Trump supporters continue to sport MAGA hats and shout “Make America Great Again” at rallies. It is a catchy slogan which has captured the conservative American imagination. It is here to stay whether Donald Trump is in or out of the White House.
But what does it mean? What makes America great and, perhaps more importantly, what makes it un-great?
The answer is complicated by the difficulty of wedding individual perspectives to universal truths. But I think it is important to search for it, so I have asked the opinion of a number of people with whom I have worked with over the years.
Carla Rapoport is an American journalist who has worked as a foreign correspondent, editor and publisher for Fortune and The Economist on three continents. She said that the answer I sought was best summed up in a key phrase from the American pledge of allegiance: “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” She added that American economic might “flows from being a union. Lose that and lose all that makes us good.”
French diplomat Jean-Michel Gaussot served as an ambassador four times over and was partly educated in the US. He answered my question with a list of rhetoricals which finished with “can America be great if it concentrates only on materialistic values, forgetting its ideals of liberty and respect for human rights and abroad?”
Another diplomat, this time British, is Ambassador Myles Wickstead replied that the single word “democracy” sums up American greatness. He added that American democracy has been “challenged” over the past four years and “triumphed”. “This will allow America to be a leading and positive role in the world again” which “in the eyes of the rest of the world, is what will make America great again.”
From the world of business I sought the views of Matthew Green, a finance director of a multinational. He placed a high premium on American culture but also said: “Americans doubtless think that there is a political aspect to greatness as in the 19th century concept of Great Powers—those powers that push minor powers around. It is impossible to separate this ‘being great’ from being a bully….Bullies must be respected, but I don’t call them great. China is very powerful, but it is not a great country in the way America still is.”
Back to journalists, and a former British journalist of the year, John Marquis, who admits to having been an Americaphile in the past. But “my views have changed radically over the last four years. I now see it as primarily a land of gun-toting boneheads, Bible-bashing religious bigots and shallow-based backwoodsmen.”
American missionary Paul Hanak voted for Donald Trump and considers himself a staunch Republican. He opined that “American greatness comes from the recognition of the worth of the individual, and the fact that each individual has inalienable rights grounded in natural law, not on loan from the government.”
The view from the developing world was provided by respected Indian journalist Ramananda Sengupta. He stressed the importance of the “American dream… which essentially revolves around the notion that anyone can attain their own version of success in a society where upward mobility is possible for everyone…This is particularly resonant with immigrants, many of whom lack such opportunities in their own countries.”
One man who immigrated to America as a child was Hungarian-born Tibor Nagy who rose through the ranks of the American diplomatic service to become US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Marrying America’s natural resources to a dynamic immigrant base has, in his opinion, created “the richest, most dynamic, productive and powerful nation in the world.” He adds: “Being able to thrive materially and professionally is wonderful, but it is the right to be free which most of us from overseas truly value.”
Back to my journalist friends and former defence correspondent Stuart Birch who stressed America’s world role since December 1941 when American isolation ended. Since then, he said, America has offered its “established strengths, capabilities and influence to make the world a safe place. That is a great role indeed.”
The last word is left to friend, neighbour and retired senior British diplomat Tim Holmes who asserts that both America’s greatness and weakness can be found in its written constitution – “A document which expresses basic truths while at the same time leaving the country stuck in an 18th century political and philosophical mould.”
To Trump and his sloganeering supporters, American greatness is measured in dollars and cents and a rose-coloured view of the immediate post-war years. The irony is that they failed – and are failing – because they ignored the values necessary to underwrite success. The more they push their version of American greatness they closer they come to destroying it.
* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".
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8 Comments
I’m reminded of the answer (allegedly) given by Gandhi:
Q: What do you think of Western Civilisation?
A: I think it would be a good idea.
I usually pride myself as being the first fan of Mr Arms’ ‘Letters from America – via the U.K.’ to respond. I see I got beaten to it this time!
My wife says I am “in love” with the USA. Mind you, over the last five or six years, I have spent a lot of time via Ancestry discovering a positive tribe of second and third cousins, the descendants of my paternal grandfather’s cousins, and have been able to make positive contact with many of them.
Hollywood figures highly in many of my views of the USA. It was quite flattering that the old country played host to so many ‘stars’, who crossed the pond to star in such memorable films as “Whispering Smith hits London” (Richard Carlson – who?) in 1952 and, in the same year the all Technicolor “Ivanhoe”, starring Arlington Spangler Brugh, better know to you and me as one Robert Taylor, or 19 years later, another detective movie, Brannigan starring Marion Morrison, better know as John ‘Duke’ Wayne, complete with toupee and featuring a cameo rôle for our own Blair luvvie and amateur archaeologist, Mr Tony Robinson.
