America was once the "shining city on the hill"..

[kentuck]

Once upon a time, most of America held their country in a much higher regard than do many citizens today. At a minimum, they thought America was a beacon of hope and liberty.

But, that appears to not be the case today? If we listen to many on the right, especially Trump supporters, America is a crude, arrogant, uncompassionate, uncharitable, dump of a third-world country. It is depressing to think that so many Americans think in such terms. It is difficult to come to terms with the idea that America no longer holds the ideals that we once held so nobly.

We have been decreased in stature by citizens that have accepted standards that are below our wildest imaginations. They were willing to accept the most crude and weak and embarrassing goals for our country. They did not see a shining city on a hill. They saw a slum, a drug-ridden den, where paranoia and hatred were the calling cards of the day. And they were happy with their results.

But, we cannot be happy. With all our faults as a nation, we are much better than the vision that they put forth. Too many have fought and died, for the progress we have made, to surrender to such weak-minded and sick partisanship as displayed by those that support Donald J Trump.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Maybe this is Trump's way of dealing with immigration.

If he succeeds in turning the US into a third-world hellhole in which most people are poor, POC are overtly discriminated against, the police shoot suspects with impunity, only white kids get to go to college, journalists are thrown in jail, the Russians control the elections, and the air is polluted and the water is filthy, nobody will want to come here. Problem solved.

[Voltaire2]

2. When was the US a shining city on the hill?

Which period of time in our history were we a beacon of freedom and liberty?

[kentuck]

3. We are a nation of immigrants...

..and many of them saw us as a beacon of hope and liberty. Moreso than any other country in the world.

[Voltaire2]

4. So again which period of time were we a beaco

of freedom and liberty?

[kentuck]

5. The Statue of Liberty was special to a lot of immigrants...

I guess that period of time was somewhere in the late 19th century. But, I'm certain the country was special to a lot of people before that.

I don't accept the Trumpsters' definition of America. We may not be a "shining city on the hill" but we are better than that.

[Voltaire2]

6. So just to be clear: 1875-1899?

[oasis]

8. Multitudes of immigrants who arrived on our shores certainly thought

it was so. For the longest time.

[Voltaire2]

9. The op was about people already here.

Once upon a time, most of America held their country in a much higher regard than do many citizens today. At a minimum, they thought America was a beacon of hope and liberty.

So which people? The slave population of the south from 1789 - 1865? The Native American population that was subjected to a centuries long genocide?
Women who had no right to vote and frequently limited property rights until the 20th century? Workers who were shot in the streets for trying to form unions?

This myth that sometime in the past we were a glorious beacon of liberty is hogwash. We were deeply flawed from the start. We've had brief periods of progress and long periods of corrupt and intolerant rule. This is not some new uncharted territory we've entered into with Trump and Republican rule, it is more like a reset to where we were from the end of Reconstruction until the New Deal.

[kentuck]

12. It is all relative.

It is true that we had to fight for everything that we got. But we finally got them. There were no blossoming utopias in the world as we were struggling to make our country better. You have the freedom to make your argument.

[Voltaire2]

14. But the framing of "a shining city on the hill" evokes some sort of perfect past.

That is exactly what the op does, and claims that we have somehow gone astray. Our past was frequently awful. We have had moments we can be proud of - abolition for example, but even that was followed within 20 years by The Nadir, by the stripping away of rights from African Americans and the systematic effort to return the former slaves to the plantations through share cropping and prison gangs, a system that remained in place until the 1960s.

The backwards looking evocation of a golden past is a conservative reactionary framing of history. The past was more generally horrible than the present. Doesn't mean that the future looks bright either. There is also no guarantee of progress in that direction.

[Squinch]

7. The original quote is often misused and its true meaning is pretty germaine these days.

Winthrop was saying that the Puritan settlement was something that everyone was watching, and those watching were simply waiting for it to fail. He called them a city on the hill to drive home the point that they could not escape the scrutiny. He was telling people to keep in mind always that failure was likely and that they should do everything they could to prevent it. He said that if they failed, they would become a byword, the example that everyone used to describe failure.

We're at a point right now where failure of the American experiment is very, very possible. We may very well become a byword for the rest of human history.

[Voltaire2]

10. And the puritan colony was an intolerant theocratic

hell-hole.

[Squinch]

11. Yes, but they didn't know that.

[Voltaire2]

13. well some did, notably Roger Williams and the gang of miscreants in Providence,

and I suspect that Bridget Bishop and the rest of the victims of the Witch Trials had an inkling.

[Squinch]

15. And that guy with the maypole who just liked to taunt them and party

with his native friends.