Photo Credit: theodysseyonline.com
Last week, in an attempt to find the age of American greatness to which Trump refers with his motto, “make America great again,” we looked at the first half of American history. Unless your definition of greatness includes no electricity, no rights for minorities, and a life expectancy of around 36, America was not greater then than it is now. But if you still cling to the notion that America is currently declining and our golden years are behind us, do not despair, we still have over another century to cover.
We left off right after the Civil War ended. Rampant racism was plaguing the nation and Native Americans were still being removed from their land. Let us move into the next century.
The twentieth century started with a bang, literally, when President William McKinley was shot and killed on November, 1, 1901. This was a bad time to be president. Between 1881 and 1912, two presidents were killed and two were almost assassinated. It was also a bad time to be a factory worker. According to the Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control, the average worker worked 60 hours a week. The pay was lousy because a federal minimum wage would not go into effect for another 30 years. Safety regulation in factories were basically nonexistent, often resulting in terrible tragedies. One of these tragedies was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.
This may seem like an obscure historical term, but the fire killed 146 people, half of them teenagers and 129 of the victims were women. According to PBS, these workers toiled away in the factory for 13 hours a day while receiving a paltry $0.13 an hour.
World War I is not a good place to stop either. A congressional committee would later conclude that the United States’ involvement in World War I was tied to corporate and banking interests. The president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, was a devout racist, even by the standards of his day. Women still could not vote for another year. American politics were characterized by Isolationism, which meant as a country, we wanted to withdraw from the world stage. Such a mindset is utterly foreign in our age.
The 1920s were hardly an improvement. Women could (finally) vote but the Eugenics movement was now a thing, as was forced sterilization. Mentally handicapped people and criminals would often got sterilized by the government. In 1927, the Supreme Court upheld this practice in the case Buck v. Bell 274. Hopefully, this is not Trump’s conception of greatness. In 1929, the stock market crashed and America plunged into the Great Depression. Great Depression and greatness do not go well together. So let us skip to another decade.
The year is 1945. World War II has just ended and America has now become a world power. We have defeated the Nazis and would help rebuild Europe. The following decades would be filled with economic prosperity and the explosion of the middle class. Is this the age of American greatness to which we should return? Probably (hopefully) not.
Yes, America did help defeat Hitler and rebuild Europe. But remember, the war was caused by Hitler, a tyrant who rose to power playing into the bigoted fears of the German public, all while delusionally harkening back to an age of German greatness; remind you of anybody? African Americans could not drink out of the same water fountains as a white person. LGBT rights were nonexistent. And sexism was still deeply entrenched in society.
In the following decades, America would invade Korea and Vietnam, conflicts that yielded millions—yes millions—of deaths and no tactical advantages. We also staged multiple coups around the world and backed warlords and tyrants.
There were drastic advancements in civil rights during the 1960s, but that was through the adoption of progressive ideas, not the rejection of them in favor of conservatism. And while African Americans did become less oppressed, LGBT rights remained ignored for decades longer and women still faced institutional barriers in almost all domains of society. America also embarked upon a futile war on drugs that disproportionately destroyed the lives of minorities and still drags on today. Finally, between the 1960s and today, the middle class has shrunk, income inequality has expanded, and climate change has intensified. Where is the greatness?
America was a nation founded on a genocide. Only white males could enjoy the freedom promised in the Constitution until as recently as a century ago. America achieved a lot, but also failed in great measure. So perhaps Trump is wrong about returning to an age of American greatness. Instead of trying to go back to that, we should look to the future. Our society treats minorities better now than ever. Technology has improved the quality of life to unrivaled levels. Sure, there are problems that confront modern America. Our economy could be more inclusive. We can no longer invade nations unilaterally and terrorist organizations are trying to kill our citizens. There are also social injustices that still need to be combatted. But if you could choose to live in any time in American history as a random person, you would be daft to not select today.
Greatness is a hard term to define. A great society must be inclusive. An economy cannot be great if it only benefits the elite class. Great foreign policy cannot consist of provoking wars and supporting dictators. Greatness is admitting faults and learning from mistakes. Rather than trying to make America great again, let us try to make America great, again and again, until we actually succeed.