20th January, 2021
By Kazeem Ugbodaga, with Agency Report
US President, Joe Biden has called on Americans to unite to fight the foes the country is facing.
The many foes, he said are anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness.
Biden, after his inauguration as 46th president of US, offered a forewarning, describing the nation as weathering a “winter of peril” amid a generational pandemic and other ailments.
“We’ll press forward with speed and urgency,” he said. “We have much to do in this winter of peril and significant opportunities.”
Biden said the predicaments currently facing the nation were historic, and said few Americans “have found a time more challenging than the time we are in now.”
According to him, coronavirus “silently stalks the country” and noted more lives had been lost to the disease than were lost in World War I.
He added: “Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation.”
The President called on Americans to come together to overcome the extraordinary challenges that face the nation – an idea that he often mentioned on the campaign trail
“To overcome these challenges, to restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words and requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy, unity,” Biden said.
“Uniting to fight the foes we face. Anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness. With unity we can do great things, important things,” he added.
Biden stated that “For without unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury. No progress, only exhausting outrage. No nation, only a state of chaos. This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and unity is the path forward. “Hear one another. See one another. Show respect to one another.”
He discouraged against the culture of “total war” in policy-making and the manipulation of facts.
“My fellow Americans, we have to be different than this. America has to be better than this. And I believe America is so much better than this,” he said.
“Today, we mark the swearing-in of the first woman in American history elected to national office, Vice President Kamala Harris. Don’t tell me things can’t change,” he said.