Simple Question

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PsychoticEpisode

It is very dry in here today
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When was America great?

Any reference to MAGA must refer to a time in which an ordinary mundane existence was elevated to greatness. Apparently whatever that was is now gone but supposedly in the process of being resurrected. Moon landings were great but can’t be sure if that was the specific time to earn a label of greatness. So if America isn’t great at the moment, then there must be another period in history where it was lost but I wouldn’t have any idea when that might have been. I guess there’s still the possibility that America was never really great and the whole MAGA movement is chasing rainbows and it could stall because of it.
 
PsychoticEpisode said:
I guess there’s still the possibility that America was never really great and the whole MAGA movement is chasing rainbows and it could stall because of it.
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While this is certainly possible, the answer to your question is not an abstract, objective measure of American greatness, but a consideration of what Maga means when they speak of greatness.

They refer to a time before we elected a black president.

More generally, it's a common undercurrent in the long complaint against political correctness on through the lamentation against cancel culture.

From there, it's a stoneskip to the Southern Strategy, which would look back to a greatness achieved in the postwar boom and gravely if not mortally wounded by the Civil Rights Act, and Supreme Court rulings in Griswold and Loving.

Making America great "again" depends, for Maga, on putting women and black people back in their places.
 
PsychoticEpisode said:
So if America isn’t great at the moment, then there must be another period in history where it was lost
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It is just a cool sound bite, all campaigns have them even Biden.
A quick Ai was required as they must have been not as memorable.

"Battle for the Soul of the Nation"

"Build Back Better" - He went for some alliteration there. Punchy.

"Our Best Days Are Still Ahead"

"No Malarkey!"

A bit crap to be honest.

If you are really asking what Trump wants to change to fix what he thinks is wrong with America, then all you need to is look at what he done since he came into power.
Energy, trade, security, immigration and spending.

If you are from the USA you will be aware of all these things yes?
 
PsychoticEpisode said:
When was America great?

Any reference to MAGA must refer to a time in which an ordinary mundane existence was elevated to greatness. Apparently whatever that was is now gone but supposedly in the process of being resurrected. Moon landings were great but can’t be sure if that was the specific time to earn a label of greatness. So if America isn’t great at the moment, then there must be another period in history where it was lost but I wouldn’t have any idea when that might have been. I guess there’s still the possibility that America was never really great and the whole MAGA movement is chasing rainbows and it could stall because of it.
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Такое выражение автоматически подразумевает тот факт, что сейчас Америка уже не мировой лидер. По видимому, Китай оттаптал ей обе пятки, и теперь она ходит с трудом. Что же делать в такой ситуации бывшему лидеру? Бежать быстрее самому, или мешать соперникам бежать? Посмотрим, запасаемся попкорном, и наблюдаем...
 
PsychoticEpisode said:
When was America great?
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Just looking at its influence and prosperity, rather than what those times entailed, one might consider the "peak USA" period to have been post-WW2, up to the '60s, and again in the 90s following the downfall of the USSR. Post-WW2 they were the world's leading manufacturer, producer, economy, and military, and that didn't change for a while.

Unfortunately that period was one of gender inequality, racial inequality, lack of any moral complexity/nuance, and so forth. Back then white men ruled the home and the country, the country was doing well, so let's go back to that, let's reverse all these unhelpful social changes and surely we'll return to prosperity, right. It's a simple outlook, at least for the white man who sees other's improvement not as those people rising but as him being pushed down.

Only it doesn't work like that. But enough people have thought/hoped it does.
 
Sarkus said:
Just looking at its influence and prosperity, rather than what those times entailed, one might consider the "peak USA" period to have been post-WW2, up to the '60s, and again in the 90s following the downfall of the USSR. Post-WW2 they were the world's leading manufacturer, producer, economy, and military, and that didn't change for a while.

Unfortunately that period was one of gender inequality, racial inequality, lack of any moral complexity/nuance, and so forth. Back then white men ruled the home and the country, the country was doing well, so let's go back to that, let's reverse all these unhelpful social changes and surely we'll return to prosperity, right. It's a simple outlook, at least for the white man who sees other's improvement not as those people rising but as him being pushed down.

