Question for Trump supporters - when did America stop being 'great'?

[Since I'm the mad scientist proclaimed by myself]

When the tea was thrown in Boston harbour.

[Hermit For Peace]

This country has never stopped being great. I would never live anywhere else!

[angus]

Serious question - when do you think, to within five years - this happened and why?

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I'll take a shot.  When I was born, the US represent fifty percent of the world's aggregate GDP.  Today it represents about twenty percent.  50 is greater than 20. 

It's not that we have diminished, rather other societies have prospered, largely as a result of importing the American ideal. 

I'm not sure that The Donald ever suggested that the US isn't great, and in any case the term is relative.  (For example, ten is great compared to five, but small compared to twenty.) 

We shall not have half the world's GDP again, no matter what policies are pursued by the government.  Trump, like all politicians, is simply attempting to exploit anxiety.  The difference between him and others is that he's quite good at it. 

[t_host1]

Serious question - when do you think, to within five years - this happened and why?

I am genuinely curious.

 When we were told homosexuality was the foundation of the future, natural instincts kick in and
said no, “no it isn’t”. The closer to the downfall was your neighbor being liable for your life/health decisions. 

The democrat trough snivelers of the anti-republic are not who we are.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Serious question - when do you think, to within five years - this happened and why?

I am genuinely curious.

 When we were told homosexuality was the foundation of the future, natural instincts kick in and
said no, “no it isn’t”. The closer to the downfall was your neighbor being liable for your life/health decisions. 

The democrat trough snivelers of the anti-republic are not who we are.

J A O
A    A
O A J

[Silent Hunter]

I'm not sure that The Donald ever suggested that the US isn't great, and in any case the term is relative.  (For example, ten is great compared to five, but small compared to twenty.) 

His campaign slogan was 'Make America Great Again'... which implies heavily it was and isn't any longer.

[Meclazine for Israel]

1984

Who's the Boss

https://youtu.be/Ojc02OvZVo8

Alyssa Milanos' first TV show.

[angus]

I'm not sure that The Donald ever suggested that the US isn't great, and in any case the term is relative.  (For example, ten is great compared to five, but small compared to twenty.) 

His campaign slogan was 'Make America Great Again'... which implies heavily it was and isn't any longer.

That is spin, for sure.  "Win the superbowl again" might mean that a team hasn't won it in 20 years and it's time for a return to long-lost glory, or it mean that the team just won last year, and wants to win again.  It's all in the spin.  The Donald is actually very good at this.  For example, he once said that Obama was responsible for ISIS, then when he was questioned about it, he said, "they can't take a joke" or something like that.  Later, when he was interviewed by an anti-obama source he brought it up again, presumably meaning it and not joking.

But yeah, we aren't as great as we once were, as I described above, if you want to look at percentages.  It's all a matter of how you look at it.  Trump knows that.  His suggestion was only that it could be great again.  (FWIW, the USA will not ever be so great as it was in his youth, at least not in terms of its power to control the world economy, and I suspect that he knows that as well. )

[Beet]

Serious question - when do you think, to within five years - this happened and why?

I'm not a Trump supporter, but I'll take a shot.  When I was born, the US represent fifty percent of the world's aggregate GDP.  Today it represents about twenty percent.  50 is greater than 20. 

It's not that we have diminished, rather other societies have prospered, largely as a result of importing the American ideal. 

Greatness should be measured in absolute terms, not relative.

By this standard we are getting greater as a nation all the time, despite the tragedy of Donald Trump's election. "We are getting greater all the time" is not an exciting storyline. It does not promote stories of nostalgia and glory times yonder when we were young. But it is true.

Think
-- Would you really want to live in a country that had never nominated a woman as a major party nominee, ever?
-- Would you really want to live in a country that never completed a successful landing of a first stage rocket, and all space rockets could only be used once?
-- Would you really want to live in a country that never once produced a person who could jump 25,000 feet from an airplane and still survive?
-- Would you really want to live in a country with a lower median income, a lower stock market, a higher poverty rate, a less valuable currency, and a lower GDP?

Hopefully not. All those describe this country a year ago.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

Serious question - when do you think, to within five years - this happened and why?

I am genuinely curious.

 When we were told homosexuality was the foundation of the future, natural instincts kick in and
said no, “no it isn’t”. The closer to the downfall was your neighbor being liable for your life/health decisions. 

The democrat trough snivelers of the anti-republic are not who we are.

Thee art married and thou art wedded though! I thought we had the dichotomy sorted out so you could attend in good faith! I need my best man!

[angus]

Greatness should be measured in absolute terms, not relative.

