Great Again

MAGA

We didn’t notice the red hats in his office. There to ask him to fix a roof on one of the NYCHA buildings directly across from his new Bronx golf course, we thought he might set a challenging example for the reluctant real estate developers who wanted no part of getting near NYCHA.

After a very frank discussion, he told us to come back after he was finished running for President. He swept his arm grandly across campaign stuff propped up around the room. Stunned and amused at the same time, we asked if he was serious – he was in his way – so we wished him luck, told him to have fun and accepted his promise to meet again as soon as the campaign was over

We noticed the red hats but not the initials MAGA so didn’t ask him what that meant.

We found out several months later when he rode down the escalator in his Fifth Avenue building to face a crowd of actors paid to be his audience…called all Mexicans rapists and announced for the Presidency.

Make America Great Again. He never said when America had been great or what that greatness was all about. His primary opponents didn’t ask. The Republican Party didn’t ask. The media didn’t ask. Hillary Clinton didn’t ask. He talked about America First, how the World was taking advantage of us, how we needed to get out of NATO and why we needed to build a wall around the entry points to American soil. And that was it.

Make America Great Again…not great but great again. Was it ever anything more than a nifty slogan, a great applause line, a red hat you could give away or sell when you needed campaign cash?

Well maybe not to the real estate developer and TV star, but we think it’s worth looking at now because it hasn’t gone away, it will be back and the brutal truth is what we were, we are no longer.

THE AMERICAN DREAM

The stunning industrial strength of America – manufacturing steel, automobiles, Railroads, communications techniques like the telegraph and then the telephone, the power of electricity — all developed through the 19th Century all came into full potential during the needs of the Second World War.

America, late into the First World War and clinging to its neutrality over concerns about endless European conflicts and uncertain about increasing Japanese aggressiveness, nonetheless found itself leading a war effort in both the West and the East.

When President Roosevelt’s brilliant cabinet advised him that the nation’s powerful industries would vigorously focus their complete attention on the demanding needs of the war effort “…if everyone makes money…” FDR bought it and sold it.

America’s industrial might made it the most powerful military machine in World history. It helped Europe crush Hitler’s German machine and used the Atom Bomb to put an end to Japan’s efforts to prolong the war in Asia.

At the successful conclusion of the war two things were clear: the war effort brought corporate interests, industry and working Americans together as never before; everyone was making money and the so-called American dream became a reality for millions who had been striving for it. Now more Americans than ever could have a well-paying job, own a home and a car, could move out of central cities to the suburbs, could send kids to college to continue the education that meant so much to the industrial strength, productivity and inventiveness of America.

The industrial and corporate sectors and the unions that served them returned to peacetime production capable of meeting the World’s needs for goods. FDR’s New Deal liberalism continued to support union growth, continued to press for increased opportunities for the working class, providing the sense that social capitalism could work to increase opportunities in every aspect of America’s society.

America’s focus on education had become so prominent, so critical, that the country offered all of its returning veterans a free college education whether they had served overseas or not. The GI Bill of Rights has been termed the most important piece of legislation ever passed by Congress.

It emphasized what most Americans believed then and still believe …that a good education is what is needed to achieve success.

America’s focus on social capitalism after World War 11 was so successful that this nation produced the World’s first Middle Class. One did not have to be born to money to matter in this country…or so it seemed.

Those Europeans, educated and industrious and arriving as immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, could in little more than a few generations begin to see the reality of the American dream.

Yes, the streets were not paved with gold…but opportunities existed in America then and ever since, that could be found nowhere else in the World.

TAKEOVER

America assumed the obligation of helping Europe rebuild. It did the same for its enemies Germany and Japan.

What began as a lend lease arrangement – the Marshall Plan in Europe – saw America lend countries money so that they could buy the goods and services that would turn a war-torn Europe into a productive continent once again. Those goods and services would come from American companies.

It was simple and it worked because America had the industrial strength to provide what was necessary and the American government was insuring that European countries had the money to buy what we could sell.

Think about that for a moment. America lent money to buyers who would then buy American goods from private companies.

It was perfect. And it worked.

Europe rebounded. Japan recovered.

And America embraced a new relationship between the United States government and full blown corporate America and that relationship would grow all the more threatening to what capitalism could and would be in the American economy. In time, the government would prosper as an organ of American business, not the other way around.

Americans would not.

When business realized that the government could be influenced by money behind its needs, the country suddenly became abuzz with special interest groups. They were the rage. They had corporate money, the help of lobbyists financed by business and a new platform from which to shout their support: television.

While we now live in a world of social media with our eyes glued to our phones, in the 1950s, 60’s and 70’s we were all influenced by television. It had burst upon us as the TV network loaded with money from commercials, turned its attention to politics: campaign coverage, political conventions, debates and nightly news on the network’s Nightly News shows headed by Huntley, Brinkley, Cronkite and Jennings.

Television became the advertising medium and it wasn’t cheap. As the need to buy television ads became the most paramount need of any campaign, those in politics came begging to business for funding.

And business realized in due time, that they could not only win the support of politicians, but buy them and their votes.

Whatever influence the Robber Barons had used in the early days of America’s industrialization pale against what had developed as we entered the last years of the 20th Century.

There wasn’t much left of the New Deal liberalism. Unions were beginning to lose their influence. Opportunities existed but if you were striving for the Middle Class, it became more elusive and then came the tilt which insured the takeover: the election of Ronald Reagan and the New Deal was dead forever.

GREAT AGAIN?

America met the swing toward a global economy as we entered the 21st Century certain that it would retain it’s powerful position as the manufacturer of the World’s needs. But it was wrong.

Little by little the will of American business became lost against the ferocious opportunism of a Germany, a Japan, former enemies of ours by now the makers of all the automobiles we wanted to drive.

European designers shaped the fashions but Chinese companies began making the clothes America wanted to wear. The great Garment district of New York City slowly faded away as did the International Ladies Garment Workers…as slowly unions faded from the business scene.

Always the targets of big business, unions could not withstand the reality that Europe and Asia began taking away the jobs that Americans no longer wanted in businesses Americans no longer wanted to lead.

If you were the son or daughter of a business tycoon and inherited the business, you sold it, took the money and ran to play in the playing fields of the rich.

If you are the son or grandson or great grandson of the jewelers in that Diamond district in midtown New York are you making the jewelry upstairs in the building above all those retail shops? No …you have become a professional in law or medicine or business management. Who is making the jewelry upstairs above those retail shops? Chinese immigrants with the touch of gold.

Today, a quarter of the way through the century, America’s business breadth has been taken over by China. This country not only owes China trillions of dollars, it is absolutely dependent on what China produces – EVERYTHING – so that we have become not only a debtor nation but a dependent one as well.

And then came Covid, and the World seemed to stop. No need to review the details…we are living them and will continue to do so. It is interesting to note that while America has buried one million Covid victims, a nation very much like ours, Australia has only lost 7,200 of its people to Covid.

China’s approach to handling Covid is to lock its people down…literally take them off the streets and lock them in their houses.

The result of this has been a drop in production and shortages in America.

The combination of slowed Chinese manufacturing, the stunning inability of ships to dock and unload combined with a lack of truck drivers – now hired by Amazon- has caused shortages and Inflamed inflation to an extent not seen in years

So the deeper story than Chinese capitalism and Covid is that America really doesn’t want to make things anymore.

Do we make anything at all for World consumption”
Yes, armaments…weapons of war. And that is all.

We are able to send plane loads of armaments to help the Ukraine fighters but we cannot produce enough baby formula to feed the kids who need it…and are looking abroad for help to meet that demand as well.

Make America Great Again? Well we are able to see what made it great and gradually over the years, what made it less.

Can we achieve that balance of government service and economic balance as we provide opportunities for immigrants as we have for the hundreds of years of our democracy? And what is left of our democracy as forces inside America seek to intimidate its existence?

Faced with these problems and a fast-changing climate bearing down on us, can our young people who do not have the education of their grandparents or the common sense that is a result of knowledge and nothing else, make America great again?

What do you think?