The next next president

A found essay, in collected quotations

“At least ten of our future presidents are probably alive today. If we go by the odds, three of them are likely serving in government somewhere already. One is in college or in the military. Three probably have other jobs—probably practicing law, building things, teaching, running a business. And at least three of our future presidents are kids.

What are they doing right now?”

—The Next President: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of America’s Presidents, Kate Messner and Adam Rex, 2020

“For Those Who Come After Us:

O God, we pray thee for those who come after us, for our children, and the children of our friends, and for all the young lives that are marching up from the gates of birth, pure and eager, with the morning sunshine on their faces.

We remember with a pang that these will live in the world we are making for them. We are wasting the resources of the earth in our headlong greed, and they will suffer want. We are building sunless houses and joyless cities for our profit, and they must dwell therein. We are making the burden heavy and the pace of work pitiless, and they will fall wan and sobbing by the wayside. We are poisoning the air of our land by our lies and our uncleanness, and they will breathe it.”

—For God and The People: Prayers of The Social Awakening, Walter Rauschenbusch, 1910

“The world’s insects are hurtling down the path to extinction, threatening a ‘catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems’, according to the first global scientific review.

More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.”

—“Plummeting insect numbers ‘threaten collapse of nature,’ The Guardian, Damian Carrington, Feb. 10, 2019

“That is also where my grief lies, because of what we are doing to the Earth and its inhabitants. It’s almost as though our own personal pain is so intolerable that if we destroy everything that is beautiful around us, we will no longer have a mirror to look at, to remind us of our own impoverishment. If the world is only a strip mine, if the world is only a clear-cut, our own impoverishment is easier to bear—there’s nothing to remind us of the richness of life, even our own. And again there is nothing to remind us where the true source of our power comes from. What we are doing as a species is an incredible mass abuse of our own spirit: and of the spirit of life around us.

I don’t think about hope much anymore. But I do think about imagination. That’s where we have the capacity to shift.”

—Interview with Terry Tempest Williams, from Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros, Derrick Jensen, 1995

“If we were to spiritually translate the phrase ‘my great grandparents,’ ‘my ancestors,’ it would mean, ‘one to whom I am connected,’ ‘that being to which I am inextricably linked.’

What’s more, this word [Indaanikoobijigan] is used for both ‘my great grandparent’ and ‘my great grandchild.’ In Ojibwe, we use the same term for one another, they are interchangeable. Sometimes I wonder if we are actually saying, I am you.”

—The Seven Generations and The Seven Grandfather Teachings, James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, 2023

“Thus says the Lord: Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak there this word, and say: Hear the word of the Lord, O King of Judah sitting on the throne of David—you, and your servants, and your people who enter these gates. 

Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness,
and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed.
And do no wrong or violence
to the alien, the orphan, and the widow,
nor shed innocent blood in this place.

For if you will indeed obey this word, then through the gates of this house shall enter kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they, and their servants, and their people. 

But if you will not heed these words,
I swear by myself, says the Lord,
that this house shall become a desolation.”

—Jeremiah 22:1-5

“The world is never ready
for the birth of a child.

Our ships are not yet back from Vinland.
We still have to get over the St. Gotthard pass.
We've got to outwit the watchmen on the desert of Thor,
fight our way through the sewers to Warsaw's center,
gain access to King Harold the Butterpat
and wait until the downfall of Minister Fouché.
Only in Acapulco
can we begin anew.

[…]

May delivery be easy,
may our child grow and be well.
Let him be happy from time to time
and leap over abysses.
Let his heart have strength to endure
and his mind be awake and reach far.

But not so far
that it sees into the future.
Spare him
that one gift,
0 heavenly powers.”

—from “A Tale Begun,” View with a Grain of Sand, Wislawa Szymborska, 1993

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Illustrations from The Next President: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of America’s Presidents, Kate Messner and Adam Rex, 2020.