Abdul El-Sayed > Quotes

“Fearmongering works because we allow it to: we play our part in the cycle of fear, blame, and hatred. We allow ourselves to respond in kind to hatred and to hit back, even though we know our actions will only escalate the hatred. We learn to hate, too. We become the equivalent opposite of those who hate us. Yet we think that our hate is righteous, excused by the hatred we have so long endured. But hatred is still hatred. It is still cold. It is still dead. And it is still dehumanizing.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[I]nsecurity’s sentinel symptoms are anxiety and fear. Anger and confrontation tend to be exactly the wrong tools to change the behavior or win the hearts of people who are afraid and anxious. Rage and recrimination only make them more afraid. It forces them deeper into a defensive posture.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[T]he paradoxical insecurity of the wealthy[: t]he fear of some future material insecurity compels [the wealthy] to put more space between themselves and the materially insecure, and in hoarding resources and creating and sustaining systems that accelerate inequality, they perpetuate the insecurity under which so many suffer.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“As the economy accelerates inequality, our government becomes ever more critical as a tool for empowering those losing out. And yet we find that, because of the porous barrier between our economy and our politics, politics only furthers that inequality; the slow, piecemeal corruption of our politics contributes to our insecurity.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[T]he system that has created and sustained the epidemic of insecurity in this country relies on a network of tokens to placate the communities that suffer most.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“Segregation changes the character of a neighborhood. As wealth leaves, poverty concentrates in a community, reshaping its businesses, lowering the quality of its schools, and devaluing its homes—the most criticial wealth assets of low-income homeowners.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“If we mistakenly assume that identity stands in for the system of power that elevates certain kinds of people, our analysis risks vilifying and demonizing the wrong people.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“Many … live in poverty, but because the nature of poverty is to disempower and distract, the burdens of their daily lives limit their capacity to act.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[I]nsecurity makes inclusion seem like a radical proposition. That’s because insecurity thinks in zero-sum terms, it warns us that our resources are scarce—that we cannot invite others because provisions are already short. Insecurity makes necessary enemies out of potential allies.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[T]he insecurity of the affluent in an unequal society, driven to acquire to protect their affluence, to guard their position lest they drop in class and join the marginalized.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[T]he insight of the identity politics of empathy: that all of us struggle under the weight of the insecurity epidemic, and all of us must be welcome in the movements to take it on.”
― Abdul El-Sayed

“Being willing to invest in a solution hinges on believing that government can accomplish what it sets out to do. But as a society, we seem to have given up on government as a critical component of the solution. That leaves key problems unsolved, which drives our insecurity. But our insecurity keeps us from believing that government can take on those problems. Rise and repeat. Insecurity perpetuates itself.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[I]nsecurity’s sentinel symptoms are anxiety and fear.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Healing Politics: A Doctor’s Journey into the Heart of Our Political Epidemic

“[M]ost bureaucracies are self-oriented: too often they ask how a new program or service would best be organized within the bureacracy rather than how best to organize it around the people we want to serve.”
― Abdul El-Sayed, Medicare for All: A Citizen's Guide