Has the American Age of Decline Begun? Trump sez yes.

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/36543-has-the-american-age-of-decline-begun

You already know which line I mean: “Make America Great Again!” With that exclamation point ensuring that you won’t miss the hyperbolic, Trumpian nature of its promise to return the country to its former glory days. In it lies the essence of his campaign, of what he’s promising his followers and Americans generally -- and yet, strangely enough, of all his lines, it’s the one most taken for granted, the one that’s been given the least thought and analysis. And that’s a shame, because it represents something new in our American age. The problem, I suspect, is that what first catches the eye is the phrase “Make America Great” and then, of course, the exclamation point, while the single most important word in the slogan, historically speaking, is barely noted: “again.”

With that “again,” Donald Trump crossed a line in American politics that, until his escalator moment, represented a kind of psychological taboo for politicians of any stripe, of either party, including presidents and potential candidates for that position. He is the first American leader or potential leader of recent times not to feel the need or obligation to insist that the United States, the “sole” superpower of Planet Earth, is an “exceptional” nation, an “indispensable” country, or even in an unqualified sense a “great” one. His claim is the opposite. That, at present, America is anything but exceptional, indispensable, or great, though he alone could make it “great again.” In that claim lies a curiosity that, in a court of law, might be considered an admission of guilt. Yes, it says, if one man is allowed to enter the White House in January 2017, this could be a different country, but -- and in this lies the originality of the slogan -- it is not great now, and in that admission-that-hasn’t-been-seen-as-an-admission lies something new on the American landscape.

Donald Trump, in other words, is the first person to run openly and without apology on a platform of American decline. Think about that for a moment. “Make America Great Again!” is indeed an admission in the form of a boast. As he tells his audiences repeatedly, America, the formerly great, is today a punching bag for China, Mexico... well, you know the pitch. You don’t have to agree with him on the specifics. What’s interesting is the overall vision of a country lacking in its former greatness.

[Hiraeth]

1. and this reminds me of Germany in the twenties and thirties of last century.

[MADem]

2. Reader Supported Garbage? Trump also thinks "wives" should raise kids and men shouldn't change

diapers!

Even Chris Christie's wife, plunked up on stage to give that asswipe "woman cred," had to roll her eyes.

Why do you keep posting these Freeperish OPs? This is not the first thread I've seen you start.

You need to understand that Trump ain't gonna be POTUS--Clinton is.

[GreatGazoo]

3. Trump is hardly the first to play on the decline of America -- Reagan shamed Carter

by using the hostages in Iran.

Trump is alluding to the Reagan era and is himself a vestige of it.

By contrast, Sanders focuses on the future ("to believe in&quot and Clinton focuses on being Clinton ("I'm with her&quot which in a broader sense is a return to the 1990s.

[bananas]

4. Reagan used "Make America Great Again"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again

[sufrommich]

5. You know who else ran on the decline of his country?

I think the dems should run commercials showing Trump and Hitler basically making the same speech to the same crowd.

[bemildred]

6. About fifty years now. nt