so that families wouldn't be separated. So that another classroom wouldn't get shot up. So that our kids won't grow up on an uninhabitable planet. Americans of all races joining together to declare, in the face of injustice and brutality at the hands of the state, that Black Lives Matter, no more, but no less, so that no child in this country feels the continuing sting of racism.
To the young people who led us this summer, telling us we need to be better -- in so many ways, you are this country's dreams fulfilled. Earlier generations had to be persuaded that everyone has equal worth. For you, it's a given -- a conviction. And what I want you to know is that for all its messiness and frustrations, your system of self-government can be harnessed to help you realize those convictions.
You can give our democracy new meaning. You can take it to a better place. You're the missing ingredient -- the ones who will decide whether or not America becomes the country that fully lives up to its creed.
That work will continue long after this election. But any chance of success depends entirely on the outcome of this election. This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that's what it takes to win. So we have to get busy building it up -- by pouring all our effort into these 76 days, and by voting like never before -- for Joe and Kamala, and candidates up and down the ticket, so that we leave no doubt about what this country we love stands for -- today and for all our days to come.
Stay safe. God bless.
I've almost certainly missed some of the evocations, but these are those that caught my eye.
Obama's speech will stand among the great speeches in US history precisely because of the beautiful and eloquent way in which he updates these American themes of democracy, decency, equality and justice, and delivers them in a way that is all his own, just as Lincoln at Gettysburg, drew upon Pericles funeral orations, the Declaration of Independence, and other historical speeches.
We are privileged, indeed, to have Obama's speech delivered to us in our direst times, filled with force and hope, power and responsibility.
It will stand in history, as another example of a great American triumph in rhetoric.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleCurrent location: New Jersey
Member since: 2002
Number of posts: 33,512
