https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=A0yvc2Qhn5E&ab_channel=RobertF.KennedyJr.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cNeither my uncle nor my father would recognize the version of America that we have today,\u201d independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. said in his State of the Union response.<\/p>\n
He firmly declared, \u201cEnough is enough,\u201d to the government\u2019s lack of interest in addressing these 21 disturbing realities:<\/p>\n
#1 – \u201cWe\u2019ve become a nation of chronic illness, of violence, of loneliness, depression, and division and poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n
#2 – \u201cOur great cities are becoming tent encampments.\u201d<\/p>\n
#3 – \u201cModern-day Hooverville is filled with undocumented immigrants and dispossessed Americans and people living in their cars, plagued by mental illness and addiction and despair.\u201d<\/p>\n
#4 – \u201cOur border has come under the control of criminal drug cartels that traffic in desolation and fentanyl \u2014 and in busloads of desperate human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n
#5 – \u201cOur children are drowning in a crisis of alienation, of dispossession, and complete disconnection from their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n
#6 – \u201cWe\u2019ve lost far more of our young people to drugs in the last decade than in the 20-year Vietnam war.\u201d<\/p>\n
#7 – \u201cWe\u2019ve printed nine centuries\u2019 worth of money in a little over a decade and spent $8 trillion on regime change wars. Those wars have made America less safe, our country less strong, and the world far less stable, while sending prices through the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n
#8 – \u201cAs our infrastructure falls apart, tens of millions of young Americans no longer even dream of owning their own home.\u201d<\/p>\n
#9 – \u201cAll the new wealth of the last generation has gone to the billionaires and to transnational corporations while our tattered middle class, our infrastructure, our industry, have been hollowed out from the inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
#10 – \u201cThe public debt has gone from about $5 trillion under President George W. Bush to $34 trillion today.\u201d<\/p>\n
#11 – \u201cUS household debt is at a record high of $17.3 trillion.\u201d<\/p>\n
#12 – \u201cOur true unemployment rate is 23%.\u201d<\/p>\n
#13 – \u201cYoung parents face housing, grocery and childcare costs that are unaffordable.\u201d<\/p>\n
#14 – \u201cToo many Americans are living bleak and hopeless lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
#15 – \u201cWe rank 40th globally in our people\u2019s health and wellness.\u201d<\/p>\n
#16 – \u201cOut of the richest countries in the world, the United States is 35th in child poverty rates.\u201d<\/p>\n
#17 – “We rank 36th in literacy and 45th in press freedom.”<\/p>\n
#18 – \u201cWe have one of the highest cancer rates in the world, and our life expectancy now ranks 59th, according to the World Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n
#19 – \u201cWe now have the worst health outcomes in the rich world, the highest maternal mortality rates, the highest number of gun deaths per capita, and the highest number of teen pregnancies.\u201d<\/p>\n
#20 – \u201cAccording to CDC, 60% of Americans have at least one chronic condition. When my uncle was president, only 6% of Americans had chronic disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
#21 – \u201cAnd all of these plights fall heaviest on our young people:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Four in ten of them suffer from depression.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Half of them have considered suicide.<\/p>\n
\u2022 One in ten has anxiety.<\/p>\n
\u2022 One in ten has ADHD.<\/p>\n
\u2022 One in five is obese.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to tell you right now that we can still restore that America, the America that almost was and yet may be,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cBut we have to start by being honest with ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n