Making America not great again

America is a great country, no one needs to make it 'great again'. If anyone wants to contribute something to its already existing greatness, he or she can just try to make it greater.

But this task requires great talent. If not blessed with such a talent, one may attempt to 'make America great again' and deceive people with this. Donald Trump has done just this and become president of the country. This, however, is not a Trumpian innovation, very few is, but a modification of the slogan used by President Ronald Reagan.

As it should have happened, instead of making the great country 'great again', Trump is simply, as many feared he would do, pulling the country down into a 'hole'. His silly steps for making America great again are: "calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

Then he declared his next plan of building an "impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful, southern border wall" on the US-Mexico border to prevent drugs, crime and rapists of Mexico from entering America. As soon as he came to power he ordered a travel ban against citizens of 7 Muslim-majority countries.

He tried to dismantle President Obama's health insurance reform law known as Obamacare and thus deprive millions of Americans of their health insurance. Then a government shutdown occurred for his failure to reach a deal to give protection to young immigrants, the 'Dreamers' brought to the U.S. illegally as children whom he wants to deport.

His way of making America great is to deny global warming and climate change which, in his view, "was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

While the world is moving towards alternative energy like solar, wind power, etc., he is trying to revive the coal industries in the USA. He is in the crusade of demolishing all Obama achievements at home and abroad including the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal.

Trump's another way of making the country great again is tax cuts for corporate America while hoodwinking the middle- and lower middleclass by presenting it as a step for ordinary people to keep more of their 'hard-earned money'. His tax cuts will, in fact, give more to the plutocrats.

In the opinion of Joseph Stiglitz: "the losers will be future generations, out-lobbied by today's avaricious moguls, the greediest of whom include those who owe their fortunes to scummy activities, like gambling." (Donald Trump's tax cuts for the rich won't make America great again, The Guardian, 27 July 2017)

Nobel laureate economist Stiglitz wrote in a Project Syndicate article that their tax plan "provides the overwhelming share of benefits not to the middle class - a large proportion of which may actually pay more taxes - but to America's millionaires and billionaires." And "Trump assumed office promising to 'drain the swamp' in Washington, DC. Instead, the swamp has grown wider and deeper. With the Republicans' proposed tax reform, it threatens to engulf the US economy." (Déjà Voodoo, Oct 4, 2017)

Trump is trying to make America a country of whites, while it is a country of whites, non-whites, immigrants and their children, a great country not established on any basis of ethnic or any single identity. After his s-hole comment, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a senior Republican senator and himself a descendant of immigrants, protested by saying "America is an idea, not a race."

Obviously, Trump's 'great' America is no more than a racist America. It seems now that America would be fortunate to be pulled into a swamp only. Her president is not satisfied with this feat, he is determined to pull it into some dark hole, 'shithole' or any other.

Giving nicknames to his political rivals is another of his ways of making America great and his original contribution to the world politics. There are Crooked Hillary, Little Rocket Man, Sloppy Steve and others attacked by his name calling. The mainstream American media is 'fake news', but all his lies are 'alternative facts'. African nations are 'shithole countries' - is his most famous in recent days.

Charles M. Blow's New York Times article (July 3, 2017) was 'The Hijacked American Presidency', in which he wrote, "A madman and his legislative minions are holding America hostage." His conclusion: "Trump is an abomination, and a cancer on the country, and none of us can rest until he is no longer holding the reins of power." This is Mr. Blow's problem, not others' in the rest of the world. 

As long as Donald Trump sits on top of the American power and can keep his mouth open launching words of fire and fury like missiles across the globe, people in America are in wonder about where he is pulling their great country into - swamp or hole or what. After the damage to America done by Donald Trump, her people must wait for someone to come and try to make her great again, in fact, not in its Trumpian alternative type, but truly.          


The writer is a commentator on
theatre, education and
socio-political issues