I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL

This book consists of a series of speeches that Emanuel Pastreich gave as an independent candidate for president of the United States after his first announcement of the intention to run in February (2020). He gave speeches, met with fellow Americans, especially those who are suffering the consequences of the profound moral rot in our country. With their input, with their help, he started to map out a positive direction for the United States, a future in which we move away from the dangerous culture of consumption, extraction and endless war that has infected the nation like a horrific virus and that has been amplified by dangerous parasites.

This book consists of a series of speeches that Emanuel Pastreich gave as an independent candidate for president of the United States after his first announcement of the intention to run in February (2020). He gave speeches, met with fellow Americans, especially those who are suffering the consequences of the profound moral rot in our country. With their input, with their help, he started to map out a positive direction for the United States, a future in which we move away from the dangerous culture of consumption, extraction and endless war that has infected the nation like a horrific virus and that has been amplified by dangerous parasites. It has become instinctive for the privileged and the educated to dismiss Pastreich's campaign from the start. When they deem to meet him in person, they immediately remark that he does not have the funding, the infrastructure, the media coverage, or the support of the famous that is necessary to get his name out, that is required to get his name on the ballot in all states. None of them ask whether he speaks the truth, whether his proposals are the most appropriate, whether he is honest and sincere. Many of them secretly know that my campaign is the only serious campaign out there. Few indeed among Yale and Harvard graduates he once associated with, the people who were his peers when he started his career, are willing to even ask whether those other so-called "candidates" are qualified to be president, or whether this election, or the last one, granted the extensive manipulation of the vote and misleading reporting about the issues, deserve to be called an election at all. But the working people with whom I meet, with whom I work, understand what I am talking about. They know that I was unemployed from January, forced out of my home, and that my wife became gravely ill because of the traumas resulting from trying to keep our family together. I know what they are talking about because I experienced it. There are two kinds of knowledge. If you are an expert on tigers, you may know everything about tigers: where tigers live, what they eat, and what their habits are. But in a critical respect your knowledge of tigers will never approach the knowledge of someone who has been bitten by a tiger. Pastreich has had the experience of being bitten by a tiger. He knows what you are suffering. He says that if we do not have an election in which someone like him can be a candidate, can have a chance to be covered in the media, then we are not holding elections, but rather holding an impressive sham. He declare that he has no intention of recognizing any such sham elections. In fact, until there is an election in which someone like him can get proper attention and a chance to be on the ballot, we should not recognize any of these "elections."

Emanuel Pastreich has emerged over the last two decades as the leading voice for a rational American policy in diplomacy and security with a laser focus on climate and biodiversity collapse, the catastrophic impact of new technology on human society, the exponential concentration of wealth, and the global arms race. Pastreich strives to reinvent the traditions of internationalism pursued Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson in his writings and in his speeches. He demands that the trillions given to corporations over the last year be returned, that conglomerates like Amazon and Facebook be run as regulated cooperatives, and that the assets of fossil fuel corporations be seized immediately and their owners and administrators charged for the criminal action of presenting fraudulent information to the government and the people about climate change. An Asia expert fluent in Korean, Japanese and Chinese, Pastreich started his career as a professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1998. He currently serves as president of the Asia Institute, a think tank focused on diplomacy, security and technology located in Washington D.C., Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi.