To the Editor:
Make America Great Again has been a political slogan made popular by a former president as his campaign slogan and has turned into a rallying cry for a large number of our countrymen. What does it mean to make America great again? It seems to me like the MAGA movement wants to return our country to an earlier time when things were better, but the question is better for whom?
I would like to know the Era we are talking about. If you are an indigenous American I guess it would be a time before your land was stolen, your people were murdered and you were marched to reservation. If you are a woman I guess it could have been the time after you gained the right to vote but before you lost the right to choose. If you are a black American I can’t even think of a time in our past you would want to return to. If you are middle eastern America I guess it would be just before 9/11 when suddenly everyone that looked like you was suddenly looked at like a terrorist.
The point here is that American greatness is not a time period. American greatness is a work in progress and I don’t think the MAGA movement gets that. At the base of the Statue of Liberty the inscription says ” Give me your tired, your pour, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” but MAGA builds walls and busses immigrants to other states. We all are descendants of immigrants and we built a great country together. We are a project and one that we all must work together if we are going to remain great.
MAGA, if you want to be great let’s stop the hatred and work on making America great. There are many opportunities in our area where you can give some of your time making America great like feeding the hungry, the animal shelter, habit for humanity and so many other places where your time invested will help the greatness of our local community and who knows if other MAGA members in other local communities do the same then maybe we can make America great.
It is time we all accept that we are all different, we have different skin colors and religions and dreams and none of them are wrong. Politicians are trying to divide us and they are destroying the very fabric that makes this country what it is. We all have a past and a lot of it is not flattering but we can’t hide it or undo it. We must teach the next generations what we have been through, even the ugly parts so that we can move forward and learn from our mistakes. In my opinion this is what it will take to make America great again.
– Robert Brown, Cape May Court House
