What does it mean to "Make America Great Again"?
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Democrat
Colorado Springs, CO
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Making America great again is whatever it is in a person's mind. Most people can relate to happy times in their lives, not really understanding all the factors that drove that happiness at the time. Job security was certainly a factor -- the factory, the mine, a store or shop, a valued profession -- but also a place called home with community and church. Norman Rockwell's America perhaps and a false sense of entitlement that went with that so called "American exceptionalism". There was a sense of complacency or comfort that set in with the middle class especially as they took for granted their economic status. They didn't realize the forces at work over many years to undermine that status. I have referenced the Lewis Powell Memorandum in this website, in which Lewis Powell in 1971 outlined a plan for "taking our country back" but from the viewpoint of the corporatist who saw the free enterprise system under attack by liberals. It is an interesting memo and should be read to better understand the corporatist movement that it set in motion and is still alive today in Trumpism. Perhaps the highlight of the movement was the election of Ronald Reagan as president and whose drastic tax reforms helped drive the inequality that we are seeing today. The election of Trump is the frosting on the cake. Reagan also set in motion a kind of warped thinking that set the American middle class against itself with his often repeated slogan from his inaugural address: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." That and his fictitious "welfare queen". George Bush and now Donald Trump carries on that mission. I should not lay all the blame on Powell or Reagan or Trump, however. For many Americans, especially those lacking a higher education or skills, what has affected their economic status even more is their inability to adapt to market forces including globalization and new technologies. The world is changing and they feel frustration at being left behind, much the same as earlier generations felt the change from the "horse and buggy" era. Their sense of anxiety made them prey for the unscrupulous politicians who made promises that they would never be able to deliver upon. And I am not only talking about Donald Trump, who skillfully played upon people's emotions telling them what they wanted to hear but with no strategy or plan on how to accomplish those "promises". There are many things that divide Americans now that are skillfully being exploited by those in power. They can do that because much of the public is ignorant of the functions of government and can be easily exploited in the "blame game". Education would certainly help, but I know some highly educated people whose underlying prejudices have manifested themselves in tribal politics and single emotional issues that trump critical thinking. Understanding our government would be a helpful first step. And then voting intelligently.
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Schmidt Wrote: Understanding our government would be a helpful first step. And then voting intelligently. That's the most thoughtful description of our current predicament I've ever read. I've spent many hours pondering when America truly was great and my conclusion (at least in my humble opinion) is that it never really has been. My other conclusion (again, in my humble opinion) is that no country or empire in the history of human civilization has ever been great. Was America great when black people were bought and sold like chattel or when our ancestors stole Native people lands and slaughtered innocent men, women, and children by the hundreds of thousands? Was America great when Jim Crow laws made it so black men, women, and children could be killed with impunity? What about when we passed laws that made it so only white people could take advantage of government stimulus dollars during the Great Depression? I can go on and on. America has never been great because America, like every other country and empire before it, is made up of fallible human beings. There have been many great Americans who have helped bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice, but for every two steps we have taken forward, we have taken one step back. The same can be said about every other empire. In the same breath, I know there are tens of millions of great Americans living in this country who truly do want to make America "great." I see them at school board meetings and soup kitchens; on the street and behind closed doors. What makes America and every other country great is the people who devote their lives helping make someone else's life better.
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jaredsxtn Wrote:Schmidt Wrote: Understanding our government would be a helpful first step. And then voting intelligently. That's the most thoughtful description of our current predicament I've ever read. I've spent many hours pondering when America truly was great and my conclusion (at least in my humble opinion) is that it never really has been. My other conclusion (again, in my humble opinion) is that no country or empire in the history of human civilization has ever been great. Was America great when black people were bought and sold like chattel or when our ancestors stole Native people lands and slaughtered innocent men, women, and children by the hundreds of thousands? Was America great when Jim Crow laws made it so black men, women, and children could be killed with impunity? What about when we passed laws that made it so only white people could take advantage of government stimulus dollars during the Great Depression? I can go on and on. America has never been great because America, like every other country and empire before it, is made up of fallible human beings. There have been many great Americans who have helped bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice, but for every two steps we have taken forward, we have taken one step back. The same can be said about every other empire. In the same breath, I know there are tens of millions of great Americans living in this country who truly do want to make America "great." I see them at school board meetings and soup kitchens; on the street and behind closed doors. What makes America and every other country great is the people who devote their lives helping make someone else's life better. Jared, you are missing a few things; don't forget that this country is only 300 years old; Europe is more than 2000 years old; China etc. even older. I call the situation here "growing pains". Europe learned from it, here not yet. Also because this is an arrogant "island" in this big world and behaves as such. The refusal to accept things what work in other countries like Norway etc. makes this island unruly and backwards. Also since WWII this has become an military driven culture, which is used the wrong way by bullying the world. Because most immigrants in the past were evicted "religious" fanatics from all over, then you get an weird society and wrong influences to move a country forward. Therefore my answer is there is no "United" States. Furthermore it does not help that it is fake and corrupt with wrong antiquated laws. Indeed a melting "pot" of which the substance does not want to "melt" Yes the truth hurts.
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Dutch Wrote: Jared, you are missing a few things; don't forget that this country is only 300 years old; Europe is more than 2000 years old; China etc. even older. I call the situation here "growing pains". Europe learned from it, here not yet. Also because this is an arrogant "island" in this big world and behaves as such. The refusal to accept things what work in other countries like Norway etc. makes this island unruly and backwards. My main issue with comparing the United States to countries like Norway is the fact that there are over 330 million people living here compared to Norway's 5.23 million. There are three million more people living in New York City than there are in all of Norway. So what works in Norway may not be what works here because it's much easier to keep 5.2 million people happy than keeping 330 million of them happy. It's also much easier to test things out and see what works and doesn't work when your population is far smaller. It's much more difficult doing so in a country of our size. Dutch Wrote: Also since WWII this has become an military driven culture, which is used the wrong way by bullying the world. Because most immigrants in the past were evicted "religious" fanatics from all over, then you get an weird society and wrong influences to move a country forward. Therefore my answer is there is no "United" States. Furthermore it does not help that it is fake and corrupt with wrong antiquated laws. Indeed a melting "pot" of which the substance does not want to "melt" Yes the truth hurts.
That's a vast over simplification of an extremely complex subject. I would love nothing more than to slash our military budget, but I also appreciate that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Withdrawing from the world stage will leave a vacuum that some other country will move in to fill. How that is handled can either wind up being positive or make things a million times worse.
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jaredsxtn Wrote:Dutch Wrote: Jared, just answer: Is there a "United" States? What does this country want on the world stage? Bullying; steal resources, "demand" things which does not fit any country, telling the world what to do, while this country itself does not know what it wants for itself. The United States is a collection of fifty individual states that shares a centralized government. The vast majority of laws are passed at the local and state levels while the central government deals more with interstate relations, the general welfare of the entire country (taxes, social programs, etc.), and international affairs. It's unfortunate that your go-to argument is to just blame any and everything that has ever gone bad in the world on the United States. Things are so much more complicated than that. Yes things are more complicated here because they ( the government) made it complicated. How often I told you that the laws here are either incomplete or wrong and no one wants to put in any effort top change them. Such as "1800's gun laws" no decent "elections laws" WITHOUT MONEY" to corrupt it, no firm laws to "vet" a president nor higher functions in the government; a worthless "emolument clause" which is not implemented, nor strict laws to exactly determine if a president can run his own business while in office etc. Jared you know what I mean; an size of a country does not matter; the priority in any country should be to prevent corruption; here instead they promote it!!
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