Mercedes Schneider ponders the meaning of Make America Great Again. MAGA.
What does Trump mean by “great?”
What does he mean by “again?”
She thinks she knows.
It’s a loaded phrase. It causes trouble because people understand what it means.
“And cause trouble, it does, because those “good old days” tend to be days in which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were chiefly available to whites– and particularly white males– with varying degrees of economic and social exclusion/oppression for women and people of color.”
That America—the era of white supremacy—is gone forever. It’s time to acknowledge and embrace a new and better America.
Toxic MAGA, yes, bringing out the worst in too many, authorizing white males especially to exercise their arrogance and bullying. Did folks see the viral video of a gang of high school teenage boys wearing MAGA caps at the annual anti-abortion rally in DC ridiculing and harassing a Native American elder as he recited a drum prayer? The elder was in DC for a rally in favor of an “Indigenous Peoples Day.” The white boys were bussed in from Covington Catholic High School in Covington, KY. It’s an ugly and infuriating scene, where Trump’s MAGA leads to. I wrote a letter of outrage to the HS principal and Monsignor of the Covington Archdiocese.
A PR firm to spin the story has been hired. Nick Sandmann, the MAGA-hat wearing, Covington Catholic student in the video issued a statement that IMO, reflects typical right wing slant, “you’re not seeing the bigotry that your eyes and ears are registering”. Sandmann said that he was praying i.e. not smirking, not intimidating. Apparently, the hand chopping motions and chanting of his co-rally attendees were not aimed at mocking. Sandmann says his face-off with Nathan Phillips reflected his attempt at diffusing the situation. Nathan Phillips, was the first one to identify his own motivation as diffusing the situation. Expected… the right wing, hackneyed, PR playbook, would produce a defense identical to the one lodged against them. The same technique was used by some media on Sunday, when Nathan Phillips was described as the aggressor even though the video refutes it.
And, too silly for words, a Sandmann defender said, if Nick had taken a step back he would have fallen down. Sad- Catholic schools with seniors who haven’t mastered walking. My view- conservative Catholics wearing MAGA hats want the USA to step back to the 50’s and God willing they’ll fall.
The good old days are the rose colored glasses through which reactionary thinker see a false narrative of history. False narrative is the stuff of which tyranny is made. The triumph of the Aryans. China is the Middle Kingdom. Europeans are gods sent to the people of the new world. All the world is subservient to the European peninsula because the latter has God’s blessing and the genetic superiority.
In actuality, the good old days days are tinged with problems, just like our present day. King, and others like him, sought to solve some of the problems rather than accept them or turn a blind eye to them, clouded by the rose colored glasses. When we venerate those who seek social justice, we look to a future. When we venerate those who seek to gain an advantage economically or judicially, we move our society closer to the tyranny we all fear.
So poignantly stated: “When we venerate those who seek social justice, we look to a future. When we venerate those who seek to gain an advantage economically or judicially, we move our society closer to the tyranny we all fear.”
Our demographics are shifting, and many ‘old guard’ white males are worried about losing their power. Trump represents those old bigots, sexists and power mongers that step on everyone else on their way to the top. It is the type of thinking that shapes ALEC’s agenda and the GOP platform. That is why conservatives are so eager to suppress the vote and stock the courts with right wing judges. In Florida despite the voter approved amendment giving former felons the right to vote, the GOP is plotting to delay or impede its implementation. Let’s not worry about making American great. Let’s work to make America a better, fairer more equitable country.
This is a good piece, and a good article that she references from Voice of America. The best piece I’ve read about MAGA was by Steven Gambardella on Medium.com: How MAGA Worked Magic. He breaks down each of the four words. A brilliant analysis.
View this collection on Medium.com
MAGA Moscow’s Asset Governing America
If we “Make American Great Again” wouldn’t we eventually get right back to essentially the same state of affairs we have right now? Why would anybody want to do that? Want to get caught up in a time-loop?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/20/it-was-getting-ugly-native-american-drummer-speaks-maga-hat-wearing-teens-who-surrounded-him/
Pence is trying to say that Martin Luther King, Jr. and Trump are the same. It takes some mighty twisting to arrive at that conclusion.
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Of Course Trump Won’t Participate in Martin Luther King Jr. Day Services
Sophie Weiner
You think of how [Martin Luther King Jr.] changed America,” Pence said on CBS earlier today. “He inspired us to change through the legislative process to become a more perfect union. That’s exactly what President Trump is calling on Congress to do: Come to the table in the spirit of good faith. We’ll secure our border and we’ll reopen the government. And we’ll move our nation forward as the president said yesterday to even a broader discussion about immigration reform in the months ahead.”…
https://splinternews.com/of-course-trump-wont-participate-in-martin-luther-king-1831914282?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=splinter_email&utm_campaign=top
Then, after that bogus statement, Pence’s nose grew six inches. Trump and Pence are doing nothing to honor MLK.
My hunch is that Dr. MLK would be leading marches against Trump and Pence, both of whom are bigots.