Only it doesn't work like that. But enough people have thought/hoped it does.
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It's weird we all have different ideas on this. We all agree on some points but disagree on what Trump actually meant.
My thoughts is he didn't actually mean anything, it's just a slogan.

(A quick Google - used by Regan)
 
Pinball1970 said:
It's weird we all have different ideas on this. We all agree on some points but disagree on what Trump actually meant.
My thoughts is he didn't actually mean anything, it's just a slogan.

(A quick Google - used by Regan)
Click to expand...
It's not a new slogan. As you say, Reagan said "Let's make America great again", and it has been used in speeches and conservative rhetoric for years, always seeming to decry the lost simplicity, output, and pride in America of yesteryear. So did Trump mean anything with it? Yes, but nothing more than what it already meant to conservatives. And beyond what Reagan meant, which was the result to a somewhat specific sense of decline that America felt in the late 70s, it simply appeals to people's idea that the reason they themselves are not doing well is because the country is somehow failing them.

So, yes, it means something. It's a good enough slogan that it leaves it to the individual to pick whatever meaning they want from it, but the same idea, the same general meaning, percolates through all of them.

If he didn't mean anything, if it was "just a slogan", he might as well have gone with some random words. But he didn't. Because it does have meaning.
 
Sarkus said:
It's not a new slogan. As you say, Reagan said "Let's make America great again", and it has been used in speeches and conservative rhetoric for years, always seeming to decry the lost simplicity, output, and pride in America of yesteryear. So did Trump mean anything with it? Yes, but nothing more than what it already meant to conservatives. And beyond what Reagan meant, which was the result to a somewhat specific sense of decline that America felt in the late 70s, it simply appeals to people's idea that the reason they themselves are not doing well is because the country is somehow failing them.

So, yes, it means something. It's a good enough slogan that it leaves it to the individual to pick whatever meaning they want from it, but the same idea, the same general meaning, percolates through all of them.

If he didn't mean anything, if it was "just a slogan", he might as well have gone with some random words. But he didn't. Because it does have meaning.
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Clinton used it too apparently.
 
Everyone seems to think there was some past time when everything was great. The imaginary "good old days."
 
I answer OP with an equation:

Unregulated capitalism + White male power + Christian Nationalism + TESCREAL = MAGA.
 
TheVat said:
I answer OP with an equation:

Unregulated capitalism + White male power + Christian Nationalism + TESCREAL = MAGA.
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I wouldn't lump TESCREAL with MAGA. There are few "tech bros" or "tech elite" within that general idea that are entrenched with MAGA, but I don't see it as being particularly aligned with MAGA, and certainly not a core aspect thereof. Musk and Thiel may be heavily aligned with MAGA but that doesn't mean everything they believe or want is MAGA.
 
There doesn't have to have been an actual better time in the past in order to generate a widespread romantic sentiment of "the good ol' days". It's an appeal to emotion - appeal to an illusion.

And it's magical thinking. (Thats where you start with step 1 and envision arriving at step 3, without ever bothering to form step 2.)
 
#SoAnyway | #JustBecause​

Sarkus said:
I wouldn't lump TESCREAL with MAGA. There are few "tech bros" or "tech elite" within that general idea that are entrenched with MAGA, but I don't see it as being particularly aligned with MAGA, and certainly not a core aspect thereof. Musk and Thiel may be heavily aligned with MAGA but that doesn't mean everything they believe or want is MAGA.
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So, anyway, this is a newsletter economist commenting on a think-tank economist↱:

Good to see Sam tacitly admitting his "EA case for Trump" is falling apart now that O'Neil was fired for being too pro-vax & the admin cut chip controls

Real question is why it took him so long to make this obvious realization—or if he will actually stop working with the admin​

And, yes, we actually have to pay attention to Effective Altruism in order to understand what Joey Politano is referring to.

But it's a tech-right thing¹.

And, yeah, I didn't really know what to do with this piece of the tescreality that just fell into my socmed feed. So, here, just because.
____________________

Notes:

¹ The connection is the think tank, the Foundation for American Innovation; per Scola↱:

「… the DOE found an unlikely ally in a right-wing think tank, the Foundation for American Innovation. Once a relatively unassuming thinktank rooted in Silicon Valley's techno-libertarian movement, the group has gained surprising influence in Washington during Trump's second term.

