Congress has passed a spending bill that will give significant tax breaks to the richest Americans while imposing huge cuts on programs such Medicaid and SNAP. This will send many more Americans into poverty while denying health care and food to millions. Americans will die. The current government has already eliminated the United States Agency for International Development. It has been estimated that those cuts could cost the lives of millions human beings. Literally. This prompts the question: Is American great again? Or is this among the worst versions of it?
Was it during the nation’s first eight-nine years when slavery was permitted in fifteen of the country's thirty-three states? Mind you this was a particularly brutal form of chattel slavery in which family members were sold away from one another. It was human trafficking writ large.
How about the ensuing one hundred years when Jim Crow laws held sway. Not just in the South but throughout the country and lynchings were a daily threat for African Americans (virtually none of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes were ever prosecuted.) Was it when Southern Senators blocked any and all anti-lynching bills?
Maybe America was great when it was taking land away from the native tribes who preceded the whites here. When every treaty signed by the US government and the natives was violated. When hundreds of thousands of Native Americans were slaughtered. When they were given blankets infested with smallpox. Was America great then?
Was it great during the Gilded Age when the richest Americans grew richer and the poor got poorer — you know, exactly like today? It was a time when labor movements were brutally put down by greedy capitalists. Sound great?
Was it great during World War I when Americans were imprisoned under the espionage and sedition acts for merely expressing opposition to US participation in the war? When America protestors were set upon by mobs and beaten while the police looked on or in some cases helped the mobs?
Was America great in the immediate aftermath of that war when suspected anarchists, radicals and communists -- especially foreign-born ones were being illegally rounded up and deported for their political views. You know, kind of like today?
Was America great in the 1920s and 1930s when the Ku Klux Klan saw a resurgence and fascist groups emerged many of which voiced support for Adolph Hitler and the Nazis?
Was America great when during World War II Japanese-American citizens were taken from their homes and sent to internment camps merely for the crime of being of Japanese ancestry?
Was America great in the late Forties and Fifties during the Red Scare when McCarthyism and the paranoid fear of Communists dominated American politics and culture? Was it great when thousands of Americans lost their livelihoods because of the mere suspicion that they might be “fellow travelers”?
Was America great when it used the Mexican-American war as a pretext to steal land from Mexico? Or how about during the Spanish-American war which was used as a pretext to steal terrorizes from the Spanish?
Was it great when it brutally suppressed Philippine efforts for independence?
Was America great when the CIA was helping overthrow governments all over the world in the fifties, sixties and seventies including — as just one example — the democratically elected government of Chile which was replaced by a military Junta that killed and disappeared thousands of Chileans without trial? Was that great?
Was the United States of America great when it was dropping bombs on North Vietnamese hospitals -- particularly the Christmas bombings of 1972 --or burning Vietnamese villages or massacring their citizens?
How about when this country illegally invaded Iraq and brought more turmoil in the Middle East or before that when they responded to terrorist attacks by attacking Afghanistan?
Was extra-ordinary rendition and U.S. led torture a sign of greatness?
Maybe the country was great when Richard Nixon was running roughshod over the constitution before, during and after Watergate the break-in only being one of his crimes?
Say could it have been great when the FBI was infiltrating and spying on radical groups and killing its leaders, like Fred Hampton, in cold blood? Were the files the FBI kept on citizens a sign of greatness? How about the spying on Americans by the CIA?
I suppose it’s possible that American was great under Reagan who supported South Africa’s apartheid government and refused to do anything — even say anything — about the AIDS crisis. Maybe Regan’s demonizing of government services was a sign of greatness, ya know when he promulgated the ethos that government services that helped US citizens were the root of all evil and it was better to give hand-outs to businesses.
Were the massacres in places like Tulsa, Rosewood and Wilmington that targeted African Americans a sign of greatness?
Maybe the Chinese Exclusion Act was a sign of greatness. Or the horrible treatment suffered by Chinese immigrants and other people of color in this country.
Perhaps the murder of four protestors and wounding of nine others at Kent State in 1970 was a sign that America was once great, particularly as no one was prosecuted for the killings.
The brutal police repression of peace demonstrators by club-wielding police across the country could have been a sign of greatness. Ya know, like the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
It could also be that our lax gun laws are what has been making the US great. After all gun violence is 23 times higher in the US than any country in the EU. And how about all those mass shootings and school shootings and mass school shootings? Great!
Then again it could be that draconian punishments — such as three strikes — passed from the seventies through the nineties, that made our prisons bulge with young African American men was a sign of greatness.
Not only have we heard that America was once “great” but we’re constantly told that the US is “the greatest country in the world.” The latter is stated by people from both parties and what’s really interesting is that it’s said without a touch of irony.
I may well hear in response to this post that if I hate this country so much I should just leave. This will be said in lieu of refuting any of the points I made. It will be said by people who don’t have the intellectual capacity to consider that maybe, just maybe America was never really “great.” There is no denying that the United States has contributed much to the world. Through scientific and medical breakthroughs, technological advancements, great artists in all manner of art forms and inspiring leaders who have fought against many of the injustices here mentioned. There have been great Americans and great deeds and great accomplishments and great moments. This is unassailable. But a “great” country? That’s a stretch. “Greatest country in the world”? Who but an arrogant American would think to say such a thing? This is not a contest. We are all part of the same planet. But if you really want to engage in rankings, the U.S. is well behind other countries -- for example the ones that treat their citizens with fairness and compassion.
Fairness and compassion. Wish we had us some right about now.
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