The Current Fragmenting of the U.S.A (and how the 2020 Election can stop it), Part 4
Part 1 Can Be Found Here: The Green God
Part 2 Can Be Found Here: USA deserves to be Che’d
Part 3 Can Be Found Here: The Upcoming Civil War of the Democratic Party
Chapter 4: Manifest Destiny vs. Sins of the Past
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The woman on the picture above once wore it while working at Home Depot, and the result was death threats, extreme harassment online, and a life-changing amount of attention that could destroy a person. All this, over the opinion presented in a hat: America Was Never Great. But the proud, strong Black woman wearing it has a point, but its a point American citizens would rather scream and rage about instead of confronting the reality….they couldn’t possibly provide a rebuttal to prove her wrong.
This is arguably the biggest obstacle of all: the United States ultimately admitting its sins and moving forward.
This is the biggest setback that has always prevented America from actually being “great.”
Make America Great Again? Truth is, that despite being a country with many strengths and benefits, its never actually been fully great. And it definitely isn’t great today. Its actually much worse now.
Even during the best times of the 20th century like the Flapper Era, the Eisenhower Era, the Clinton Era, and that early 2010s boom under Obama, there were still scores of Americans and people living within these borders needlessly suffering. Even during the prosperous era of the Reconstruction Period, where Black Americans had gained their freedom and were developing political and economical power, we had the resistance from racists, Confederate loyalists, and supremacist groups pushing back by any means necessary.
The country was founded on slavery, so no way can a country be “great” when a population of their people are slaves, it just doesn’t make sense. And slavery became such a conundrum for half the nation that we wound up having to go to war to enforce the fact that slavery is a racist, immoral practice that should have no place in what was supposed to be an advanced society.
The successful Flapper Era also had the Tulsa and Rosewood massacres, which decimated Black American territory to nothingness. The Eisenhower Era coincides with the Jim Crow Era and the fights for equality. Then under Reagan when the economy was bouncing back, Black American neighborhoods were secretly being pumped addicting drugs which led to the destruction of many areas throughout the country as well as pandemics that were ignored---AIDS being the big one. Clinton and the Seinfeld 90s had a lot of prosperity, improvements, and an overall peaceful period----but Black America was struggling with police brutality, immigrants first started receiving the modern blunt end of blind justice, and of course the LGBTQ community was still having to battle for their equal rights. It was slow, methodical, but there was progress. But this country was growing, not great.
It is okay to admit your sins of the past and appeal to do better. Germany in a span of 100 years went from becoming the brutal enemy of the entire world to being split in half and owned by other nations to being put back together and emerging as a major progressive economic powerhouse in the European Union. Italy in a span of 100 years went from royalty choosing a fascist dictator to losing everything in a brutal war to re-emerging as a monarch-less republic and top culinary and tourist destination—well before the pandemic. Its wild that the country that has progressed the least from World War 2’s atrocities (besides Russia, even though it can still be debated) is the United States. Even Japan, the size of California, is a Top 10 economy in the world, and it’s the only country to endure TWO nuclear bombs.
The United States however was founded on this manifest destiny mindset where they believe that your failures and the failures of your families are due to your inability to rise above the ashes of oppression, and this mindset ignores the centuries of crimes and atrocities committed towards Mexicans who saw their land decrease in half during the 1800s thanks to American warfare and interventions, the Africans forced to come here by boats, and the Native Americans who saw their peaceful existence being wiped out to the pure minimum.
Donald Trump is a personification of this manifest destiny ingrained in the minds of a majority of Americans in the Rust Belt, Midwest, Tornado Alley, Great Plains, and other territories very much separated from the rapidly-changing demographics of the country—a man that made it, is draped in gold, and is a reflection of what they COULD be with work. Why would Republicans be mad at the personification of their core values of God, Money, Success, Prosperity, and being above the rules angering and offending Americans? Why would a majority of Americans not acknowledge the problems current and historically if we see success stories like a Donald Trump and his family, embedded in all kinds of projects all over the world?
