This passage came after Kennedy made the extraordinary move of asking Americans to reexamine their attitude toward the Soviet Union — and to empathize with the Soviet people. He reminded Americans that the Soviets had lost 20 million people in World War II, that a third of their territory had been turned into wasteland, 'a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.' He argued that the two superpowers, despite their profound ideological differences, shared the most fundamental interests: 'If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.' Then came the four simple sentences that compressed the entire argument into its essence. The progression from shared planet to shared air to shared love of children to shared mortality was devastating — each sentence stripping away another layer of political abstraction to reveal the common humanity underneath.