The world isn’t ending no matter how you voted. Trump is going to be the next President. Barring acts of god or other forces beyond our collective control.
#MAGA
By the way, America was never great.
It has had moments of self-awareness, and little flashes of excellence, but America can’t be made great again, because it never has been great.
Pick any moment in the history of this country, from the start up until the present, and you will find stains on the pages.
Think we were great because of the founders? Half of them were slave owners. Black people were worth 3/5ths of a white person during that time and they could be bought and sold. Not great. The founders took the land they built this country on from people who already lived on it. We call them native Americans today, and early Americans abuse the ancestors of today’s native Americans horribly.
Maybe you think we were great when we saved Europe from Hitler during World War II. You’d be wrong, because while we were busy doing that admittedly righteous thing, we were still segregated at home. We built concentration camps for Japanese-Americans because of paranoia. Not so great.
But America defeated communism you say? That’s what makes us great! Not so much. One could argue that communism isn’t such a bad concept, but I won’t go there. I’ll just remind you that we fought a lot of dirty wars to do what we did to bring down the Berlin wall in the late 80’s. Take a moment to research how many dirty wars the CIA has funded only to cast aside the fighters it recruited for political convenience. Google the Hmong, or Iran Contra, or just “the worst things the CIA has done.” American government has a long history of installing and funding atrocious, despotic governments and making friends with bad people. Remember Saddam Hussein? He was once a great friend to America. Before he became a great enemy to our great country that has never really been great for any sustained period of time.
Maybe you think America was great more recently. Let’s say you think it was great after slavery and segregation and all the secretly funded dirty wars. We finally made some progress on human rights and immediately started massive spying programs that break our laws. The NSA collects data on all Americans and possibly all the world for all I know. I know for certain that our so-called great nation is spying on world leaders and governments while keeping many secrets of its own from us. That doesn’t seem so great to me.
America was never great. It only has the potential to be great in the future. That’s the real challenge of a Trump presidency. Admitting that the starting point of his entire campaign is a lie. I don’t think he’s up to the challenge. I’ll be watching and commenting the whole way, as he attempts to make America something is has never been. Again.
Next time someone tells you we’re going to make America great again, I hope you’ll call them on it. We can make America great for the first time, but we need to start from an honest place to do so.