From pop culture to even the history books, the history of the United States has been edited, fragmented, disguised to look like it simply had growing pains on its pathway to the top tier of all countries, which makes it much more difficult for current Americans to actually confront said history, confront the issues it had created, the conflicts with intense consequences, and the injustices today. This is why its impossible to discuss Black Lives Matter with a good population of the country, because they’ve been raised to assume that the country is now equal and there is no residue of the Civil War and the Jim Crow Era, and it leads to the racist backlash we’ve seen throughout this administration. We even have history books call the African slaves “immigrants” and simply “workers,” watering-down the severity of the Founding Fathers’ actions.
It was assumed that we had turned a corner when Obama was put into office (even though we all know Black America was praying that he doesn’t get killed before even getting to Day 1), but clearly all it did was make the racists and American mythologists extremely bitter and angry. Trump even today is eliminating racial sensitivity training sessions for federal contractors. Trump wants to spread his method of happiness: extreme ignorance is bliss.
We have mainly two types of citizens: Americans that see the country as a constantly evolving process towards its goal of obtaining equality and pathways towards success for all, and Americans that love the myths of America, the personality of America, the image of America, and will quite frankly go into chaos when its being challenged because in their eyes, we don’t need much fixing. Black Lives Matter is revealing a blemish in a country that Americans deem as perfect. Racial inequality, social inequality, the power of the top 3%, extreme capitalism, oligopolies, and environmental setbacks are all problems that don’t get recognized as much as they should because to fix these irregularities means making changes that a part of the country just isn’t willing to accept.
We’ve all heard it:
Make America Great Again.
Keep America Great.
America First.
America is the Greatest Country in the World.
America Doesn’t Need Changing.
Blue Lives Matter.
All Lives Matter.
Never Forget.
Don’t Kneel during the Anthem.
Slavery Was So Long Ago.
Pick Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps.
This Flag is a Symbol of my Southern Pride.
These are ALL phrases used and attributed to battle movements and protests and pleas for changes and attempts to move closer towards actual equality. Until we learn our history properly, until we accept and embrace collectively that there’s still so much work to be done (and after this administration, even MORE work), we’re going to be a nation with competing mindsets about the past, present, and future of the United States.
Don’t just discuss the Tea Party and the American Revolution, discuss the Native Americans and slavery sins. Discuss the Trail of Tears, discuss all the massacres committed, especially at the hands of some of the notorious historical figures we revere like Andrew Jackson.
Don’t just discuss manifest destiny and the wild wild west, discuss why we went on a Civil War (SLAAAAAAAAVVERY, and I literally had to learn this after my high school and college days which had books that told the history differently) and discuss what we did to Mexico. And then, discuss how the French was ready to join the Confederates, but Mexico was having none of that, even hiding runaway slaves from the Confederates at the time.
Don’t just discuss the Great Depression, discuss how the Great Depression started early for Black Americans nationwide thanks to Jim Crow, the KKK, and the dismantling of Black progress.
Don’t just discuss Martin Luther King Jr. and the END of the Civil Rights Movement, discuss everything that actually led up to it, discuss the riots that emerged after MLK’s assassination, discuss the scores of Black lives lost while trying to earn the right to be in this country, discuss how Muhammad Ali sacrificed his best years of his boxing career because he was a target to White Americans making an example out of him. Discuss the victories and enhancements, but don’t forget to include the missteps that still resonate today.
Admitting the sins will not make us weaker, much like how when Obama toured countries devastated by American intervention like Japan, like Cuba, did not make us look weak, no matter what the other side tells you. Confession and acceptance is a sign of strength, and this is a source of power the United States has not achieved enough. We don’t lose any footing simply federally and majorly acknowledging the disconnect and the economical and social separations between Black Americans and White Americans---as well as Native Americans and Latin Americans.
Discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of the United States---and then and only then can we collectively provide the conversations necessary to find solutions to resolve the biggest problems affecting America. And it starts with having a president that is actually willing to admit his own political sins of the past, with Joe Biden admitting his faults and his efforts to un-do the damage.
We have to kill the myth of America, because that myth disguises the tragedies.