The awkward truth of 'make America great again'

[GMDino]

Quote:For all the hand-wringing about how we've never seen a presidential primary season like this before, in fact, it bears a remarkable resemblance to that of 1992. Back then, we had a flamboyant millionaire,several crusaders demanding a return to "traditional" families, calls for a wall to keep out immigrants and of course another Clinton and Bush(although the 1992 Bush candidate didn't crash and burn so early).


That same year I published a book titled "The Way We Never Were," warning against the dangers of imagining we could recapture a largely mythical golden age anywhere in the past.

One big difference, though, was in 1992, nostalgia was the stock in trade of social conservatives pining for the supposedly idyllic families of the "Father Knows Best" era. Today, by contrast, liberals and moderates are also jumping onto the nostalgia bandwagon, harking back to the political bipartisanship of earlier days. Donald Trump says "make America great again," and Hillary Clinton counters with an appeal to "make America whole again."

But just exactly what era do they have in mind? And how many of their followers would actually like to live in the conditions that prevailed then?

No question, it is tempting to look backward. Listening to the drumbeat of attacks on Planned Parenthood raises wistful memories of 1964, when two former presidents, Republican Dwight Eisenhower and Democrat Harry Truman -- no kidding -- were honorary co-chairs of that organization.

And speaking of presidents who wouldn't pass today's political litmus tests, how many contemporary politicians would dare echo Eisenhower's lament that "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed"?

Instead of using the cop-out "I am not a scientist," Eisenhower, a World War II general, brought a full-time science adviser into the White House and funneled millions of dollars into improving science education. Later, President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act, declaring it was "now or never" to start saving the environment.

Even President Ronald Reagan, Sen. Ted Cruz's idol, overruled his Cabinet advisers to help secure passage of the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer, which enforced the phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons such as that used in refrigeration, air conditioning, foam plastic, aerosol production and more. After leaving office, he also defied the National Rifle Association to help pass the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, since expired.

As for campaigns that pine for rosier economic times, in today's economy who wouldn't miss thejob and income trends that prevailed from 1947 through the late 1960s? Manufacturing jobs were plentiful for young men without a college degree, and each cohort of men aged 25 to 29 earned more than three times as much as their fathers had made at a similar age. Since 1980,young men have earned less, on average, than their fathers at the same age.

But idealizing the era when America was the economic powerhouse of the world, bipartisanship reigned and male breadwinner families were the norm requires overlooking much else. Nostalgia is never random. We cherry-pick the past, highlighting what we like and leaving out the things we don't, even if they were closely intertwined.

So when Trump says let's "make America great again" and Clinton says let's make it "whole again," they neglect to mention how much the prosperity of the postwar era depended on a system of regulation and taxation that neither of them shows any inclination to reinstate.

In that era, fully 30% of the workforce was unionized, compared with 11% today. Public spending on transportation and water infrastructure was three times higher than today. The airline, trucking, rail and banking industries were tightly regulated. Corporate taxes weretwice as high in relation to national income, with top-earning individuals facing much higher tax rates than today. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of business interests 42% of the time, compared with more than 60% in recent years, a study found.

Many Bernie Sanders supporters, and some Trump ones, would welcome a return of those features. But in that era of rising real wages for male blue-collar workers, manufacturing was so dominant that wages for service work -- such as health care aides and fast-food workers, now among our fastest-growing occupations -- could be kept low without threatening the living standards of most American families.

What's more, female white-collar workers could not earn enough to support themselves. A black or female college graduate working full time, year round, earned less than the average white male high school graduate. And almost a third of the elderly were poor.

In the foreign policy realm, the bipartisanship of that era is what let Presidents Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy secretly help overthrow the popularly elected leaders of Iran, Congo and Guatemala, launch the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and kick off our disastrous involvement in Vietnam.

Hillary Clinton may laud Henry Kissinger as an old-style diplomat who "transcends partisan differences," but that's precisely what allowed him to sanction the 1973 coup against Chile's popularly elected president, Salvador Allende, and give explicit consent to Argentine's "dirty war," in which 30,000 people were killed.

And bipartisanship certainly did not extend to political dissidents, especially a socialist such as Sanders. Thousands of people were blacklisted for their beliefs.

Presumably Clinton is not referring to the Eisenhower-Nixon era when she says we need to "make America whole again."
But it's hard to claim even that America was "whole" during Bill Clinton's administration, when Democrats and Republicans alike were fanning racially charged fears of "super-predators" and "crack babies," financial deregulation was all the rage, mass incarceration was accelerating, gays and lesbians were denied basic civil rights, and the Confederate flag still flew over state capitols throughout the South.

There is much we can learn from past eras, but we must be as honest about their limits and failures as their successes.
Looking backward for models will not move America forward to meet the unprecedented demographic, technological, climatological and ethical challenges we face today.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/29/opinions/2016-candidates-false-nostalgia-coontz/index.html

[*michaelsean*]

Nothing wrong with cherry picking what each individual considers the good stuff from the past. A liberal can say, "Wow remember when Ike and Truman were in support of Planned Parenthood, and not be pining for segregation.

And when we talk about post WWII, can we try to keep in mind that a large part of the world had to rebuild, and we were about the only ones around to do it. And Germany and Japan weren't really in a position to produce cars, so we got that whole market. Union membership percentages and taxation are correlations.

[*michaelsean*]

And when you had Ike and Truman, you had two guys that either side could at least live with. Right now we have two candidates that their own parties aren't exactly excited about. Trump more than Clinton.

[fredtoast]

(05-03-2016, 12:15 PM)michaelsean Wrote: And when we talk about post WWII, can we try to keep in mind that a large part of the world had to rebuild, and we were about the only ones around to do it. And Germany and Japan weren't really in a position to produce cars, so we got that whole market.  Union membership percentages and taxation are correlations.

If Fredtoast and Michaelsean agree on something you can bet it is probably true.

Bring back unions would help the middle class some, but it is not going to change the fact that the world is evolving.  The UNited States will never have the advantages that we did in the 50's-60's.  It is not going to be as easy to succeed with out extensive training, education, or special skills.  The low skill jobs are all being replaced with machines and cheap overseas labor.

And tariffs are not the answer either.  Business is transacted ona world wide bases.  We can not isolate our economy from the world wide economy.  We are just going to have to adjust to it. 

[tigerseye]

The world banks run everything. Our president doesn't have the power they use to have. The BIS and the other world banks are trying to make all the countries and individuals for that matter debt slaves from here on out.  It's a power grab by the world elite psychopaths who want to rule the world. The federal reserve (who is just a pawn under the BIS) is a privately owned business who pay dividends to its owners from all the money they print out of thin air. Do you know who the owners are? No ,because they won't tell us and won't let us audit their books. The global elites are purposely burying everyone under debt so they can have control over everyone and everything. Everything is run by the global elite and the world banks ,including the USA. So if you want to make America great again ,you'll have to start at the top. They have been setting this up for generations. The globalists want the New World Order, one world government, one world religion and one world currency. Thats what all these treatys are about that they keep signing in the name of the USA. The problem with fixing the USA is these psychopaths own a bunch of our crooked politicians and the Supreme Court. Our Presidents are on board to and have been for a while. Bush 1 used to talk about the New World Order in his speeches.(look it up) From at least Bush 1 to present "We the people..." have been sold out. 

Our elected officials are supposed to look out for our best interests as the USA and they don't. On the contrary they are weakening and distroying our country for the sake of globalism and the world state.

By the way the Bible also said that all this was going to happen.