Make America Great Again: When Was America Great?

Donald Trump and his Republican MAGA horde want to make America great again. I’m wondering when, in their minds, was America great? According to a March 28, 2016, CNN interview with Donald Trump, he says America was at its greatest during periods of military and industrial expansion. Candidate Trump points to 1900 and post-World War II.

In 1900 the average family earned $3000 per year in today’s dollars. Most families didn’t have indoor plumbing, phones, nor automobiles. Fifty percent of American children lived in poverty. Teenagers didn’t attend high school and instead, labored in factories or on farms. Women couldn’t vote and Jim Crow operated freely with white America believing in its supremacy and black inferiority. Trump wants to return to that. No thank you! 

Was America great during the post-World War II years of 1950-1973 as Trump claimed? This was a period of world-wide economic expansion. In the United States, struggles for civil and social rights, equality, and justice were ubiquitous. Women were confined to domestic duties. While the white middle class grew, blacks were excluded from the prosperity with segregation in housing and education being a serious inequality for African Americans. During the war, Latinos, like other minority groups, had made huge sacrifices, but still faced discrimination at home once the bombs stopped falling in Europe. This doesn’t sound like a very great America to me. 

In his play, “Angels in America,” Tony Kushner writes, “The world only spins forward and only those who keep their eyes forward—on the future, not the past—have the capacity to progress and to succeed. Those who keep their eyes on the past will drag their people down with them.” 

Trump and his MAGA crowd have their eyes on the past like some other historic leaders. Benito Mussolini was nostalgic for the Roman Empire when Italy was at the zenith of its power. In reality the average life expectancy of a typical Roman was 25 years. Vladimir Putin yearns for the old Soviet Empire as justification for his invasion of Ukraine. Ethnic minorities wouldn’t agree with Putin for they experienced repression and bloodshed during the Soviet era. 

Trump and his MAGA minion, Benito Mussolini, Vladimir Putin, and scores of dictators throughout history believe that nothing will compare to their country’s past historical period of greatness. Which is funny because they are transforming a historical memory by cutting it up, mixing and matching ingredients that ring true to them, and then form an idealized sanctuary from their present circumstances.  

Nostalgic thinking is believing that nothing will compare to the experience previously had. Trump wants to return to the 1950s. President Eisenhower, a Republican, expanded Social Security, prioritized a balanced budget over tax cuts, and his administration established the Interstate Highway System. Trump decreased taxes for the rich and added $8.3 trillion to the US debt. Trump tried and failed to pass an infrastructure bill. During Biden’s first year as president, he signed into law the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Trump tried to unsuccessfully derail the negotiations. 

Nostalgia doesn’t build a nation; it tears it down. John F Kennedy, America’s 35^th president, looked to the future. In a speech at Amherst College on October 26, 1963, Kennedy said, “I look forward to a great future for America in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.”

Kennedy was a forward thinker predicting Americans would land on the moon before the end of the 1960s. Like Kennedy we don’t want to make America great again but to encourage America to reach into the future with plans to colonize the moon and Mars, provide equal rights for all its citizens no matter their race, religion, or sexual identity. It’s a future where American women have complete control of their health, children will go to school without worrying about being shot at, and college is affordable for everyone. 

It’s not looking back at our historical past for greatness but looking forward to technological advancements coupled with social equality that will make America great and a beacon to the rest of humanity. When the next politician speaks about an American future based on sowing the best of humankind, then that is one bandwagon I’ll jump on.