All
of Donald Trump's delusional talk about our need to “Make America
Great Again” reminded me of this 2010 Charlie Rose interview with Fareed Zakaria. Zakaria made the point that America's glory days of
the '50s and '60s were aberrational because of the historic moment in
which the world found itself.
America
had led the Allied effort to defeat Nazi and Japanese militarism.
Europe and Japan had been decimated by war so we essentially had no
competition in the realm of global manufacture. We financed Europe
with the Marshall Plan, which meant we were propping up a large part
of our customer base. All of this contributed to the triumphant rise
of America as the world's great global economic power.
But
Europe recovered and Japan rose to become one of our greatest sources
of competition – especially in cars and tech. By the 1970s we'd
begun feeling the impact of this recovery. What the nativist,
jingoest “America First” crowd fail to understand is that
American supremacy wasn't the natural order of things. It was
largely an accident of history.
Donald
Trump won the presidency based on his promises to “Make America
Great Again.” This can never happen because the unique
circumstances that made it possible after WWII will never be
repeated. So the centerpiece of Trump's campaign is a sham, just
like the man himself. Will the American people ever catch on and
vote this reality TV star off the island?
