What’s Right About “Make America Great Again”

Make America Great Again—what is that all about?  What time in the past are the people in the red hats  looking to?  Great in what way?

There’s no one answer, of course.  It’s a useful phrase because it means many things to different people.  But I think there are two basic meanings.  One is quite awful and dangerous, but the other is actually something progressive politicians and activists should support.  And they are connected.  If we articulate clearly what we mean, maybe we can make inroads into the heads of MAGA supporters.

The awful and dangerous meaning has been frequently pointed out and is clearly front and center for the reactionary side of the MAGA movement.  This is a desire to restore or impose ‘traditional’ norms regarding the role of women, homosexuality, non-white minorities, Jews, and atheists and non-believers.  In the not so distant past, the post-war period up to roughly the early 1970s, these norms all favored white, male, Christian power.  Then, in the eyes of traditionalists, it all fell apart in a cascade of youthful protest, black empowerment, women’s movements, gay movements, Native American movements, surging immigration, and on and on.  

MAGA enthusiasts want most of this rolled back.  They may not be against any and every aspect, but the overall trend is personally uncomfortable and frightening; white Christians are now becoming a minority with attendant threats to power and status.  Women are asserting themselves in work, politics, education, everything.  What used to be seen as ‘normal’ American life based in rural areas and small towns and manufacturing (or living in the suburbs and working for big corporations), has been replaced by urban lifestyles dominated by minorities and immigrants and educated professionals.  

This discomfort is comprehensible, but unacceptable.  It amounts to a reactionary desire to reject basic premises of American life:  the equal worth and dignity of all Americans, the right of all to participate in choosing our rulers, equal respect before the law, the ability of everyone to pursue the ‘American Dream’ of economic success and advancement. 

But I think there is another side to MAGA nostalgia, one that has real weight.  During the same postwar period that traditionalists praise as a time of solid, family-oriented, Christian values held up by white men, the American economy was (for those same white men) a juggernaut of success.  It was during the roughly 30 years after WWII that the United States saw its longest period of sustained growth, growth that benefited all classes more or less equally—a rising tide that really lifted all boats.  Growth was steady and strong and similar for blue collar workers, white collar professionals, and executives.  As productivity climbed, wages and compensation climbed for everyone.  Work was characterized by job security, pensions, and benefits, fought for and protected by strong unions.  

Pay for corporate executives was of course higher than for regular employees, but not so much higher that they lived in different economic universes.  In 1962 the CEO of the average company made about 25 times as much as the average employee, unlike today where it is often 400 or 500 times as much.  Marginal tax rates as high as 90% discouraged very high salaries.  

The good times were made possible in large part by an expanded role for government.  Social security, the GI bill, financial regulations, and government infrastructure programs like the national highway program boosted growth and gave Americans economic security.  A broad consensus, that seemed permanent at the time, took hold that government had a central role in making sure the economy avoided major recessions and worked for everyone.  As Richard Nixon famously said, “We are all Keynesians now.”    

The postwar economic (and demographic) boom was the necessary condition for the challenge to traditional cultural norms and hierarchies that took hold in the 1960s. Rising incomes, greater economic security, and a huge increase in access to higher education made it easier to argue for radical social change that would make the fruits of prosperity available to all.  Extending rights, opportunity, and government assistance to everyone was now seen as both just and affordable.  

But then, in an ironic turn, changing norms about race and gender and patriarchy contributed to the eventual collapse of support for the postwar egalitarian economic system.  Economic stress in the 1970s—caused by the unfunded war in Vietnam, growing international competition, and the sharp rise in oil prices from OPEC—led to embracing Reagan’s neoliberal model which championed unbridled competition, small government, lower taxes, weak unions, and free trade.  This caused skyrocketing economic inequality and, eventually, the hollowing out and destruction of much of the unionized manufacturing that had been the underpinning of America’s shared prosperity.  The trajectories of corporate managers, investors, and educated professionals began to diverge sharply from those of America’s blue collar and lower middle class, where incomes stagnated and jobs disappeared.

Economic stress is almost guaranteed to exacerbate racial and social tensions; it is much easier to get broad support to share a growing economic pie, than a shrinking one.  As economic prospects began to contract, more and more Americans were easily persuaded that liberal social and economic policies were to blame.  Minorities and immigrants and women were taking the jobs and privileges that rightfully belonged to regular white guys.  Conservative politicians and culture warriors were happy to connect the dots, redirecting anger and frustration away from corporate and political decisionmakers towards undeserving ‘others’ who were being given unfair advantages.  Business interests who had never accepted the postwar consensus about the role of government in managing the economy pushed a new Friedmanite, anti-Keynesian ideology that said all good things come from the private sector.  They grew in power and took over the Republican Party. 

So the two sides of the MAGA worldview—anger at efforts to include all Americans, and anger at the loss of economic security and opportunity—are in fact closely connected.  They are linked by a zero-sum view that sees any gains for others as a loss for ‘us’.  In the MAGA mind, the decline of jobs and prosperity and status for white men is because everyone else has been rising.  And though there is plenty of disdain for women and people of color, the real hatred is reserved for the white liberals who brought this about and are seen as traitors.

If liberals want to defuse this anger, we must push policies that separate these goals, and find a better language for talking about them.  We should start by agreeing that we need to re-create a version of the more egalitarian economic and social system we once had.  There are genuine traitors who have sold out working class Americans, but they live mostly on Wall Street and Silicon Valley, not college campuses.  They have hoodwinked working Americans with neoliberal claptrap about ‘trickle down’ economics and ‘move fast and break things.’ 

At the same time we can’t back down on the need to include everyone.  White Protestants have no right to keep their historical privileged position.  We are a nation united by a common creed, not a common ethnic or religious heritage.  But we also must avoid ‘flipping the script’ to such an extreme that it panics those who we need to win over.  If America cannot properly be described as an exceptional “city on a hill,” neither should it be described as a version of hell.  This is thoughtless as well as dangerous.

MAGA Republicans have some things deeply wrong, but some things right.  Acknowledging that the past was better in some respects might help reduce and redirect the simmering anger that is dividing Americans.