With the 2024 general election barely five months away, I wanted to explore the theme of Donald J. Trump’s campaign, “Make America Great Again.”  Win or lose, it has remained the same since he ran for president in 2012.  It has become a brand among Mr. Trump’s followers and a mantra for any Republican politician who hopes to keep his job or avoid threats against his family. Nor have women of integrity in the political hierarchy of the Republican Party (such as Liz Cheney) been spared.

I was still teaching politics full-time when the slogan “Make America Great Again” first became widely-known, and I offered my students the opportunity to research and write about exactly when America enjoyed greatness in the past.  I didn’t want them to just parrot some public relations release on the Web. I wanted them to dig into the theme and draw–and defend–their own conclusions. The MAGA statement suggests that we were a great nation once, but we’ve let greatness slip through our fingers, and now we are either mediocre among nations or on the brink of ruin. Maybe it’s because of the migrants crossing our borders who are poisoning our blood, and raping our women as they secretly build an army to destroy us from within? They are “animals” and “not human, according to the Republican candidate for president. Mr. Trump, after all, is not the first demagogue to attack immigrants who enter our country legally or otherwise. What people coming to America today want is mostly what your parents and grandparents (and their grandparents) wanted when they came here: A chance to be free, safe and provide a better life for their children and grandchildren. Is that such a crime? Of course, we can’t take millions of people every year, but this is a matter for Congress to decide and they have defeated the latest legislation to bring structure to the process.

Or, maybe it is the climate change “hoax” with all the environmental regulations to save wetlands and meadowlands that might be better converted into parking lots or golf courses? Or expensive attempts to clean up the air and water that are cutting into the profits of corporate shareholders? Maybe this is dragging us down?

WHERE DOES ONE BEGIN?

Was America great when the U.S. won its independence?  Or, perhaps, during the years that wagon trains crossed the Great Plains headed West?  Maybe it was after the Great Rebellion, also known as the American Civil War, was ended, or the growth in commerce and industry during the Gilded Age?  The ascent to global leadership after World War II might quality as well.  Or, perhaps the moon landing?  That was more than half a century ago and has not yet been repeated.  Of the three astronauts on Apollo 11, two have died of natural causes, and Buzz Aldrin is still alive and kicking at a ripe age of 94.

WE WANTED CALIFORNIA, SO WE STOLE IT

Like many, I am a student of American history.  I don’t believe everything I read, however. I am skeptical at attempts to revise history, or completely reinterpret and overturn historical events (or statues commemorating them on the town square) unless there is logical reason to do so. To do so otherwise is to me, not just Marxist, but Maoist.  Whereas some might look at the freedom Americans giddily enjoyed after the Revolution was won, many others in this country understand that people of color were destined to remain firmly shackled to that “peculiar institution” of slavery, and faced the lash of the whip without warning, and perhaps, without reason. The romance of the Conestoga wagons traveling West must be weighed against the fact that most of the land west of Wyoming and south of Oregon that was coveted and settled by Americans belonged lawfully to Mexico and seized unlawfully during the Mexican-American War.  DId this theft make us great?

The Civil War (aka The War Between the States) was an event which caused the deaths of almost 620,000 Americans (360,222 Union deaths and 258,000 Confederate deaths.)  Did this bloodshed make us great?

THE GILDED AGE

The Gilded Age (1870s to the late 1890s) was a self-congratulatory time among Americans (those of European descent, at least), but the American Indians would know nothing of it.  On December 29, 1890, at a place called Wounded Knee, South Dakota, somewhere between ≈150 and ≈300 Lakota were massacred by the Army’s 7^th Calvary.  Nineteen Medals of Honor were subsequently, and occasionally posthumously, issued to the U.S. Army soldiers involved in the “battle.”  I searched in vain to see how long the engagement actually lasted, but could not find a duration specified.  So, students of history must speculate how long it took 490 soldiers armed with the latest Springfield carbines and assisted by four Hotchkiss M1875 rapidly repeating cannon to kill as many as 300 Native Americans. Each cannon was capable of firing 4-6 rounds a minute at a fairly accurate range of slightly greater than a mile.  These four weapons, alone, were sufficient to dispatch 120 armed Lakota’s, plus almost twice^[1] that many women and children on level, exposed ground.  So, maybe the battle lasted perhaps fifteen minutes or less? If only this were an isolated event.

TRAIL OF TEARS

Although there are no accurate records, the number of Native Americans who were killed directly or indirectly by whites between 1492-1900 must certainly run into the few millions (e.g., there were 10,000 deaths alone related to the so-called “Trail of Tears” forced march.) The rest of the original Americans were killed by disease imported from Europe, war, genocide ethnic cleansing, mass murder, starvation and so on.  So I ask: “How does this figure into American greatness?”

RACE RIOTS

The Roaring Twenties was ushered in by the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.  Two years later as middle class America was dancing the Charleston while inebriated by bootleg whiskey, few people outside of Oklahoma paid attention to the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 which led to the death of as many as 300 people (overwhelmingly black Americans.) Another 300 black Americans were also lynched during the same decade, of a total of 3,445 hung without due process or mercy between 1882 and 1968, the year the data base stops. But there was subsequent lynchings afterwards, finally ending in 1981 with the death of Michael Donald found dangling from a tree in Mobile, Alabama.

