When Was America "Great"???

Donald Trump

Dumbass Donald's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again" seems to be resonating with a lot of voters in the GOP primaries.  I've asked the question several times of Trump supporters; when was this time when America was "great" that we are going to go back to?   To date I've only received one response.   I'll save that one for last.   It puzzles me that so many want to go back to a time yet so few are willing to articulate exactly when that time was.   Since I can't get many responses, I'll try to guess.

I'm going to start with the "greatest generation", generally regarded as the generation who grew up during the Great Depression and went on to fight in World War II, or as Donald Trump might say, WW2.   Tom Brokaw is generally acknowledged to be an expert on this time frame in U.S. History which began around 1920, also known as the "Roaring Twenties".   Some things to consider about this period:

• Women did not get the right to vote until August 18, 1920. 
• America got it's first commercial radio station on November 2, 1920, KDKA in Pittsburgh.  The fist broadcast was the returns of the Harding-Cox presidential election.  
• The U.S. Congress passed the 18th Amendment on January 16, 1920 which made the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal.  (Alcohol consumption or private possession however, was never illegal)
• The stock market Crashed on October 29, 1929, beginning the Great Depression. 
•  Unemployment in the U.S. was about 25% 
• Around half the nation's 2600 banks closed by 1929.  According to Tom Brokaw, Businesses were failing everywhere, sending four and a half million people onto the streets with no safety net. The average American farm family had an annual cash income of four hundred dollars. 
• Also, according to Brokaw, "The majority of black Americans were still living in the states of the former Confederacy, and they remained second-class citizens, or worse, in practice and law.

It's generally accepted that the Great Depression didn't end until the U.S. got involved in the war in 1941, and that it ended mostly due to government spending on the war.    Maybe it's just me, but I think America in 2016 is greater.  

So I'm still searching for that time period when America was "Great".  Let's try the President Reagan years, 1981- 1989.  I graduated in high school from 1987, and I generally remember it being a pretty good time in my life.   I know my conservative friends often talk with great fondness of the President Reagan years.  This was the merger mania decade on Wall Street, the era of Gordon Gekko and "greed is good".  Some things to consider about that time period:

• The minimum wage was frozen at $3.35 an hour for his entire Presidency.  President Reagan thought there should be no minimum wage for children.  
• The country did have economic growth, but most of that growth benefitted those who were already rich.  President Reagan's supply side economics philosophy was the beginning of the dramatic income inequality we see in the country today.
• Hundreds of savings and loans collapsed, costing the federal government $130 billion to bail out the depositors.  
• The federal government's drastic reduction of aid to U.S. Cities put an enormous strain on city budgets which led to increased homelessness and poverty in our nation's largest cities.  Many of our cities still have not recovered.
• The U.S. government secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran in direct violation of U.S. law. 

Even though I think it's pretty accurate to say the Reagan years were "great" for the richest 1% of Americans, I'm not sure it was actually great for the rest of us.  I think most economists look at the Reagan years as one big vacation that America took and put on a credit card.   That bill wasn't paid until President Clinton left office.  Looking at the Reagan years versus today, I'm still going to go with today as being greater.

The one actual response I got to the question was 1947.   Right off the bat I recognized that this was before the Voting Rights Act and before integration in the South, so I knew it wasn't necessarily a great time for people that looked like me.  But still I went to look up some facts from 1947.  Consider these:

• Jackie Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 1st to become the first Black professional baseball player.
• President Truman signed the National Security Act, creating the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.
• The Hollywood 10 were blacklisted by Hollywood studios after refusing to co-operate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. 



Jackie Robinson

• The Civil Rights movement had yet to occur, America still operated a de facto apartheid system in almost every respect.  

With all due respect to my conservative friend.  I still prefer today.

I often say that the biggest problem with our politics today is Americans by and large have become selfish and lack empathy.   Whereas previous generations of Americans have generally elected politicians based on the theory that which benefits the most of us benefits us all and makes us a stronger society, there has been a shift where Americans today only vote for self interests.   We now vote for politicians who promise to make life better for me, even if it means doing things that aren't in the best interests of the country.   When I hear Trump supporters say they want to "make America great again" I don't think they're talking about making America great for all Americans.   I think they are talking about making America "great" again only for Americans that look, act and think just like them.