White man’s country
In the 1970s, I thought changes in US laws and customs had put cries of “get out” and “go home” to rest. I thought the legislation of the 1960s on immigration, civil rights and access to the vote had put all that behind us, in law, at least, if not totally in practice. I thought the United States had turned a corner, had moved away from “this is a white man’s country” and relegated “go back to where you came from” to schoolyard taunts.
I didn’t quite think that, but I thought the changes and legislation had made the more overt behavior more shameful and thus less practiced in public.
Trump has made us admit that the “white man’s country” past – the past of publicly uttered white supremacy that Trump channels, the unabashed bigotry and xenophobia, the long, long past of race hate in the American south, but also in the west and the north—flourishes among us. His followers chant “send her back” and he preens in their enthusiasm.
He’s done that, and he and his allies and fans are also busily educating a new generation straight into racism, noisy shameless unabashed public racism. This isn’t going to fade away once Trump is gone.
Trump’s stated aim is to “make America great again.” That only begs the question: ‘what made America ungreat?’
The answer can only be the defeat of all its armed forces and those of its allies in Vietnam 1965-75, by the people of Vietnam, against whom the war was fought. The Vietnamese armies were too good for America to beat, and had the advantage of fighting a defensive war; as Secretary MacNamara, Nixon, Johnson and Kissinger realised too late.
And so in its humiliation, America became ungreat; helped along by Nixon’s Watergate imbroglio and schemozzle. And a few other issues.
But then again, the only human societies in the history of the world to have achieved ‘greatness’ have done so on the basis of severe inequality at home, and have been imperial military hierarchies. Mussolini and his fascists took every opportunity to remind the Italians and the world of the ‘greatness’ of Ancient Rome, and of the expansion of its imperial domain, with the whole thing resting on slavery and continual frontier warfare.
Trump would do a lot better to hold Scandinavia, Switzerland or Iceland up as the examples to follow; ‘great’ because they abandoned all imperial projects early-on, or never bothered with them in the first place.
The poor benighted fools who voted for Trump were suckered by his ‘greatness’ bullshit; more fool them.
Omar, I think all that hinges on how you define “great”. My brother, who is Trump with a better vocabulary and a worse suit, would agree that the loss in Vietnam would count as destroying greatness. He thought we should nuke them out of existence. But you end up suggesting that there might be something else called greatness (and I would agree), but as you rightly suggested, the Trump voters believe the other line.
Greatness as military might is all too prevalent in this country (and in much of this world). We need to redefine what it means to be great. Great art, great literature, great music, great food, great health care, great support for all citizens, great ecological care…all of these would be included in what I would consider great. Trump is completely unable to deliver any of that (and even if he did, it wouldn’t be a great again, since we have had only greatness in the superficial, military and material wealth sense in our history.)
To feel great, many people need someone to look down upon. So I think “great” also implies “being better than…”.: Better than other nations, better than other people, and especially better than other people in your own country.
So if you can feel better than that homeless guy or that brown girl or that elitist lawyer…, that’s worth a lot. It is even worth voting against your own interests. Yes, you may need healthcare or some sort of welfare, but others need it more and denying it to them makes sure that you (and they) know it. Racism is of course a facet of this, with the advantage of it being easy to categorize people just by their looks, but it is not all of it.
iknklast & Sonderval,
I could not agree more. As long as Captain Bonespurs aka Trump can keep the Homer and Marge Simpsons of America feeling safe at the second-bottom level of the social heap, convinced that there are still some somewhere beneath them, and that without Trump they could well be worse off, then there is a good chance he will be their hero for that.
I suppose that situation will continue until factors beyond the genius even of Trump’s propagandists to play down take hold. But then, look out. Trump could see no salvation for himself or his gang through any other course than scaremongering and a witch hunt.
After all, it worked in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692-93. What is so different about today?
We have better, more advance methods of tracking people down? Torturing? Killing?