Trigger Warning: Don’t Read if You Believe America Was Once “Great.”

Let’s be honest. When some people say, “Make America great again,” they’re being nostalgic, which by its very definition means, “a sentimental or wistful affection for a past period with happy personal associations.”

Yeah. It’s those “personal happy associations” we have to watch out for. Many people never had them.

For example, the vintage photo above is from the article, “Ten Outrageous Reasons Black People Were Lynched in America.”   They include things like “skipping a rock across a lake,” and being “unpopular in the community.” Now, there’s a history lesson we were never taught in public school.  Today, lynchings have been replaced by police brutality in poorer Black neighborhoods. (I experienced this firsthand in my dealings with the profoundly crooked and abusive Oakland California Police Department.) 

Then there are the mentally ill, who were so badly mistreated throughout United States history that this article about what was done to them in the 1800s will give you nightmares. Today, the mentally ill are left homeless on our streets if they cannot afford psychiatric help. Here’s one who was recently beaten to death for “looking suspicious.”  

That’s Blacks and the mentally infirm covered. Let’s talk about homosexuals. Prior to 1962, homosexuality was “illegal” in every state in the USA and punishable by prison. In fact, in 1779, Thomas Jefferson, one of our forefathers,  wrote a law in Virginia which contained a punishment of castration for men who engage in sodomy.  Luckily it was rejected by the Virginia Legislature, but only recently a pastor in Arizona took that mindset one step further and called for his congregation to “kill gays for an AIDS-free Christmas.”     

And then, in 1917, American suffragettes who called themselves the  Silent Sentinels began picketing the White House for the right to vote. Yes, in yesteryear’s “great”America, women were not allowed to vote. Over two hundred of those women were arrested, with many sent to the notorious Occoquan workhouse, where the conditions were horrific. Some went on hunger strikes and were force fed with raw eggs in milk, which they almost immediately vomited up.  How’s that for being a “great” country?  Doesn’t sound so bad, does it, being thrown in jail for your cause, and forced to eat? Beg to differ. Here’s an account by a British sister suffragette, Sylvia Pankhurt, who describes what it felt like to be forcibly fed, while in prison, for the sole reason that women wanted the same civil rights as men. 

If we take the “greatness’ of America and discuss our foreign policy of unmanned drones that drop bombs on innocent people so that we here in this country, can feel “safer,” well, the reasoning behind that boggles the mind. For example, here’s a photo of of some dead babies who were pulled from the rubble after a US drone was dropped on them. Now, seriously —if someone did that to us, would that scare us into submission? Or do you think we would hate down to our soul the motherfucker who did this to our kids? Would we passively back down, having learned our lesson not to “mess with the US,” or would we do everything in our limited power and limited resources to get revenge, even if that means dying in the process? If you ask yourself what you’d do if one of these children were yours, it shouldn’t be a leap to figure out how suicide bombers came to be. 

This is why when I hear, “Make American great again,” what I’m sometimes hearing underneath that is, “Make America great again for white wealthy males, with no interference or protests from women, people of color, the LGBT community, immigrants, the poor, those who live in other countries, and all other human beings we’ve happily exploited and marginalized since we signed the Declaration of Independence 240 years ago.”

Funny thing is, those who are shouting, “Make American great again,” are not all white, male, and wealthy. Many are blue-collar, lower classes of all races, creeds, and sexes, who feel cheated and disenfranchised. But they are blaming the wrong people for that and supporting the very ones who caused our economy to crash, a crash in which only those at the bottom suffered. Sadly, these people don’t know that. They’ve been taught to see themselves as millionaires who temporarily have no money. “Temporarily.” They’ve been taught to believe that the reason they don’t have their millions right now,  is the fault of the guy standing next to them, suffering right alongside with them. But these millionaires without money don’t recognize that those next to them on the same economic and social scale are kindred spirits, for the reason that they have a different tone skin, or speak with an accent, or have a uterus, or go to a different place of worship, or have sex in a way that’s weird to them.

Politicians thrive on that. If they can keep us separate, looking sideways at each other with suspicion and even hatred, we will never look up at those we’ve put in charge, and examine the laws that they make that benefit only them, or the ones they exclude themselves from, or the back room deals they all make, and how every politician — every single one — gets richer and more powerful the longer we allow it.  It’s a stupendous con. Genius, really, because not only do we accept it, they’ve gift-wrapped it so brilliantly in Red, White, and Blue that we actually enjoy it.