The Trump era major symbolic production is the slogan Make America Great Again and its acronym MAGA. Counteracting the term are opposition groups that argue that America is already great and that what is offered by MAGA has ulterior and unacceptable motives.
Yet, the MAGA movement has been strong enough to promote a candidate for President that has won twice. One of the major groups that has helped to make this a reality are the Independents, the largest group of voters.
Also, a fact borne out by one election after another is that both the Republican and Democratic Parties have very low popular ratings. It is as though their traditional messages no longer resonate enough with the American people.
We tend to see instead a living reality has been taken over by a cavalcade of salesmen that parade their economic and political wares for a quick sale. This is helped along by our media, most importantly the social media, that can invent need, solutions and create social and political postures with enough power to change outlooks.
This is not only true in the United States but in the Western World as well. Results show that the nations associated with this dilemma are also going bankrupt. The 39 trillion dollars owed by America is only an obvious and glaring example of a First World in trouble. That condition is trending toward even worse outcomes.
Since its beginning, our leadership understood that important challenges and problems to solve would be part of our history. The ideals expressed in our founding documents were so high that we soon discovered that we had to commit to an incremental approach to solutions in order to accommodate them.
I recently attended a lecture by a professor of Mexican American Studies that gave a talk on Latinas joining the Women Army Corps (WAC) during World War II and the issues they faced as a result. To me, that is a great example of incremental progress caused by the extraordinary needs of the War.
Our history shows at least twice incremental change has been forsaken in favor of a radical approach to perceived solutions. The first were the disagreements on progress that led to the American Civil War. The differences between the free states of the industrial North and the slave states of the agricultural South, exacerbated by Manifest Destiny and the rush to settle the West, led to a bloodletting that almost destroyed our nation.
The second is what is happening in our time. The march of American history has brought a slow but fundamental demographic change that has created a strong ethnic and racial diversity that important segments in the country do not want.
There is an earnest effort to turn the clock back to a time when a European-based absolute majority ruled our democracy. This attempt at radical change threatens to create a political storm that can destroy the nation much like the divisiveness that caused the Civil War and brought such destruction to the country.
The preamble to the Constitution states six goals that form the rationale for our system of government. The first mentioned is “to form a more perfect union,” that has been a work in progress since the beginning.
The work of creating and maintaining a just democracy, an effort that involves many differing opinions, also creates opportunities for disunity. That is why the work of citizens and political leaders that project the voices of discourse must understand that progress is a step-by-step process.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of LaVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to News@lavozcolorado.com.
