Those who have read and understand U.S. history know that the country has always been flawed. But it's saving grace is a constitution that allowed for change -- and slowly but steadily, change has been made. We have not reached the goal of equality as outlined in the Constitution, but as a nation we are closer to that goal than ever before.That brings up a question. Trump and the MAGA nuts claim they want to make America great again (return it to a time when it was great). When is that time? What period in history are they talking about?
Jennifer Rubin, columnist for The Washington Post, thinks she has figured out the time the MAGA crowd thinks was "great". This is part of what she writes:
I have always wondered when the MAGA crowd and its Great Leader thought America was great. We know their appeal to disgruntled white voters is an exercise in phony nostalgia and wish fulfillment. Implicit in their slogan is a desire to go back to a time when whites — white men, to be specific — were numerically, politically, economically and culturally unchallenged. But when was this, exactly? 1950? 1920? We might have to go back to the 19th century.
We got a hint this week when President Trump restated his support for U.S. Army bases to retain names of Confederate traitors and white supremacists. He said in one of his more bizarre interviews that removing the names would “divide” Americans. (We aren’t divided now, I suppose, because “America” to him is his white base.) We wouldn’t want to “bring people apart,” he insisted — as the traitors did when they took up arms against fellow Americans?
In the same interview, he said that no one really knew about Juneteenth (meaning, he and his lily-white staff were ignorant of it) until he brought it up. He also argued that his “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” comment was appropriate. Meanwhile, Republicans in the Senate blocked an effort to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol. I am getting the sense that Trump and his followers look back favorably on the Confederacy, the memory of which swells them with pride. (Does Trump know that, in addition to being racists and traitors, they were losers?). . . .
It seems the leader of the MAGA crowd would be most at home when the Confederacy was still revered (by racists who promulgated the “Lost Cause” nonsense), when scientists lacked the ability to contradict him and when only certain kinds of voters (his) could manage to cast their ballots. For the rest of us who live in a modern, multiracial, technologically sophisticated 21st-century America, he seems like a poor fit for president.
