When Was America Great?: What MAGA Really Means
In Progress..
The sense of declinism among those who sport Chinese made Make America Great Again hats makes one wonder for which time in history are they longing and why? The 1950s , 1920s , 1850s ? The political realignment and social divisions America and Europe are facing are not about the proper role of government or classical ideologies of the left or right. It's just the latest skirmish between those in this country who look expectantly forward and those who look nostalgically back. It is a schism borne of fear which separates those who fear the future and those which welcome it. Between those who see the future as an end to the days of disenfranchisement, discrimination, and dislocation and those who pine for an imagined era of political consensus, community cohesion, and economic stability. Thus, despite the widespread media narrative, recent elections were fundamentally not about President Donald Trump, his Administration, or his voters. It is just the latest skirmish between those in this country who look expectantly forward and those who look nostalgically back. These two entrenched camps cut across party identification, income , race, gender, education, and region. One camp excitedly works toward a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual 21st Century America which strives to lift all its citizens and empower both men and women. The other camp pines for a halcyon America of yesteryear. An imagined country with a commonly agreed upon national narrative without today’s complexity and confusing multiple perspectives or patchwork of intersectional identities.
The Imagined American of the 1950's
Some Americans see the Post-War period as eiter an utopian paradise of bipartisan moderation, Some Americans see the Post-War period as either an utopian paradise of bipartisan moderation, owever is that the For some, the subsequent Civil Rights, Women Rights, and Gay Rights Movements of the 1960s and 70s as a culturally corrosive tipping point after which the country devolved into a politically correct grip-fest of identity politics and moral relativism. For others, the 50's were a time before before the entitlements of the 'War on Poverty' rewarded those theicy view as undeserving poor. Before so-called 'activist judges' allowed women to avoid what to them are the rightful punitive consequences of moral turpitude by legalizing birth control and abortion. Reality 1950's reality More reality The American 1920's look to 1920s America with its nearly nonexistent federal regulations, social safety net, and global military presence. They fetishize the era's protectionist economic policies and perceived racial and ethnic homogeneity despite being produced and enforced through Jim Crow laws, domestic terror, and restrictive immigration. These people reject international treaties and alliances and embrace a neo-nationalism with walls and tariffs. The 1920s was the age of conservatives like Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. They and their supporters rejected binding alliances and any notion America should make military or economic sacrifices to maintain geopolitical order and peace. Like many Trump supporters, conservatives in the 1920s saw little difference the European powers and insisted America remain independent from them all. Back then they opposed the U.N. and NATO, now they oppose Paris Accords, NAFTA, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Reality https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/the-death-of-cold-war-conservatism/562811/Others The 19th Century American Reality A smaller group longs for even an even more distant America. The time of the so-called 'wild west' and 'pioneer spirit' in a libertarian fantasy of the pre-Civil War United States of the mid-nineteenth Century.
