Mr Trump, you tell us that you want to make America great again. Would you tell us when you think America was great?
No one is asking you that simple question. It might challenge your first grade rhetoric, who knows? Or cause you to insult or attack or eject or ban or rough up some journalist for making you uncomfortable. So we'll try.
Was it great when we got started and half the country owned slaves and only people in your economic class could vote?
Was it great when it aggressively expanded into native territories, violated treaties endlessly, forced deadly migrations, and committed genocide?
Was it great when two sides fought monstrous, bloody battles and left the South in tatters because they refused to end slavery?
Was it great when the robber barons, under laissez-faire capitalism, repeatedly led us into depressions, when workers’ strikes were met by armed repression?
Was it great when women couldn’t vote? Or Black citizens?
Was it great when Teddy Roosevelt busted the trusts?
When he set aside massive tracts of natural beauty to be owned and operated for the citizens?
When he followed up on the theft of half of Mexico by ejecting Spain from this hemisphere and most of its other colonies?
Was it great when Sacco and Vanzetti, in a spasm of racist fear of darker-skinned immigrants, were falsely accused, convicted, and hanged?
Was it great when a series of wars and interventions kept much of Latin America subservient to US agricultural and energy needs?
Was it great when the KKK and its kin lynched African Americans?
Was segregation part of its greatness, or red-lining, or overt discrimination, or poll taxes?
Was it great when Herbert Hoover fiddled as the economy tanked?
Was it great when isolationists looked away and the Bush family made a fortune as Hitler re-armed Germany?
Was it great when whole industries – mining, textiles, steel, auto, were finally unionized?
Was it great when FDR launched and expanded the New Deal? When he regulated capitalism?
Was it great when we prevailed in WWII, and then sent all those GI’s to college, and helped them buy houses, and taxed millionaires at 90%?
And at the same time excluded over 10% of our citizens from sharing in most of that opportunity?
Was it great when we faced down the Soviet Union, but had a nightmare balance of destructive power hanging by a thread?
Was it great when we finally passed civil rights laws, after generations of struggle, murder, and resistance?
Was it great when we went wild for science, math, and technology and won the Space Race?
Was it great when we waged wars against tiny countries of rice farmers and tried to bomb them back into the stone age?
Was it great when we finally passed laws to protect the air and water from industrial poisons, and to save plants and animals from extinction at our hands?
Was it great when migrant farm workers finally had their union recognized?
Was it great when the Southern Strategy was hatched?
Was it great during Watergate?
Was it great when deregulation of savings and loans cost taxpayers billions and billions?
Was it great when we had relative peace and prosperity and ran a balanced budget during the ‘90’s?
Was it great when we were attacked by terrorists in our greatest city, and launched two wars in response, at least one of which was for faked reasons, destroyed a country and left it in chaos? When we didn’t pay any of the bills for it and tanked the economy yet again?
Was it great when the taxpayers bailed out deregulated banks again, this time for 20 times what the previous mess had cost?
How about when we stopped one of those wars, brought the economy back from the brink, and greatly expanded health care access and coverage?
Was it great when you and others railed that Obama wasn’t born a citizen despite the mountain of evidence?
So, when was it great? What vision do you have? What version of the past would you care to lead us into? Inquiring minds need to know. Oh wait.
Happy Labor Day. I'll be in and out and will try to join the thread when I can.