Add to that all the late 1950’s music (in my book you still can’t beat Buddy Holly), the TV shows in that pre Beatles period, when all we had were the likes of Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and Adam Faith, so is there any wonder that we were taught to look on the USA, in the words of Ronald Reagan, as “that bright citadel on the hill”. The USA was just so modern and rich compared with post war Britain. In education, something I got involved in as a profession, most of the ‘new’ ideas appeared to be coming from across the pond. The democracy we were fed new no boundaries. It wasn’t perfect; but as JFK said in his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech at the Berlin Wall in June 1963, we didn’t need a wall to “keep our people in”.
As the swinging 60s progressed, it was clear to many of us that, like all empires, the American version would inevitably have a sell by date. However, such as many Brits still carry on as if that world map was still coloured predominantly red, so many Americans just assume that, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, if you keep that big stick, whether you talk softly or louder, you’ll be fine. I remember the bumper stickers my wife and I encountered in Southern California in 1971 at the height of the Vietnam War, which read; “My Country – Right or Wrong”. Today, I suppose those words would be replaced by “MAGA”.
How I loved the : rock n roll” music of the 1950,s and early 60,s, still do and of course the wonderful western films especially for me High Noon can still watch it today and feel morally superior, but that the gun lobby in the USA still holds so much political sway still indicates that they have a long way to go yet, to become really great leaders of the free world.
Denis Mollison 6th Mar ’21 – 8:30am
The Mahatma was right.
I’m back for another go as I had to shorten my first effort to get it accepted. Born as I was in 1943, I grew up at a time when we thought we knew who our friends and enemies were. Too late to be won over by the British Empire, like many youngsters enduring rationing, I envied those for whom nothing seemed impossible. Money appeared to be capable of buying anything and the US seemed to have an endless supply and was not afraid to splash it when its own interests were concerned. However, they didn’t always get it right. “How come the Russians got into space before we did?” Bob Hope once asked his audience. “Because their German scientists were better than ours”. However, once it out its mind to it, it was the US that won the race to put a man on the moon.
While the USSR was its main challenger, in economic terms, there was really no contest. No wonder so many British families couldn’t wait to visit Disney World rather than Lenin’s tomb, or enjoy a burger and fries rather than a bowl of cabbage soup, especially as caviar, although clearly a luxury, was really only fish by another name. However, now that the new challenger is Communist China, that has swopped Mao’s little red book for capitalism without the democratic checks and balances that still technically exist in the USA, as they say, it’s a very different ball game. Like Bob Hope’s US, China is not afraid to ‘acquire’ the material and intellectual resources of other countries to serve its own ends. President Biden has, in theory, only got two years to make a difference, while only mortality stands in the way of President Xi Jinping.
All ‘Empires’ have their day. Ours lasted longer than many. Perhaps the USA is about to find out whether its time in the sun has its limitations. However, whether it’s Trump supporters over there or arch Brexiters over here, some people never seem to see the writing on the wall.
Thanks for this interesting collection of views. There is one other voice that it would be interesting to hear, that of the haudenosaunee confederacy. Maybe that would require its own article.
I am always intrigued by the way most Americans not only believe that theirs is the greatest country on earth, but also believe that everyone else in the world agrees! Patriotism is fine, but it should not be blinkered, and it should be open to experiencing and acknowledging the delights of living in other parts of the world. Of course, the fact that only around 40% of all US citizens own a passport may have something to do with it.
Synergy.
A great organisation is more than the sum of its parts.
If talking about Post-War America, then that was driven by the FDR coalition which had launched the New Deal, run the US WW2 effort, defined and joined the Bretton Woods system, and paved the way to the JFK Moon effort and the LBJ Great Society Project.
Indeed the WW2 system was such a smashing success – a common goal – they tried replicating it with the Cold War. Watch this week’s episode of Deutschland 89 where two Americans hope the Soviet Union will not fall as that would mean finding a new bogey-man. However this period also had the Great Compression, soaking the ultra rich, a Big State, Big Science, a push for equal rights, and global engagement. The donors would never stand for those things, and the populists would never stand for the technocracy when they have to divert slush money to their base.