I love the Jane Fonda comment. 50 years later she is still at it. Unfortunately the America Firsters have GOP antecedents in the 1930s with the likes of Arthur Vandenberg. Yet Pearl Harbor turned the Michigan Senator from an isolationist to a hawk over a single day. Yet Justin identifies a deeper rot. Just took a fresh look through Trump's inauguration speech and the core is that America is great but is being held back by ... other Americans. Combine that with the indoctrination that nearly every student receives about our ills, and is it any wonder than an unalloyed Reagan belief in our exceptionalism is drowned in sorrow?
What's always been so interesting to me about Trump's rhetoric is he underneath the uber-patriotic bow he tries to wrap himself in, his message is essentially that America's just another country, we shouldn't judge bad actors because we've been bad too, and we just need to set aside our high standards for ourselves and be nasty in our own self-interest. Beneath it all, it's pretty clear to me that Trump is anything but a patriot, but he's got these legions of followers who think that their the most patriotic people in history.
Good questions. It’s been suggested that some of it is fueled by dislike of other groups of American citizens. If many nationalists feel a lack of kinship with their countrymen, and if many populists resent the elite of their own country, that fuels their antipathy towards America on the world stage.
I love the Jane Fonda comment. 50 years later she is still at it. Unfortunately the America Firsters have GOP antecedents in the 1930s with the likes of Arthur Vandenberg. Yet Pearl Harbor turned the Michigan Senator from an isolationist to a hawk over a single day. Yet Justin identifies a deeper rot. Just took a fresh look through Trump's inauguration speech and the core is that America is great but is being held back by ... other Americans. Combine that with the indoctrination that nearly every student receives about our ills, and is it any wonder than an unalloyed Reagan belief in our exceptionalism is drowned in sorrow?
What's always been so interesting to me about Trump's rhetoric is he underneath the uber-patriotic bow he tries to wrap himself in, his message is essentially that America's just another country, we shouldn't judge bad actors because we've been bad too, and we just need to set aside our high standards for ourselves and be nasty in our own self-interest. Beneath it all, it's pretty clear to me that Trump is anything but a patriot, but he's got these legions of followers who think that their the most patriotic people in history.
Good questions. It’s been suggested that some of it is fueled by dislike of other groups of American citizens. If many nationalists feel a lack of kinship with their countrymen, and if many populists resent the elite of their own country, that fuels their antipathy towards America on the world stage.
It definitely makes for an interesting stew.