Usually, a slogan is just a slogan. Perhaps it’s a catchy
rhyme or humorous phrase. Really, they’re just mnemonics; memory aids. I’ve
been known to walk around all day singing “Chicken parm, you taste so good”. It’s
ridiculous, and taken out of context, people should be giving me strange looks
for singing about my food. But everyone knows that I’m referencing Nationwide
Insurance. Imagine that: a jingle about
chicken parmesan sandwiches that make me think about car insurance.
Some slogans simply stand as a sort of mission statement;
something that is intended in the message. That brings me to campaign slogans.
President Obama used the “Change We Can Believe In” slogan, and presented to
voters, stood as a powerful message of intent. But I can’t remember people
walking around saying that, or using that phrase in conversation. What I find
interesting about Trump’s “Make America Great Again” is that his supporters
actually say those words in conversation with others. It has happened to me
many times. It happened just the other day, actually. I was having a
conversation with a Trump supporter who told me that he believed Trump was
going to “bring back jobs and make America great again.” It didn’t even sound
like he used it as some kind of rallying cry; like it was rehearsed. It may as
well have been an original line in his dialogue based in his true beliefs about
what comes next.
I’m passing no judgement for this at all. The purpose of
this article isn’t debate the qualities of President Trump or to try to predict
what kind of policies are to come. I won’t begrudge the person who cast their
vote, confident that Trump will do well as president. Rather, what set me to
thinking was the slogan itself. Make America Great Again. Again is the word that strikes me first. It implies that greatness had
been achieved, but it was lost somewhere along the way. When did we lose it?
Would Trump or his supporters mark that time with the previous eight years
under Obama? Did his presidency evaporate American greatness that had been
established in the aftermath of World War II? Or had our greatness been
declining for some time? No one has quite pointed that out. I’m not sure that
Donald Trump has even fully outlined that fall from grace and the timeline by
which it coursed. Perhaps the idea is that, from a conservative’s perspective,
America can’t possibly be great under the leadership of the left. “Make America
Great Again”, therefore, begins to sound strangely akin to a previous slogan
used by others—“Take Our Country Back”. That one always had me questioning what
non-American outsiders had taken hold of our country and government. I guess if
you’re different, you’re dangerous.
What really evokes deeper thought is the concept of greatness. I’d be willing to bet that
the majority of Americans feel that America is or was great. I guess it depends
on who you ask, though. Is it possible that someone whose family and ancestors
have always been marginalized, enslaved, discriminated against, or even
slaughtered might differ? Perhaps a Native American might not agree with the
idea that America has ever been great. Perspective is a funny thing. I always
grew up believing in America’s exceptional status in the world. Maybe that’s
what I was taught, and I never experienced anything to personally challenge
that idea. But the older I have gotten, I can see that not everyone has had
that experience.
Doesn’t that mean greatness
is kind of a subjective thing? Can it be great for some people and terrible
for others? How do we even define such greatness? What are the parameters? I’ve
decided that most people might point to wealth and military dominance. The
biggest, baddest, richest kid on the block. We established a post-depression
economy that was the strongest in the world, mainly because there was no
competition. Europe, Russia, Japan, and China had been ravaged by war. They
spent the following twenty years rebuilding, and not one shot was fired in
America. On top of that, we had increased the size of our military during the
war, and with the Truman Doctrine, escalated it from there. It was in those
following decades after WWII that we built a strong sense of capitalistic
nationalism that could see you locked up as a communist for questioning or
defying. A rich country and huge military was the end result of the fighting our
grandfathers had endured on the beaches of France and the jungles of the
Philippines.
But are wealth and brute strength truly the measure of
greatness. Let us personify those qualities. What about a person who is very
wealthy? Does that immediately make that person great? They might be, but is it wealth that makes
them great? That person might be a real shit stain. Thus, wealth doesn’t make
you great. Neither does a person’s ability to kick another’s ass. It might make
him a bully. In fact, it might very well land that person in jail for assault.
Some people point to our founding fathers and the
constitution. There, I might say you’re on to something. From my perspective, I’ve
never had to deal with racism or any other consequence of the darker aspects of
our history. The Emancipation Proclamation or the Civil Rights Movement didn’t
do much to affect my life today. I’ve never had to fight for the right to marry
who I choose. I’ve never had someone discriminate against me for my religious
beliefs. Slavery, Native American removal, Jim Crow—all of these things point
to a society that has been far from perfect as our founding fathers attempted.
But the spirit of what they did in the latter half of the 18th
century is the very thing that makes America great. It’s the spirit of
progress. It’s the spirit of innovation. We take risks and try new things. We
try to correct our misgivings and move forward.
Progress, until recently, was not a politicized word. It
wasn’t merely a left wing ideal bemoaned by the right. People on both ends of
the political spectrum embraced innovation. Eisenhower was a Republican, and
under his administration, we got interstate highways. The revolution, the 13th
amendment, the extension of marriage rights to same sex couples. The invention
of flight. Jonas Salk created the polio vaccine and gave it away for free. If
you look throughout American history, the bright points—the moments that define
our country and make it great—are always moments of progress and innovation. We
decided to do it better. We decided to make our society better. We pioneered
modern democracy for many other countries to use as a model. We invented things
that would change human life the world over. We revolutionized art and literature.
That is what makes America great. So
if you want to make America great again, go out and do something new. You make it great again. Not Donald
Trump.
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