It leveraged that influence to convince others on the right that the Energy Department's loan office was key to helping the U.S. build the next-generation of reactors to compete with China's global nuclear energy exports ....

.... In the end, the Department of Energy's loan office escaped the legislative process largely intact—and well-equipped to provide capital to the country's next generation of nuclear power companies. It also cemented the FAI's role in a new era of beltway politics. FAI, once advocating its politics among a small choir of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, is the proverbial dog that caught the car.」​

Scola, Nancy. "Meet the Rave-Throwing Think Tank Shaping the Tech-Right". Inc. 4 September 2025. Inc.com. 15 February 2026. https://www.inc.com/nancy-scola/foundation-american-innovation-tech-right/91235091

https://twitter.com/x/status/2022520688041693627
 
America was great in WW2, for the UK Europe and the ROW, never underestimate that contribution. Brave boys and resources.
If Europe and the UK would have fallen who knows how that would have ended? We would have needed a bail out from Russia but they would have had a different scenario entering from the East if D day would have been repelled. A Russian loss? Disaster and a Nazi Eurasia, success? Disaster and an extended CCCP.
There are lots of other ways it was great. Europe was the center of excellence for science, look at where all the great physicists came from? The schools where they taught? Prior to 1930s?
Then the Exodus, when immigrants were welcome and the USA flourished as a result.
(It would have been awesome if that Jew, What's his face would have stayed in Manchester, a lot of bigots around at that time, we needed him)
While we were weaving black shirts and burning books, America was giving refuge to immigrants. That's pretty great.
I don't like literature that much but American art and literature is as important in the 20th century as European was in the 19th.
Cinema USA is number one.

Ok something I DO know something about. Jazz, rock and roll, Bill Hayley, Elvis (huge) Buddy Holly, Everly Bros(Brit invasion - in a nice way this time) Beach Boys, CSN, Mamas and the Papas, Hendrix, GFRR, The Doors etc etc.

That was a creative amazing two decades.

Politically?how about civil rights? Women get the vote? Ok you may not have been the first but you got there before us.

Yeah the US was AND can be great again
 
Pinball1970 said:
Then the Exodus, when immigrants were welcome and the USA flourished as a result.
(It would have been awesome if that Jew, What's his face would have stayed in Manchester, a lot of bigots around at that time, we needed him)
Click to expand...
Was that Irving J. Good? One of the Bletchley Park fellahs? Known as "Jack" in The Imitation Game.
 
Pinball1970 said:
America was great in WW2, for the UK Europe and the ROW, never underestimate that contribution. Brave boys and resources.
If Europe and the UK would have fallen who knows how that would have ended? We would have needed a bail out from Russia but they would have had a different scenario entering from the East if D day would have been repelled. A Russian loss? Disaster and a Nazi Eurasia, success? Disaster and an extended CCCP.
There are lots of other ways it was great. Europe was the center of excellence for science, look at where all the great physicists came from? The schools where they taught? Prior to 1930s?
Then the Exodus, when immigrants were welcome and the USA flourished as a result.
(It would have been awesome if that Jew, What's his face would have stayed in Manchester, a lot of bigots around at that time, we needed him)
While we were weaving black shirts and burning books, America was giving refuge to immigrants. That's pretty great.
I don't like literature that much but American art and literature is as important in the 20th century as European was in the 19th.
Cinema USA is number one.

Ok something I DO know something about. Jazz, rock and roll, Bill Hayley, Elvis (huge) Buddy Holly, Everly Bros(Brit invasion - in a nice way this time) Beach Boys, CSN, Mamas and the Papas, Hendrix, GFRR, The Doors etc etc.

That was a creative amazing two decades.

Politically?how about civil rights? Women get the vote? Ok you may not have been the first but you got there before us.

Yeah the US was AND can be great again
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А если в США к власти придёт аналог Гитлера? Кто сможет ему противостоять, если мир будет однополярным?
 
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