I’m just trying to figure out what “Make America Great Again” really means?  What the hell are these folks trying to get back to?  America is not perfect…it has never been perfect. But our country has been going forward rather than backwards.  Every time I see “MAGA,” I find myself asking, what is it that they mean by “again”?  What in their psyche makes them think the progress we have made isn’t worth the effort to figure out how to make it work going it forward. The world is moving forward and here we are fighting not to go forward…here in this country where people risk their lives every single day to enter.

So, ask yourselves the following questions and think about your answers?

Was life better when a woman could not get a tubal ligation without her husband’s permission?  Was America better before equal pay for equal work became popular?  Was America better when it was legal for a man to have non-consensual sexual intercourse with his wife? Was America better when rapists could watch their victims bear their children? Was America better when marriage bars prevented women getting married were disqualified from teaching and other professions?

Was life better when almost everyone on our televisions belonged to one race? Was America better when black Miss America contestants could only be second runner-up? Was life better before we had a black President…we elected him twice?  Was America better when “strange fruit” swung often from southern trees? Was America better before “Black Lives Matter”?

Was America better when antisemitism was widely accepted? Was it better when the LGBTQ community remained mostly closeted, sometimes entering heterosexual relationships in order to be accepted by society?

Was America better before unions? Were American sports better when they were segregated? Was golf better before Tiger?   

Was American education better when Dick and Jane lived in an all-white world?  Was life better when there were no cellphones, or computers, or internet? Was it better when schools were legally segregated, or is it better now that they are creatively segregated? Was life better when children worked in factories with few age, wage, or hours worked limitations?

Was life better when one had to have a better reason for shooting an unarmed child than “saying you were in fear for your life?”  Was America better when there were no requirements for police body and vehicle cameras? Was America better when the KKK covered their heads with hoods?

There was a time when people were enslaved in our country.  There have been times in America where some were forbidden to even learn to read. There was a time when there were no people of color or women in the Federal Government and consist of three branches of the federal government.  Today we have diverse (although not necessarily equitable) representation in all branches of government. There was a time when the vote was not afforded to everyone.  The expansion of rights from one sector of American society to include others has not been smooth and is certainly an on-going battle.  While it is certainly beneficial to some to go backwards, it has never been beneficial for the majority.