WASHINGTON: Without once taking Donald Trump ’s name, US President Barack Obama pledged in a farewell speech on Tuesday the continuation of a multi-cultural, multi-religious, racially-diverse and globally-engaged America that his successor’s victory is widely perceived to have the potential to undermine.In a 50-minute address in Chicago that brought his colourful coalition of supporters to their feet repeatedly, the United States ’ first mixed-race occupant of the White House spoke more to America’s future than to his eight years in office as the country’s 44th President.He defended the ''beating heart of the American idea'' built on immigration and enterprise drawn from across the world, a creed that a Trump administration is expected to stall if not reverse, maintaining that “Our youth and drive, our diversity and openness, our boundless capacity for risk and reinvention mean that the future should be ours.”“Rivals like Russia or China cannot match our influence around the world - unless we give up what we stand for, and turn ourselves into just another big country that bullies smaller neighbors,” he said.The President also had words of advice to Americans on the impact of immigrant children, who are expected to outnumber children of native stock in the US in the coming decade.''If we’re unwilling to invest in the children of immigrants, just because they don’t look like us, we diminish the prospects of our own children – because those brown kids will represent a larger and larger share of America’s workforce,'' he explained, later urging native-born Americans to constantly be ''reminding ourselves that the stereotypes about immigrants today were said, almost word for word, about other immigrants such as Irish, Italians, and Poles, who it was said would destroy the fundamental character of America.''''As it turned out, America wasn’t weakened by the presence of these newcomers; they embraced this nation’s creed, and it was strengthened,'' he said. ''So regardless of the station that we occupy; we have to try harder; to start with the premise that each of our fellow citizens loves this country just as much as we do; that they value hard work and family; that their children are just as curious and hopeful and worthy of love as our own.''Often dubbed a closet Muslim by right-wing conspiracy theorists, and in another oblique rebuke to Trump, Obama also explicitly defended Muslim-Americans and insisted that science and reason matter. Trump has demonized Muslims with broad-brush strokes, dismissed global warming as a hoax, and broadly pandered to wingnuts and Islamophobes on his way to the White House.Amid epic political convulsions resulting in setbacks to Democrats and liberals, the man who was also dubbed a closet socialist urged Americans upset by recent changes to stay the course, saying, ''Yes, our progress has been uneven…. The work of democracy has always been hard .. But the long sweep of America has been defined by forward motion.''''Show up. Dive in. Stay at it,'' he urged, after he had opened his remarks recalling his own early political work as a community organizer in Chicago. ''Sometimes you’ll win. Sometimes you’ll lose .. And more often than not, your faith in America — and in Americans — will be confirmed.''Accompanied by his wife Michelle , daughter Sasha and close aides, Obama took a final Air Force One flight to and from the city where his political career began.The passion of his die-hard fans stomping the rafters screaming “four more years!” (no, he can’t; term limits) and a teary goodbye to supporters who have elevated him to 57 per cent approval rating, among the highest for an exiting President, is bringing the curtain down on eight remarkable years in American history as he demits office on January 20, when Trump will be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.