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Your choice: Green New Deal or M.A.G.A.


I wrote a column about the reactionary non-vision of M.A.G.A. and the Trumpists for the Long Prairie Leader a couple of weeks ago. Then, the Intercept published the video "Message from the Future" by Rep. Ocasio Cortez. In it Ocasio Cortez looks with a clear vision toward a hopeful future that can be. It is a stark contrast to the Trumpists looking backward to a past that never was.

I urge you to look at AOC's inspiring video and, if you care to, to read my description of M.A.G.A. the follows.


"Message from the Future"  https://theintercept.com/2019/04/17/green-new-deal-short-film-alexandria-ocasio-cortez/
I saw a photo of Donald Trump on his golf course the other day. He was wearing one of those red caps with M.A.G.A letters on it. Make America Great Again was the whining complaint that got Donald Trump elected and it’s the same absurd complaint he imagines that will get him re-elected.

What the dickens does it mean to Make America Great Again? Why does Trump insult our country by making such a complaint? I’d say we’re pretty great as a nation but we could be greater - or more great. If you really believed in America, and its wonderful possibility, wouldn’t you say something like, “Let’s Make America More Great”?

That’s the thing. Over the last two hundred or so years we Americans have worked together to make America a better place for all of us. We’ve made a lot of progress and I think that’s great. There are still improvements that need to be made and I think that together we can make them. In fact the main thing that makes America great today, and will into the future, is that we have the capacity to work together to make America even greater.

But the Donald is not complaining that we should work together to be better in the future. His M.A.G.A. whine is that we need to go backwards into some past that was better than today. Since he hasn’t told anybody when that was all of us must wait for him to tweet out the time when we’ve arrived in the perfect Trumpian past.

I’m a little curious about when the Golden M.A.G.A. past that we’re going backwards to was. So, I’ve been thinking a bit about American history.

Back around 1750 we were ruled by a greedy and unreasonable king. Could the Donald want to M.A.G.A us back through time to then? I can’t imagine that to be the case. Americans are too good for kings.

Over the next fifty years Americans worked hard and together they threw off the heavy yoke of the king and wrote a constitution that the world has admired ever since. Great stuff! America was great. Does the Donald want to return to that Golden Past? I hope not. We were great but we had a lot of things that needed improving back then. I’m certain that the M.A.G.A.ites don’t want us to return to slavery times!

It was painful but America finally threw off slaveries yoke. Thanks to Abraham Lincoln, and a whole bunch of great Americans, the barbaric belief that humans could be bought and sold was snuffed out. America was getting greater and we were doing it together. 

But we had work to do and I’m certain that the Donald would agree. Back then was still the bad old days and women couldn’t vote to change that. 

So, since they couldn’t vote, a whole lot of women took to the streets and they protested. And protested some more. Finally, after a lot of struggle, they got the rights that the Constitution guaranteed them. They could vote. Wow! What a great time that was. But, looking into the future, there was still work for Americans to do to be even greater. 

When American women got the vote, mobs of masked Americans were still lynching black men. Nobody, not even that tweeting Donald, is taking us back to the horrors of that time. 

Change to become greater usually takes protest or, in the cases of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, violence. There was protest and there was violence as we Americans struggled to make it right to our African American citizens. We did improve and we became better but there is still work to be done in that area. Our struggle was great and we must continue to look toward a greater future. We must not look backward when it comes to the treatment of Americans of African descent.

About the time the Civil Rights Act passed Congress the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire. Corporations had dumped so many toxic chemicals in the river that the water became a flammable mess. It was then, also, that it was discovered that the insecticide DDT was causing our nation’s symbol, the bald eagle, to go extinct. When Americans learned of these things they rose up in protest and Congress responded. Laws were passed regulating corporations and their environmental misdeeds. Now the Cuyahoga is clean and bald eagles are a fairly common sight. What a great accomplishment!


Each generation of Americans has done great things to make America great. There is no need to make America great again. We are great and our challenge is to continue to be great by looking forward, not backward. 

 Tim
Central Minnesota Political

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