America is Already Great

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There is a flaw in the slogan, “Make America Great Again.” And it isn’t what you think. It isn’t the idealistic reflection of America’s past that ignores the suffering and inequality that was rampant in the 1950’s. That is no doubt an issue, but it isn’t the main problem with the slogan. The main problem is America doesn’t need to become great again, it is already great. 

Now hear me out. Yes, there are problems. Just as there were problems in the 1950’s, the 1920’s, the 1880’s, the 1860’s, and so on and so on. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single moment in the entire history of the US where everything was perfect: where all people were treated fairly, equally, capitalism functioned flawlessly, politicians behaved nobly, society was polite. Think about it. There isn’t one single moment where America was perfect. So there isn’t even a time for us to reminisce about and naively wish back into existence. We can pretend otherwise. We can focus on a time frame that might have benefited a certain segment of the population more so than others, but then that is just playing pretend and ignoring the reality of that time. Trying to replicate it will not make America great again and will in fact hasten the fall of America because it disregards what it is that actually makes America great. 

What is it then that makes America great? Well, America is great because we are flawed and we know we are flawed. It is the one thing that has and will always be the secret to our greatness. There are parts of our history that are troubled, embarrassing, disgraceful. We can look back and be ashamed at those parts. But we can also look back and see that we eventually did better and be proud of that. And we did better because we saw our mistakes and we made an effort to change. We didn’t just accept our shortcomings as inevitable. We didn’t just stand around powerless to the march of time, the progress of our society. We instead rose up and fought back. The founding principle of America is that we are a country governed by the people for the people. And people make mistakes. But people also learn. People have the power to reflect. People have the power to empathise. People have the power to innovate. People have the power to do so much and that is what our country has harnassed. It is our ability to look at ourselves and re-evaluate our beliefs and not be beholden to antiquated notions, antiquated traditions. 

Does this mean that we will eventually move forward without error? Of course not. We will always make mistakes and at times we’ll make the wrong choices, but as long as we retain the power to learn from those mistakes and to change, then we will continue to be great. We can’t go back to some idealised version of the past because it doesn’t actually exist, but more importantly because that would ignore the progress we have made since then, the mistakes we have fixed. It will force us into a society beholden to traditions that are outdated and wrong. We’ll have no way to become even greater in the future if we can’t fix our past mistakes. 

America is great. It is the flawed hero, the scrappy fighter, the imperfect saviour. It doesn’t need to be made great again, it only needs to remember what it is that actually made it great in the first place.