Donald Trump's Idea Of When America Was "Great"

(Caricature of Donald Trump is by DonkeyHotey.)

One of Donald Trump's favorite lines is that he's going to "make America great again". This of course means there was a time when the United States was better than it currently is. When was that time? Trump answers that in a recent interview with the New York Times. Here is his answer:

". . . it was the turn of the century, that’s when we were a great, when we were really starting to go robust. But if you look back, it really was, there was a period of time when we were developing at the turn of the century which was a pretty wild time for this country and pretty wild in terms of building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship etc, etc." 

 That shouldn't surprise anyone. Trump admires a time in our history when the rich and the corporations controlled everything in the country. Unions were weak and just trying to get established, and corporations could use government power against them. Wages were low, and corporate executives (and owners) gobbled up all the rising productivity. Workers worked long hours for little pay, no safety protections, and no job security.

It was an era of unfettered greed and unregulated capitalism, and it eventually led to the Great Depression -- since they had stolen all they could from ordinary Americans and demand sank to a dangerous low.

Trump doesn't want to make America great for all Americans. He wants to make it great for the rich and the corporations by removing the few regulations left that protect workers and consumers. He is a true believer in the "trickle-down" economic policy -- the policy that says everyone will benefit if we give more to the rich and the corporations. He wants us to ignore the fact that this kind of policy resulted in the Great Depression, and when reinstitute resulted in the Bush Recession (which we still haven't recovered from).

Trump's vision of America would be "great" for the rich, the corporations, and real estate moguls like him -- but it would be terrible for all other Americans.It is also worth noting that Trump longs for a time when America only gave rights to white men. Women and all minorities were discriminated against, and bigotry reined supreme. That also shouldn't surprise us -- considering the racism, misogyny, and religious bigotry Trump has displayed.