re: Is it really that controversial to claim that American isn't great now for lots of people?

People don’t care about race like you think they do.

I'm genuinely curious, dev. Why can't you just accept that people disagree with you based on legitimate policy views, rather than because of deep racial resentment.

Reminds me of a Sowell quote:

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Policy differences don't make people go from wearing American Flag briefs on their heads to "America isn't great" in eight years. The bitterness and anger that was on display was over the top and "MAGA" is the perfect phrase to tap into it while preserving a touch of denial.

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Obama governed as an ideologue and vast swaths of America never recovered from the 2008 econ downturn....it's reasonable to expect a lot of people (including obama voters) to think America was in bad shape.

Your whole thesis (that trump won because of racial resentment against a black prez) doesn't explain why 5.76 million obama voters switched sides, and why 2-3 million Romney voters switched to Clinton.

Attributing the 2008 economic downturn requires a brainlessness that I can't even attribute to Trump supporters.

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But this I know. Europe used to be a lot greater than they are now. We really don't want to follow their lead.

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Serious question...when was Europe ever really great? I mean, the forefathers our country abandoned the place in the 1700's. I'm sure most would say the 1900's weren't a great time due to WWI and WWI.

Or do you mean, Europe just used to be whiter?

So America is great, but if something bad happens to me ( I don’t make as much as my neighbor, I don’t get a great COLA, my buddy gets killed by a cop after strong arming a store owner and resisting arrest, Asians are penalized for success in college admissions, Obamacare sends my healthcare cost skyrocketing, a guy in France gets twice the vacation time - using your examples ) and then it’s not ?

This just shows that false notions of equal outcomes have confused the fact that it’s about equal protection. It’s about opportunity to life , liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not that the State is a guarantor of that outcome. Obviously if perfection is the standard, “better than anybody else in history” will still be a failure. It’s a fundamental misinterpretation of what American Exceptionalism is.

America is great because of that document and how it has shaped us.

I think people that think America is not great have no sense of historical perspective and concurrently no idea what it would be like for them to live as a minority in 70% of the world.

I’d tell them that every gain by any slighted group in this country was done by the people in spite of government, not with the assistance of government.

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Serious question...when was Europe ever really great?

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Ever heard of the Roman Empire?

Later, Spain was great. Hell, Columbus was a Dago but he had to go to Spain to discover the new world.

England ruled so much of the world that today the world speaks their language.

And if England really wanted to go to war with the American colonists they could have crushed us like a bug. They had other issues across the globe and a parliament that said 'WTF are we killing Americans for?'

Now the French were never that great. That's why they still revere Napoleon.

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The phrase "Make America Great Again" coming off the heels of the first black President is a pretty clear dog whistle.

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Black Jesus 8 years fundamentally transformed the country into "Stagnation Nation".....however if America was never not great than we can end the lib dog whistles called equal opportunity, affirmative action open borders etc.. right?