There is nothing too profound in this post. Most of it comes from my never-ending, futile quest to enlighten the crazies in my extended family.
Perhaps some of this will help you to articulate the argument when you are with your own family nut-jobs. Hopefully you’ll have more success than I did.
Throughout the course of history there have been powerful nations. Prior to the founding of the U.S., a powerful nation was one that had proven itself as a mighty force, wielding its power to conquer the world..
Then we came along and wrote the U.S. Constitution. Our new nation was to be, and has become,a powerful nation — not based solely on our military might — but on the very simple concept that all men are created equal and should be treated equally.
Fast forward to the 21st century — we are a powerful nation and a great nation.
We have not yet achieved perfect equality. Our greatness comes only from the fact that we continue to move closer and closer to our stated purpose. We likely will never achieve perfect equality — but no matter what gets thrown in our path we keep trying.
That is what makes us a great country.
Those who scream about making America great again, begin with a false premise based on the idea that as long as there is room for improvement, we cannot be great.
The biggest falsehood in this argument is the part where we need to to re-achieve our greatness. It goes like this.
- We used to be great.
- We lost that greatness.
- We need to get it back.
The challenge with that is that it conflicts with the part about equating greatness with perfection.
The issues that prevent us from “greatness” are issues that we’ve been dealing with since the day the Constitution was ratified.
We have never solved the issues- but we keep getting better.
“Make America Great Again,” is a slogan. And, it’s a great slogan. How can you be against the idea of America being great? If you aren’t in favor of America being great, then you must be a traitor.
He Who Shall Not Be Named draws them in with the slogan based on a sense of patriotism — and then he begins to show our lack of greatness through a litany of issues that strike fear into the hearts of those want America to be great again.
If you ask a supporter when America WAS great and when we lost our greatness, their mind will turn to a fuzzy memory of a time that never was.
There is no decade when we didn’t have the same or similar problems that we face today. The human mind, however, has a protective component where we remember good experiences more clearly than bad ones.
The idea of the United States is great and we, the people, have been striving for a few centuries to move in the right direction.