Ask Lemmy

I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned.

Stephen Colbert has a book titled America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't

You are literally nine or ten years late.

....yeah? And both campaigns have taken place after those dirty commie dems were in charge.

Edit: Guys, I too, am a dirty commie dem.

There was never anything "great" about the US - unless you believe that the world's largest experiment in white supremacism is (somehow) "great."

I thought MAGA was coined when he was demonizing immigrants and campaigning on building a wall and making Mexico pay for it.

It was a racists dog whistle from the very beginning. It meant expelling the ~~Jews~~ Mexicans to make America White again. After 8 years of a Black president.

Did people really miss this? This was like... the main focus of his campaign.

This one is easy to explain away... If you're ranking countries on greatness, then you put America at the top. But then unfortunate things happen, like minority presidents and gay marriage and solar panels, so that makes America not quite as great, but still far better than everyone else. But if we could roll back the clock, maybe to some time before women's suffrage and the civil rights movement, that would make America return to the extra high standard that it's capable of achieving.

Yes, actually. Hell, lemmy will tell you that rent is sky high, wages are too low, theres not enough workers rights, just everything is fucked.

The MAGA solution is just different than the left wing solution.

Yes... that's exactly what it means. America is in bad shape domestically and internationally.

There's the context of Trump riding the wave of right wing rage with his claims Obama was born in Kenya. Shortly after he paid a bunch of hourly extras to form a crowd as he descended a golden escalator to launch his 2016 campaign claiming Mexico was sending rapists, and a cadre of WWE fans, white supremacists, credulous evangelicals, and reprogrammable meatbags who tuned into Fox News decided politics was interesting again.

For most of these people if you start asking which years America was great versus not great they might admit some of the Bush years were sub-par (because of those OTHER people who hate freedom), and preach about the good ol' days when we drank water from a hose. Where everybody treated each other right, unless you were a person of color in a sundown town. They will retcon any facts you present and claim you are cancelling them and it's no fair remembering the past, as they have been conditioned to believe faith is a virtue. The Bible's "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" fucked up my brain for too many years of my life. I wish it was easier to fix this, but a useful quote I remember when I break off most discussions with my dad is,

If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic? -Sam Harris

"America was great once... before the libruls took it over! Things were so much better when I was young... not like this weird shit now around me... it's not ME who's grown older...! ...it is YOU who've gone weird! Why should I change! I refuse to change! That would require... making an effort! I refuse to change! Damn libruls! Damn libruuuuulssss...!!!"

Always assume they are like terror billy dad. They want the nazis to round up everyone.

https://youtu.be/3tJRVRx66GI?si=qLfvdiP6r1BrjJ6t

I mean... It's not great. But the reasons the MAGA people think it's not great and the actual reason it isn't great are mutually exclusive.

Well if you think about the wording of it, then yes.

But fortunately for the far right, MAGA people aren't burdened with such troubles.

Instead they get to think about how great it would be without blacks or Hispanics or Jews or women's rights or gays or trans people or any of the myriad of other things whose mere existence sends them into a purple faced rage on a daily basis. And if you fit into one of those categories, then you just think "well surely they don't mean me, I'm one of the good ones" while ignoring the last century of evidence until it's way too late.

Great for whom? Billionaires? Convicted felons? Or what?

Without expressing an opinion on it: some people believe that it is meant to say that America was greater during times when women and minorities were more oppressed than they are now.

My own interpretation at least in 2016 was always that it was meant to say that Obama was a weak leader in terms of foreign policy and that Trump would restore America's place in the world to be stronger. This may have been my interpretation because I am not from the US and so mainly care about it because of its foreign, not domestic, policy.

Correct. It won’t be great again until women are forced into the kitchen and slavery returns.

Casting themselves as victims is a critical part of the movement. What makes me sad is that many of them are victims, but of their own leaders. Progressive policies would actually make life better for the majority of them.

Doublethink is a core feature of fascism.

Not only is cognitive dissonance not a problem, they take pride in believing two mutually exclusive things at the same time. It's proof to how willing they are to align themselves with the party.

The meme works as a double dog whistle. Simpletons find camaraderie in nostalgia while actual traitors recognize and organize around the damage they intend to cause.