More race riots occurred before and after this decade. The most recent one is probably the Ferguson, Missouri riot in 2014. Often a riot with racial undertones today is caused by the death of a black person at the hands of the police. It is not unusual for a black prisoner to be beaten while bound, or a black person with some mental health emergency to be shot or tased from some distance away. For many victims, their last words are “I can’t breathe!” Curiously, the body cameras of the police involved in this brutality are usually turned off or have malfunctioned in some equally mysterious way. Personally, I believe that 99.9 percent of the police officers across America are decent, hardworking, honest, and law-abiding folks. But that doesn’t save the life of the occasional black motorist or minister who never returns home after driving to a convenience store for a carton of milk at night. And I understand that when a police officer gives a suspect the benefit of the doubt, his trust and goodwill may cost him his life.

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

The Great Depression did not discriminate between age, race, class, political party preference, region of the country and so on.  Everyone was affected alike.  Herbert Hoover was the Republican president from 1929-1933.  No one ever accused Hoover of starting the Great Depression, but he was blamed for not doing enough to keep the Depression from gathering momentum.  This was the case with President George H.W. Bush in 1992. It may be due to a fundmental laissez-faire approach to the marketplace that conservatives have. Add to this the Dust Bowl, and you have a recipe for disaster on a monumental scale.

THE FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT OF 1938

One other area I want to mention because it is being “dusted off” and brought up in Republican circles has to do with the federal legislation that ended child labor in America (the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.)  Until this law was passed, children were often used for manual labor before they reached puberty.  I’m not talking about newsboys, or children who shined shoes for tips.  I’m referring to those children forced to risk their prepubescent lives. Perhaps their short stature made them “ideal” to squeeze deep into a coal mine shaft that adults could not enter to plant some dynamite, or maybe they could climb under or behind heavy and dangerous equipment to free a piece of fabric in a mill while the rollers were in motion.  Maybe, because they were a child, an employer could get away paying them a nickel an hour during the depression instead of a quarter?  But children were nonetheless at risk:

“Work as a child was a dangerous affair. Machinery and tools injured nearly three times the number of children as adults. Many lost fingers, hands, or legs through entanglement with machinery, simple miscalculations, or distractions. For those who survived, many carried scars from factory life well into their adulthood.”

One cannot say with any accuracy that Democrats supported the bill and Republicans opposed it.  This is because a century ago, we had such a thing as liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats.  This is essentially no longer true.  It is true that conservatives opposed excluding young children from the workplace and forcing employers to pay a minimum wage.  Conservatives did all they could to defeat, or at least, weaken the legislation, according to the U.S. Department Labor:

The bill was voted upon May 24, 1938, with a 314-to-97 majority. After the House had passed the bill, the Senate-House Conference Committee made still more changes to reconcile differences. During the legislative battles over fair labor standards, members of Congress had proposed 72 amendments. Almost every change sought exemptions, narrowed coverage, lowered standards, weakened administration, limited investigation, or in some other way worked to weaken the bill.”

Like any bills, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 can and has been amended.  Perhaps a thirteen-year-old is able to do light work for pay (such as computer programing, counting change as a cashier, housekeeping and so on.) Certainly, we want to, or should want to, encourage the entrepreneurs of the next generation.  Deena and I pay neighborhood children to walk our dog, Molly, and to rake leaves in the fall if they offer.  And we pay them pretty much what we would pay an adult because we want them to take the task seriously (assuming they have the ways and means to complete the assignment.) We don’t want to exploit them because of their age.  We want them to have a happy experience as they experience the dignity of work, earn their own money and provide us with a valuable service.

WE NEED HEALING, NOT GUILT

As the son of German immigrants, I feel sad about how people of color suffered in America. I don’t feel personally guilty about it, however, anymore than a thirty-year old German today should feel personally responsible for the Holocaust. I do act in a very circumspect, reverent way so as not to attract the attention of the demons of hate, racism or prejudice who might see me as fair game. And I don’t want to provide a horrible, guilt-ridden litany of grievances here.  I do want to suggest that America’s past is checkered to say the least, and just as there is a danger to paint it entirely in negative terms, there is also a temptation to focus on the best in our history to the exclusion of the worst.

And I will admit that there is a case for American Exceptionalism, a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831.

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

To political scientist Seymour Lipset, American Exceptionalism is the theory that the United States is inherently different from other nations, in terms of accomplishments, and a certain destiny for greatness.  This notion is sometimes referred to as America as the “City on a Hill.”  Taken to an extreme, it suggests a certain moral superiority possessed by Americans.  Some of the specific examples of American Exceptionalism might be 

• The invention of the Internet. The Internet has truly revolutionized the planet.
• Possessing—for the moment—the strongest military force on the planet.
• Nobel Prizes won:  At 413, the U.S. has one almost three times the number Nobel Prizes that runner up U.K. has won at 138.
• We lead the world in nominal GDP and median income.
• We also lead the world in terms of planning for the future.
• For what it’s worth, we lead the world in the percent of people who believe in angels.  Unfortunately, we also lead the world in the number of people incarcerated. The question of whether people in prison believe in angels, however, has not been polled as far as I know.

Are there great days ahead for the United States of America? Almost certainly, but certainly not unless we can put aside our hate and rage, our tribal mentality, our intolerance of diversity, our xenophobia, and at least some of our assault weapons.

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FOOTNOTES

^[1] Brown (2009), p. 178, Brown states that at the army camp, “the Indians were carefully counted.” Utley (2004), p. 204, gives 120 men, 230 women and children; there is no indication how many were warriors, old men, or incapacitated sick. . .” (Wikipedia.)