Tom Hanks Speaks To America: We’re Going To Be All Right

Tom Hanks Speaks To America: We’re Going To Be All Right

Tom Hanks, The BFI London Film Festival: Saving Mr Banks - World Film Premiere, Odeon Leicester Square, London UK, 20 October 2013.

Tom Hanks has done a lot of things in his career that I have disagreed with. But this election seems to be bringing out both the best and the worst in people. President Barack Obama’s speech the morning after the presidential election concluded was the best thing I have ever heard come out of the man’s mouth. He seemed to understand that the country needs to be unified in these moments more than ever.

For the millennials out there panicking, because they feel their voice wasn’t heard, be calm. It is going to be okay. And Tom Hanks seems to embrace these truths in his speech recently. When he received an award on the fifteenth of November, he took the opportunity to speak to the nation. It is okay. It is going to be okay. We have weathered much worse. These are his exact words.

In my own lifetime, our streets were in chaos, our generations were fighting each other tooth and nail, and every dinner table ended up being as close to a fist fight as our families would allow. We have been in a place where we looked at our leaders and wondered what the hell were they thinking of? We’ve had moments with administrations and politicians and leaders and Senators and governors where we asked ourselves, Are they lying to us?…

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We are going to be all right, because we constantly get to tell the whole world who we are. We constantly get to define ourselves as Americans. We do have the greatest country in the world. We may move at a slow pace, but we do have the greatest country in the world, because we are always moving towards a more perfect Union. That journey never ceases. It never stops. Sometimes, like in a Bruce Springsteen song, one step forward, two steps back. But we still, aggregately, move forward. We, who are a week into wondering what the hell just happened, will continue to move forward. We have to choose to do so. But we will move forward, because if we do not move forward, what is to be said about us?

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