Watch and Discuss: College Kids React To The Greatest Speech Ever Made (The Great Dictator)

First, the white male in the blue shirt speaks at 7:14. He talks about everybody having a voice, everybody has a cause. As the old adage goes, opinions are like assholes: everyone's got one. The world is absolutely saturated with people, small and large, weighing in on any given topic. Some are good, some are bad, some are somewhere between. It's all for naught. It's like trying to move an object and giving everybody a rope, but not giving them a direction to pull. Talk has never been cheaper. I don't know what the solution is, but it's not activism on social media. That much is clear, little to no good is being done. At 4:03 this colored kid in the red shirt is asked about his thoughts while listening to the speech. He says, quote, "I was just thinking of, like, Trump the whole time." I don't know why this bothers me so much. Make no mistake, Trump is a fool, but he's not curator of the world's ills. He has contributed very little to that, and will have contributed little when he's done. The worst, in response to Chaplains speech, would be going against: "Let us fight to ... do away with national barriers ...". Trump certainly has been fighting hard to get people out. That said, it's not just poor brown people--he's fighting to remove all undocumented people who have not come or stayed through official, legal channels. The majority of those people, unfortunately, are indeed brown people. At 4:40 an asian girl in plaid is talking about the state of the world since this speech had been made. She claims we haven't "evolved" or progressed since then. We have, drastically. There hasn't been another world-encompassing war since. Everything is trending downward: [homicides are the lowest they've ever been](https://ourworldindata.org/homicides), [world poverty has dropped like a rock](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty), [human rights are steadily--if not drastically--improving](https://ourworldindata.org/human-rights), [education is the best it's ever been](https://ourworldindata.org/global-rise-of-education). It's insulting to make a claim that we're not moving forward. Why would you even think that? Our generations have never seen true hard times. These social issues that command the headlines are nothing. It's a great luxury that we're even able to be worried about them. 10:12: "What I'm getting out of this is that maybe I should see if there are films like that, 'cause I'm like, if there are I'd like to watch them and support them because I think it's important to challenge political climate." Well, I guess you felt like you needed to say something. You can't see the forest for the trees, bud. ---- Chaplain's speech is still relevant, though the players and their tools have changed. Instead of being physically forced to fight, being physically captured, being systematically killed, they've found a way to make us do it to ourselves. Because everything costs money, and more than ever, we force ourselves into slavery to stay afloat. We once had single-income households and ever-present parents, now strangers are left to fulfill that role in the most sterile way possible. "We think too much and feel too little." I feel this is now in opposite, we feel too much and think too little. It's more important to have a quick reaction than a reasonable, well thought out reaction. It's more important to make sure feelings are accounted for than to be correct. "We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind." I'd agree with this. We have more than we've ever had, but all of our comforts and possessions haven't made us feel any better. It will never be enough. "Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world - millions of despairing men, women, and little children - victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people." Especially the last part, the US has a big problem with imprisonment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate