Guest writer

America the (?)

Nation already great—and flawed

We're just days away from America being great again.

I actually have no problem with the aspiration to make America great. It's the "again" part I bump my head on.

The problem with appealing to the past to make a case for America's greatness is that one must use selective memory--or approach the subject with more nuance than is allowed in tweets, soundbites and one-sided press conferences.

In any era we could point to as an example of America's greatness, there was also, in that moment, some form of oppression or moral blind spot we'd eventually have to reckon with.


At the time of my grandfather's birth, slavery had only been abolished in the United States less than 30 years. It would still be another 23 years before women were allowed to vote.

Was it great that America thrived on the slave trade and excluded women from participating in democracy? No. Was it great that Americans wrestled with those iniquities and by force of conscience and rule of law did something to right those wrongs? Yes, of course.

Frankly, if there's anything great about us--that's it. That we keep working. It's the struggle that makes us great, not the victories. The victories tend to make us soft, complacent, and arrogant.

The problem is not that America was great and now it's not. The problem is, we Americans are so stricken with amnesia and so easily seduced by the rhetoric of preachers, pundits, and politicians that we think there was a time--some golden age--when America was only great.

The truth is America has never been only great. That rhetoric is based on the false assumption that this is an either/or proposition. With the complexity of our history, the diversity of our population, and the contradictory nature of values and ideals, greatness in America is never a binary state.

So the thought that we can return to some period of American Nirvana is the kind of bad thinking that runs rampant when people are scared or immature. Or both.

Mature people know that life in these United States is rarely an either/or. It's mostly a both/and. America is great, and America is not so great. America is great right now. It's always great. And it's always flawed.

There's a big gap between the cheap, tawdry brand of greatness the president-elect is selling and the brand Americans have employed during the truly defining moments in our history.

My gut tells me that Americans are going to have to face up to the difference between gold-plated greatness and the real thing in the next four years.

My hope is that Americans will put more faith in one another than in slogans from on high and tweets in the middle of the night.

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Tim Jackson has been an Arkansan and an American for 51 years.

Editorial on 01/14/2017

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