Can Donald Trump “Make America Great Again?”

By Dada Vedaprajinananda

The surprise candidate of the presidential primary race is Donald Trump. He is now the front runner in public opinion polls among Republicans and as I travel around I hear ordinary people saying good things about him. Despite his public appeal he is widely denounced by commentators on the left and on the right. One political pundit, though not in favor of Trump, said that the reason for his success is that his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” speaks to what common people are feeling.

Let’s look at the slogan and see whether Trump can actually deliver on his promise. Trump’s general idea is that America was once a great superpower but is now in a state of decline due to “stupid” politicians. Before we ask whether America is truly in decline and what is the cause of that decline, it is important to decide whether America was once “Great.”

The common history narratives taught in American schools and firmly nestled in the American mind pays little attention to the ethnic cleansing of the Native American people which made the expansion of the US possible. The role that the slave economy played in building the strength of the South and the rest of the nation is also forgotten against the larger idea that energetic, hardworking Americans built the greatest economy ever seen. The military interventions of the US abroad to “make the world safe for democracy” are portrayed as selfless efforts to help less fortunate people enjoy the benefits of freedom. Others see these same interventions as an example of political and economic imperialism. Without deciding on all these points it is safe to say that the past greatness of America is open for debate.

In my opinion, if there is one thing that did make America great it was the opportunity that it offered to people of many different nationalities to flee from poverty and persecution and start a new life in the New World. Millions of people immigrated to the US, learned how to speak English and were accepted as “Americans.” Many of these people had their backs to the wall in their native lands and the opportunity that America presented was nothing short of miraculous.

Now what about Donald Trump? He says that the current leaders and politicians are “stupid” and that he alone can restore America’s preeminence in the world. So far he has not really presented economic and diplomatic programs which could reverse current trends. And it could also be asked whether anyone could. After all history shows that empires rise and then they fall. If the 20th Century was, as many historians call it, an “American Century” can we really expect this to continue indefinitely?

Where Trump has been specific and emphatic is his stance against immigrants. He wants to build a wall on the border with Mexico and deport 11 million immigrants. He wants to repeal the provision in the 14th amendment to the US Constitution which grants citizenship to anyone born in the US. In a loud and brash manner he is hitting at the one thing that really once made the US an exceptionally good country. I don’t think that a country which is symbolized by a Statue of Liberty, welcoming the world’s “tired and poor,” can be restored to greatness by building a wall proclaiming, “Go back to where you came from.”