Becoming Mean, Becoming Great
It’s pretty evident that the United States is losing friends, or rather forsaking former friends and making new friends of former enemies. This rejuggling of friendships and alliances is being done under the assumption that it will make the country great “again.” All of this is the doing of the MAGA movement, Make America Great Again. The implication is that we’re not now great, but that we used to be great. And the prediction is that if we follow their game plan we will again be great.
This friend making and breaking behavior of the government applies as well to the states as it does to foreign countries. Some states are in MAGA’s good graces, others not. And where does West Virginia stand? By almost all measures of greatness, we’ve got a ways to go, but we are considered a friend because as a state we vote for MAGA politicians and their policies. We’re a red state, among the reddest, in fact.
But how does this affect us here in Jefferson County? Well, for one thing we’re considered friendly because we, along with all other counties, voted red. Our dominant Republican party in West Virginia and in Jefferson County pretty much toes the MAGA line and votes the way MAGA wants us to vote. But the consequences of voting overwhelmingly red include the following:
We’re told we have no say in decisions made about whether we will have data centers. Those decisions will be made by a few people who don’t live here.
We have no local control over how much we can pay our teachers and civil servants. Those decisions are encoded in state law that our Republican legislators as a group will not change.
We were asked if our county law enforcement agencies would cooperate with ICE in identifying and apprehending immigrants and the county said yes. That decision was made by our county commissioners (all Republicans) and our local Republican state legislators proposed to make it mandatory for all law enforcement in the county, even though several of our municipalities (Harpers Ferry, Charles Town, Ranson, and Shepherdstown) are against their local police cooperating with ICE.
We’re told that we have to allow guns on our university campuses. No consideration of local opinion or local context is permitted. This is a priority of community safety versus 2nd Amendment rights and community safety loses.
So that’s where we are, taking the first baby steps to becoming as mean as MAGA wants us all to be. Is all of this going to make Jefferson County great? Probably not.
More likely, it will produce opposite effects. Let’s first consider what our local contribution to the MAGA agenda will do to the country. It is already making us susceptible to the same forces that humbled the European colonial powers, the German Third Reich, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union. MAGA is a losing strategy. None of these failed empires are with us today. They were “great” only in the sense that for a time they were powerful enough so win battles and extend their influence. But then, finally, they they all stopped being powerful and fell apart.
So where does America, the world power that it is now, stand in relation to these fallen powers? Consider the response from the perspective of MAGA. Consider specifically the “again” in the MAGA name. That word makes the iffy assumption that there was a time in the past when America was great, and further asserts the proposition that it is not now great.
To some parts of our population the country has never been great. During America’s 250 years as a country it’s not been regarded as great by Native Americans, by Blacks, by Asians, by various immigrant groups, by LGBTQ people, by labor, by various religious groups, even by women. Close to home significantly, it’s not been regarded as great by Appalachian people of any stripe. It’s mainly white people with historical privilege who see greatness in past America, mainly because of the advantages they had and now feel are slipping away. Their reasoning rests on the idea that the country, by caring for all these other groups, no longer cares for them the way it used to.
So in the final analysis America has never been great for everyone. Maybe the closest we’ve come is during the Franklin Roosevelt era, with the New Deal that brought so many people (not all!) to a happier place than before. But now, even people who don’t include themselves under any of the demographic categories above are beginning to feel the country is not so great. The reason is essentially because there’s been a shake up in the distribution of good life benefits.
Today, some group or another has complaints about the poor treatment they’re receiving. These groups do love the country, but more for its ideals than its accomplishments. It’s their belief that greatness lies in the admission of our Founding Fathers that we all have unalienable rights and that our democratic government will strive to uphold those rights, if not right now then later. But it has pretty universally been the case that too many Americans of different stripes believe those unalienable rights should be upheld for them and denied to others of different stripes. That’s been the stickler.
So if this argument has any validity, it means that America has never been great, in the sense that it’s ever lived up to its ideals. MAGA would be more honest to acknowledge this point, and just label itself MAG, eliminating the “again” part. By admitting this reality, they would further have to admit that it’s the ideals themselves that are wrong and we would be better off scrapping them and starting over with something new, say, leadership by a few folks. Abandon the old guidelines and honestly confess that we hate other people who are not MAGA like us and that we want to do away with them. And naturally, those few who should lead have to come from among our group, not theirs.
So we’re back then to the solutions of the Third Reich, the Soviet Union, etcetera. We embrace the idea that there are individuals and groups who are inferior. We will disenfranchise them, segregate them, forcibly assimilate them, imprison them, deport them, kill them, if need be. In general we just abandon any prospect that they can ever be enough like us that we could ever tolerate them.
And what is the best way to start this ball rolling? Simple, it’s to control the narrative and demonize the very ideal of our constitutional democracy, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), as a social good. Just baldly admit that some people are identifiably better than other people and its these good people who will boldly set new rules in place and enforce them. The proof for finally seeing America as a great country is the successes we will have in doing disenfranchisement, assimilation, segregation, imprisonment, deportation, and slaughter. And screw the wimpy do-gooders who get in the way!
If any of this pathway to greatness strikes you as something you think has already been tried, but without a lot of lasting success, you can look back to the ideology and discriminatory practices of the Axis countries in World War II. I doubt MAGAs will go so far as advocating for a Final Solution, but I do believe they take inspiration from some of the tactics. They certainly favor separate-but-equal policies, restricting voting, limiting sovereignty, denying social services, imprisonment, appropriating property. But the fact is that these “solutions” will be socially and economically disruptive, and ultimately they will encourage even worse treatment.
Republicans believe in trickle-down economics, but it’s just as true that they believe in trickle-down social and educational policies. And we here in Jefferson County, West Virginia are at the bottom of the trickle stream. We’re already seeing our water, our air, our schools, our property, our books, our behavior, even our bodies taken out of our control. It can get worse, if we don’t turn off the tap and stop the drip. Being mean to people is not a pathway to greatness. It never has been.
