MAGA

How has Trump made America great again?

Millions unemployed and 100,000+ dead from a disease, and a pariah on the international stage.

That's not great.

Was America ever great?

Parts of it were. I grew up where it was "great" in a small New England Republican community. There were no homeless, no race problems.

There were financial differences. The family that invented the ace corners for photographs had more money than the shoemaker's family, but they were only poor in comparison, not the hungry, living with rats poor.

The Seventh Day Adventist family was not allow to have their laundry open on Sunday in place of their Saturday Sabbath. That was as close to religious intolerance seeping into law. Yes, Protestant kids were expected to marry into their own religion as were Catholic kids.

A bit of tribalism existed based on ethnic backgrounds depending on if you name had an O' or ended in an O for example. Never mind endings in stein, eau, etc.

We did have two black families, neither of which were integrated into the community. One family was headed by a man who owned the gas station. One was Bill Russell.

I thought every family had enough food, a car, a job, a chance to be anything they wanted. They could get the education and training they needed than set up their own families. Everything was possible if we just worked hard enough.

Unlike in most families, my mother was not a housewife. She was a trend setter. She worked first having her own business than as a successful journalist.

She never saw the need for the feminist movement because she never had let anything stop her from what she wanted. In a way, it was a role model for me, that made me push boundaries, but still as an educated white woman, doors would open that would be denied others. I only had to put my foot in to stop it shutting. Unlike my mother, I saw the need for a movement, so women like my mother, women like me didn't have to jam that foot in the door.

Only later did I learn about the treatment of Indians in the founding of the country, of sharecroppers, KKK and slums. I learned about the fight for unions that reduced the sweatshops.

Only when I read biographies and history books that went beyond the propaganda taught in schools did I learn that the America I grew up in, was not all of America or even most of America. There was a hidden underbelly.

I would like all of America to be somewhat like my childhood America, where everyone has a nice roof over their heads, a good education. Where when a person goes for a job the only thing considered are the qualifications.

I want to see an America where people feel they don't have just rights but responsibilities to the society as a whole. I look at the trash left on the beaches when people were allowed back on them. I see people screaming about wearing masks that might save other people from dying.

I want to see an America where truth matters.

I want to see an America where differences can be celebrated not used as a political weapon to keep others down.

I want to see where people are willing to share not just hoard.

I want to see America made great for the first time.

Silly me.