Last Attempt

In his last State of the Union address, United States President Barack Obama came out all guns blazing. “I stand here as confident as I’ve ever been,” President Obama declared at the conclusion of his final State of the Union address. From the state of the economy to Donald Trump (without really naming him), Obama candidly summed up his feelings about the legacy he is  leaving behind. In consonance with his recent remarks on gun violence, Obama made his feelings on the subject rather clear again. He urged the American people to not support pro-gun candidates during the upcoming elections. In a candid admission, Obama said that he wasn’t quite sure if it is practically possible to change the gun laws before he is replaced later this year.

Though the speech generally highlighted the positives that Obama was responsible for, the man himself was also candid enough to accept that the promises he made while campaigning hadn’t been completed to his satisfaction. However, Obama strongly contested the claim that the US economy still hadn’t emerged out of the doldrums. “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction,” he said. On the legacy question he said, “For my final address to this chamber, I don’t want to talk just about the next year. I want to focus on the next five years, 10 years, and beyond, I want to focus on our future.”

Despite these inspiring words, President Obama did not give up the opportunity to address the ignorance being peddled by Republican presidential front-runner, Donald Trump. He said that the anti-Islamic animosity that Trump is trying to inject isn’t the right way forward. Americans “need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion,” the president said. “This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.” Suffice to say, Obama kept coming back to the question he had asked in the beginning, “Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, and turning against each other as a people?”