Ralph Nader, “thinks” he knows as well…
“All societies perpetuate lavish myths that enable the few to rule over the many, repress critical thinking and camouflage the grim realities. Our country was, and remains, no exception.”
Lavish myths or the “bosses’ propaganda”? Take your pick. Both function as a
base for venerable articles of faith.
Everybody just “knows”, THEIR belief, is the way it ought to be.
It separates people into believers and non-believers.
If you believe Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897:
“…Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper
social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the
prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven.”
If you believe the State has chosen you, out of all the peoples in the nation,
to be the “bright stars”, at the center of the American universe…
Believers and non-believers…
The belief “debate”, superior and inferior, redeemed and rejected, resurrected
and damned…: “Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy.”
WE are “right” in the world, YOU think, you know, now get off of my cloud.
Thus the divisive nature of “belief” continues…all the way to the bank.
Point: Stop repeating the bosses’ propaganda.
I pay a lot of attention to the politics of Brexit because I believe it is perfectly analogous to what is going on in this country, especially the MAGA cult. One of the people I’ve found along this journey is British radio personality James O’Keefe. I find myself addicted to the clips of his show on YouTube. This country does not have his equal. On one show, when debating an irate Brexiteer and trying to get beyond, “I believe…” statements, O’Keefe summed it up perfectly when he replied, “I don’t care what you believe, I need to know what you know.” That’s something we should all have in our rhetorical arsenal. To get a perfect distillation of his gifts of discussing political issues, may I recommend this 5-6 minute clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_q6RZqZaPw
James O’Brien!!!!!! Dementia is shifting into higher gear.
Years before Trump coined the phrase and started selling hats make in Taiwan for a tidy profit to his ignorant, deplorable Always Trump followers, racist Roy Moore inadvertently explained what “Make America Great Again” really means to Trump’s supporters.
Roy Moore in 2011: “Getting rid of amendments after 10th would ‘eliminate many problems'”
https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/10/politics/kfile-roy-moore-aroostook-watchmen/index.html
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery
The 14th defines citizenship and has the due process clause and equal protection clause.
The 15th prohibits the denial of the right to vote based on race, color or previous conditions of servitude.
The 17th established the direct election of US Senators by popular vote. Before that, they were appointed, not elected.
The 19th Amendment granted American women the right to vote.
The 22nd limits the number of times a person can be elected president to only two times.
And this is not the entire list. There are 27 Amendments if 18 is included that the 21st got rid of.
From the first time it was seen, most Trump supporters knew that “Make America Great Again” was code for “Make America White Again”.
Our ‘Great Leader’ spouts some mighty dumb ideas. Here is one of them.
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Trump touts wall in city that isn’t on the border, doesn’t have a wall
By Steve Benen
Trump: “Everybody knows that walls work. If you look at different places they put up a wall – no problem. If you look at San Antonio, if you look at so many different places, they go from one of the most unsafe cities in the country to one of the safest cities immediately. Immediately. It works. We have to put them up and we will put them up. We got to.”
…But in this case, there’s another problem: Trump wants us to “look at San Antonio.”
OK, let’s do that. San Antonio is over 100 miles from the Mexican border, and it does not have – nor has it ever had – a border wall. (The Alamo may have been surrounded by a wall, though if memory serves, it was of limited utility.)…
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-touts-wall-city-isnt-the-border-doesnt-have-wall
I loved what Lady Gaga said in a live concert. If politicians and the media had had the same guts this country wouldn’t be in such a mess. Trump and Pence should never have been elected.
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Lady Gaga, sent out her own message of protest on Saturday night, during a concert in Las Vegas. Gaga stopped in the middle of her song “Million Reasons” to blast Trump for his self-proclaimed shutdown that has financially debilitated hundreds of thousands of federal workers.
“If the fucking president of the United States could please put our government back … there are people who live paycheck to paycheck and need their money!”
Gaga didn’t stop there. The Star is Born award-winning singer, songwriter and actress had some words for VP Mike Pence as well.
“To Mike Pence, who thinks that it’s okay that his wife works at a school that bans LGBTQ, you’re wrong. You’re the worst representation of what it means to be a Christian. I am a Christian woman, and what I do know about Christianity is that we bear no prejudice and everybody is welcome. So you can take all that disgrace, Mr. Pence, and look yourself in the mirror and you’ll find it right there.”
This is the latest Tweet from the Orange Ignoramus. [I didn’t know that the wall was under construction. Pray, pray and pray.] Sarcasm
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Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
BUILD A WALL & CRIME WILL FALL! This is the new theme, for two years until the Wall is finished (under construction now), of the Republican Party. Use it and pray!
66.7K
6:57 AM – Jan 23, 2019
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Sympathy For White MAGA Kids Are Never Afforded to Children of Color
The Young Turks
Published on Jan 23, 2019
Hasan Piker breaks down the VIRAL MAGA Kids Facing off with Native Elder – and how the media coverage has failed.