That's just silly.  I'm no trump supporter, but you cannot honestly believe that.  Is five a great number?  Well, in a vacuum we can't say.   Compared to two it's great, but compared to nine is is not.

Is 1000 great?  Well, if it is the number of dollars I receive each day as renumeration for my labors then yes, it is indeed great.  If, on the other hand, it is the number of dollars I receive each month, then no it is not great.

A year ago we could say "No woman has ever been nominated by the Democrats or Republicans for president."  Today we can say, "the only woman ever nominated by a major party was so narcissistic and so untrustworthy that even a greedy, unethical businessman accused of sexual harassment, bigotry, and fraud defeated her, winning several states that Democrats have not lost in a generation."  This is not a bigger situation, and it is not a better situation.

Your argument has so many holes in it you should market it as a sieve.

[Beet]

Greatness should be measured in absolute terms, not relative.

That's just silly.  I'm no trump supporter, but you cannot honestly believe that.  Is five a great number?  Well, in a vacuum we can't say.   Compared to two it's great, but compared to nine is is not.

Is 1000 great?  Well, if it is the number of dollars I receive each day as renumeration for my labors then yes, it is indeed great.  If, on the other hand, it is the number of dollars I receive each month, then no it is not great.

A year ago we could say "No woman has ever been nominated by the Democrats or Republicans for president."  Today we can say, "the only woman ever nominated by a major party was so narcissistic and so untrustworthy that even a greedy, unethical businessman accused of sexual harassment, bigotry, and fraud defeated her, winning several states that Democrats have not lost in a generation."  This is not a bigger situation, and it is not a better situation.

Your argument has so many holes in it you should market it as a sieve.

Would America be a greater country if we destroyed the rest of the world? We would have 100% of the world's GDP. We would also be the country that killed 7 billion people, and soon sink into economic and environmental catastrophe.

If my arguments has the holes of a sieve, your argument does not even have the thread to hold together as a single piece. And your kind of zero sum thinking is dangerous!

Even if Hillary had lost in a 60-40 landslide, her being in the running would have still represented progress, compared to no woman ever having seriously run. It says a woman is worthy of being considered. This has never been said before by our country, never seriously. Prior to this year, the sum total of all the women ever to run for president in 240 years received about 2.5 million votes. After this year it will be over 67 million votes. A quantum leap in our people's concrete willingness (which had only been theoretical before) to demonstrate support for female leadership.

[angus]

You're attempting reduction to the absurd.  I appreciate the effort, but it misses the point.  I am not advocating a "zero-sum game."  As I stated in my original post, our aggregate GDP has increased.  It's just that those of developing nation have increased faster.  Capitalism is very fashionable now, even in Communist China.  It's a positive-sum game, to be sure, so long as it sustains itself.

[Beet]

You're attempting reduction to the absurd.  I appreciate the effort, but it misses the point.  I am not advocating a "zero-sum game."  As I stated in my original post, our aggregate GDP has increased.  It's just that those of developing nation have increased faster.  Capitalism is very fashionable now, even in Communist China.  It's a positive-sum game, to be sure, so long as it sustains itself.

Of course not. But the frame of reference that America was greater when we had 50% of world GDP because large parts of the rest of the world were reduced to rubble, assumes zero-sum game.

[angus]

But it doesn't.  True, there were once great empires in Africa, South America, East Asia, the Indus River valley, and so on.  And it is also true that they were "reduced to rubble" long ago, long before the USA existed, and those societies were in that rubble state in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, when the US was an expanding empire.  But since then all our products have grown.  It is not zero sum.  It is a positive sum for everyone, with a few notable exceptions.  For most societies, GDP(final) minus GDP(initial) is positive, therefore the sum of all those differences must be positive.  There is no assumption of a zero-sum game!  At least not on my part.  

It's just that our share of global influence, since the heady days of the Cold War, has decreased.  Again, our absolute influence has not decreased, but our relative influence, where it is measured as a ratio, has.  This, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing.  I'm not really a fan of being the World Police, nor am I a big fan of bailing out every failed state.  There are many Trump campaign promises that he's clearly not going to keep faithful, such as siccing the legal system on Hillary Clinton and reneging on the climate accords and reversing Obama's course toward a trans-pacific partnership, and I'm glad about that.  I didn't expect, and wouldn't want, him to keep those promises.  I'm also hoping that he'll drop the Mexican border wall idea.  I suspect that he will.

Rather than make us great again, I think it might be more prudent to Make America Whole Again.  One campaign promise that I hope he keeps is the infrastructure investment.  I don't care whether you call that "making us great" or "making us whole" or "taking us back to a previous era when people were more concerned with big social investment projects" but whatever you want to call it, our crumbling bridges, sidewalks, highways, and transit systems need a little tender love and care.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Michael Knight

Knight Rider

https://youtu.be/Mo8Qls0HnWo

I would say once he started eating Pizza off the floor drunk, that was the beginning of the end.

[PresidentSamTilden]

America was made great by unions in the aftermath of World War II. They allowed for the creation of a wealthy middle class society where wealth was evenly distributed.

America was made not great by the Immigration Act of 1965 which, while it did the admirable thing of getting rid of race based immigration quotas, opened the doors to wide and let too many people in, mostly people too poor to pay income tax and dependent on government services that American born citizens pay for but never get to use themselves. This is the main cause of the growing gap between rich and poor that liberals usually love to complain about.

There are a lot of reasons for the wealth inequality that we love to complain about. Immigration may be a factor, but how can you deny all of: automation, outsourcing, rising cost of universities, stock market buybacks, increased executive pay?

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

2001.

[wolfsblood07]

Well, it was a slow process of decline.  The peak of greatness was somewhere from 1945 to 1960.  Everybody bought American cars, "Made in America" meant quality and a lot of things were made here, we won wars and they were usually declared by Congress (Korea being an early exception), Hollywood made films that were great and not filled with cursing and graphic sex and violence, people respected the flag and authority, drugs were so taboo that people didn't dare mention them in casual conversation.  America was respected all over the world.  People didn't expect handouts and all sorts of freebies from the government.  School kids recited the pledge of allegiance.  
Is America still great?  Yes.  But that greatness is greatly compromised by the leftist agenda and cultural degradation, globalism, and other destructive forces.

[hopper]

Probably it started in 2008 with the "The Great Recession" but I think when ObamaCare got passed a lot people were mad about it. I don't remember people feeling like this in the first half of 2008 but by the time ObamaCare was being passed into law...

I remember one Black Commentator on TV(can't think of his name, might have been Charles Blow of NYT) " this is the first time that White People have really been pushed income wise" which in my opinion is a true statement. He said Black People are used to being pushed financially with income inequality.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Car Jump across 1 mile of the St Lawrence river.

Kenny Carter, the original Canadian stunt driver pulled out of the stunt due to safety concerns, but an American stunt driver, Kenny Powers, was sitting in the shadows to take over.

With no practice, Kenny Powers, strapped himself into the rocket-powered car in an attempt to perform the most insane stunt in human history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpUMSarCSQw

Kenny Powers Made America Great Again.

[BuckeyeNut]

Well, it was a slow process of decline.  The peak of greatness was somewhere from 1945 to 1960. Everybody bought American cars, "Made in America" meant quality and a lot of things were made here, we won wars and they were usually declared by Congress (Korea being an early exception), Hollywood made films that were great and not filled with cursing and graphic sex and violence, people respected the flag and authority, drugs were so taboo that people didn't dare mention them in casual conversation.  America was respected all over the world.  People didn't expect handouts and all sorts of freebies from the government.  School kids recited the pledge of allegiance.  
Is America still great?  Yes.  But that greatness is greatly compromised by the leftist agenda and cultural degradation, globalism, and other destructive forces.

The other options at the time being...?

[Devout Centrist]

October 1492

[Person Man]

Well, it was a slow process of decline.  The peak of greatness was somewhere from 1945 to 1960.  Everybody bought American cars, "Made in America" meant quality and a lot of things were made here, we won wars and they were usually declared by Congress (Korea being an early exception), Hollywood made films that were great and not filled with cursing and graphic sex and violence, people respected the flag and authority, drugs were so taboo that people didn't dare mention them in casual conversation.  America was respected all over the world.  People didn't expect handouts and all sorts of freebies from the government.  School kids recited the pledge of allegiance.  
Is America still great?  Yes.  But that greatness is greatly compromised by the leftist agenda and cultural degradation, globalism, and other destructive forces.

In other words, it was the jews.

[GlobeSoc]

Well, it was a slow process of decline.  The peak of greatness was somewhere from 1945 to 1960.  Everybody bought American cars, "Made in America" meant quality and a lot of things were made here, we won wars and they were usually declared by Congress (Korea being an early exception), Hollywood made films that were great and not filled with cursing and graphic sex and violence, people respected the flag and authority, drugs were so taboo that people didn't dare mention them in casual conversation.  America was respected all over the world.  

Cultural change=The DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA!!1!1

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The legacy of the new deal was very strong in the 40s and 50s.

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Lol.