“Great Again” When?

Whatever has been is what will be, and whatever has been done is what will be done.  There is nothing new beneath the sun!

Ecclesiastes 9:1 Stone Edition Tanach

Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” has one glaring flaw.  When exactly was “Great?”  Rather than restoring America to a former glory, he is refusing to learn from history.  For instance, his hostility toward USAID.  We take USAID for granted now, but it only became important as America struggled to win the Cold War.  In the beginning, America believed in fighting the Cold War solely through military might.  Then we learned the importance of soft power and the war of ideas–that the world viewing America as committed to human rights was as important as being a superpower.  

Trump’s shocking and utterly unworkable idea to remove Palestinians has been tried before as well, several times.  Ironically, one effort was made by USAID.  They moved Palestinians to Jordan, hoping they would see themselves as Jordanian.  It didn’t work.  It became clear that the Palestinians were a people with a homeland and were not going to go willingly.  They were displaced once and were not going to be displaced again.  The world moved forward and came to understand that a two state solution was needed–except Trump, who insists on repeating history and telling the world it is something new.

Stocking a federal bureaucracy on the basis of loyalty isn’t a new idea either.  It was called the “spoils system.”  But the rest of us don’t want to return to the 1880’s, before the Pendleton Act established a merit based process for hiring civil servants.  It would take a long time for the merit based system to take hold.  But as it did people understood it as a step forward.  Ironically, the main reason the merit based system was instituted was to increase efficiency.

Furthermore, it is not as if transgender people have never encountered laws that force them into the closet.  Not so long ago people went to jail for dressing in “drag”.  Cross-dressing was kept secret and if discovered lives would be ruined.  It was accepted that gender dysphoria was a mental illness.  Then we had the Stonewall Uprising, and the movement it sparked.  Transgender people became recognized members of society.

The last two generations have brought negative changes as America has transformed socioeconomically.  But this isn’t the first time America has faced such changes.  During the Gilded Age, America transitioned from an agrarian economy to an industrial one.  There were real problems, like child labor and tainted food.  But America did not return to an agrarian economy.  We passed child labor laws.  Harvey Wiley and his Poison Squad laid the foundation for the FDA.  America had to adapt to seismic changes; it could not return to the past.

We should be careful when we use the word “unprecedented” to describe Trump.  There are precedents to his backward and dangerous ideas.  They exist far back in the annals of the history he is repeating.  Trump isn’t making America great again.  He is rolling back hundreds of years of human progress, not returning America to a storied past.