I Finally Understand #MAGA

It's been a minute.  Sometimes life kicks you in the teeth and you need extra time between rounds before you get back in the fight.  I haven't recovered fully but I'm stable enough now to start throwing jabs again so here we go...

Make America Great Again.  

It's the slogan that won Dolt 45 the highest office in the land.  But like most good slogans, its definition could be molded to fit almost any situation or perspective.  America means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  For some, its the ultimate melting pot.  A country made strong by its mix of people from all over the world thrown into a Star Spangled blender, bound by a commitment to democracy, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness.  To others, America is made strong by a commitment to conservative values, strong families, a strong military, and sensible fiscal policy.  To even more, it's a country that's kept strong by ensuring one group remains dominant over all others and their decisions ultimately result in better outcomes for everyone.  As we reach the one year anniversary of the most controversial presidency since Nixon I think its safe to say our favorite Cheeto in Chief wasn't thinking about these different facets when he started his quest to simplify our country's values 140 characters at a time.  To understand what he meant by the slogan you have to understand his values.  Thankfully, he's not a man of nuance, subtlety, or guile.

I said earlier that America means a lot of things to a lot of people and what the #MAGA slogan means depends on your perspective.  To a person on the outskirts of society like minorities, soon to be the collective majority, the commitment to diversity shown by the last administration was America finally recognizing your humanity.  Until Obama's election, the majority of non-immigrant, non-white Americans felt like that kid in high school no one remembers.  The observer that just went to class and passed all the cool kids in the hallway but could never make enough of an impression to get noticed.  If you did get noticed, that attention was usually negative.  Think bullied by jocks or mocked for some random deformity you have no control over like braces or being short.  Pep rallies and school spirit were wastes of time since you never felt like part of the school.  Until the coolest kid you've ever seen, cooler than the school's star QB not only talks to you like you exist, but tells the other cool kids about you.  And he's got braces.  And he's short.  But none of that matters because he just commands respect.  Suddenly you and your fellow outcasts think, "if THIS guy can pull this off and he's just like me..."  Suddenly you're an American.  No hyphens.  Old glory's stars look a little brighter and her stripes a little more vivid because for the first time in your life your country actually lived up to its promise of progress.  Of diversity.  This complete outcast just got a seat at the most powerful table on the planet and he's just like you.  

Coolest photo ever.

So diversity to you means opportunity.  A chance to shed your exterior and truly be judged by your accomplishments and your character.  Diversity to you means not having to put yourself into a bucket because the more "outcasts" there are at the table the less of an outcast you become.  From that aspect, America was already great and #MAGA means a return to the old status quo, where you're back to being the invisible short kid with the braces who gets his lunch money taken and stuffed in lockers.  That doesn't just frighten you.  It pisses you off.  That's something 45 can't relate to but his immigrant grandfather could.  It took Frederick Trump 7 years to earn his citizenship after his arrival from Germany to New York in 1885.  He eventually moved to a state that was as new as he was to America, Washington, where he voted in the first Presidential election for both of them in 1892.

Demon Seed....(Sorry, not sorry)

If you're a MAGA-American, diversity must feel like an invasion.  You grew up in a culture that not only sheltered you from the rest of the world and its issues, but deliberately put you on a false pedestal of superiority.  Every historical example of "you" presented your people in a dominant, angelic, and benevolent light that as you got older you realized was not only false, but the direct opposite of historical truth.  Your people didn't spread democracy across America as an act of upliftment for uncivilized natives.  They did what most empires do,  spread their culture by the sword (or the gun if we're being historically accurate.)  Millions died for the foundation of your country.  The country that you had been told was the shining city on the hill, a beacon of hope for the oppressed and the best force for good the world has ever known.  In fairness, America has had its moments.  The Nazis were an evil that would not have been stopped without American intervention.  American ingenuity brought the world advances in medicine, engineering, physics, and countless other positive changes to the global community.  Racism, while it still exists in many forms today, isn't as brutal and indifferent to black life as it was at its inception.  But progress demands that fixing a problem starts with acknowledgement.  When faced with the choice of embracing a horrid history of genocide or keeping the sanitized narrative of historical moral superiority it's not hard to understand why people choose to remain in their personal Matrix.  It's also not hard to understand why they'd follow someone who reinforces the more pleasant narrative like Trump, who thinks of himself a business tycoon despite his string of failed businesses.  Facts, however, don't care how you feel.  Making America Great Again has just enough of a jingoistic ring of patriotism to help its believers delude themselves into thinking its an agenda of self love when in reality its a rehash of the nativist movement of early 1900s.  Ironically, that's the last time there was a massive influx of immigrants, many of whom were the grandparents of the current MAGA-Americans, including the aforementioned grandfather our current Commander in Chief.  

The irony....the more things change....

The need to protect his image as the all powerful, all knowing, and unquestioned master of everything, is very similar to the needs of MAGA-Americans to see themselves as unswerving patriots despite their positions being the very antithesis of American ideals.  Those early immigrants also faced violence at the hands of Nativist Americans who were fearful that they would take their jobs and "replace" them.  The irony is that the nativists from both eras are right in a sense.  They were replaced.  They changed their names from Jankowitz to Johnson and their children were able to blend in by hiding their history as newcomers.  In two generations, they were the new "Americans."  We've already seen similar actions by today's immigrants.  The Estevez's of Hollywood fame come to mind.  Ramon Antonio Gerardo Estevez and Carlos Irwin Estevez being the most successful. Oh I'm sorry, you might know them better as Martin and Charlie Sheen.  The men in Charlottesville were willing to assault and murder people for doing things their own grandparents did but still want to believe they're being patriots just like their President believes he's a "stable genius."

Patriotism at its finest according to David Duke

The fear of replacement and the need to "Make America Great Again" only make sense if you don't understand the history of the country you claim to love.  The idea of America, founded on the hope of creating a country in which the old European-style socioeconomic caste system would be left behind, cannot exist under a system that seeks to reinstate it.  America's founding fathers and the men and women that died at the hands of imperial muskets to bring this country to life would be appalled to see their nation falling back into the same system they fled.  Granted, their personal moral code led them to not extend their idealism to the First Nations of the Americas nor the Africans they kidnapped, brutalized and enslaved but the idea of a country free of barriers to prosperity that weren't self created is one that eventually led to America we know today.  We aren't perfect, but the one thing this country could hang its hat on was that it improved, decade after decade.  From outlawing the importing of slaves to eventually fighting the bloodiest war of its time to free them to giving women the right to vote then eventually African Americans winning their right to do the same shows that we can and have changed and will continue to change for the better.  Every change we have made has been for the betterment of America not its downfall.  Until Trump, that progress was leading us to an America where color truly wouldn't matter anymore and it could be argued that this farce of a presidency might actually be the final nail in the coffin for the fallacy of white supremacy.  We built this nation together.  From the death of Crispus Attucks to the election of Barack Obama we have always been there. We survived Jim Crow, we survived slavery, and still made contributions to this land that made it better.  Even if we didn't come here by choice it's our home now and America's greatness can't be excluded, deported, stripped of its rights, nor rendered politically invisible again.  Anyone who tells you otherwise isn't talking about America.  They're talking about making themselves great at your expense.

This is the Wanderer's Voice...