I still think you're being a little black and white here. Not every form of progress hurts Trump personally. Ironically, the obvious one that leaps to mind is a more progressive policy on immigration. Trump benefits from that due to the cheap labor it provides him - and boy has he taken advantage of that over his career! Even as he's been calling for stricter policies and deportations, he somehow hasn't thought to apply these things to HIMSELF, happy to use (quite recently) undocumented labor at his properties. But he calls for these things to benefit himself politically, as he knows his xenophobic base loves it. And of course he's produced his overpriced shirts, ties, etc. in China, even as he decried US companies broadly manufacturing in China. It's "do as I say, not as I do" with him. It's particularly egregious because although it may be difficult today to, say, produce a $10 tie in the US and turn a profit, it's NOT difficult to charge 80 bucks for a tie (as Trump has done), and produce it in the US and still turn a tidy profit. So Trump COULD have insisted his branded ties were made here and still have turned a profit, but no... for yet greater profits, he was just fine with them being made in China. That's not mercantilism at all. Then when he does turn around and promote protectionist policies (tariffs, etc. - for others, of course), that's anathema to classic free-trade Republican policies. This is why the one thing Congressional Republicans have pushed back on are the tariffs and the threats to close the southern border for trade, even temporarily. But again, he doesn't care - he supports these things to benefit himself politically. Sure, there are plenty of things that Trump and the reactionary elements in the GOP agree on. But where they disagree, Trump will choose his own interests every time, and not give a rat's patootie about ideology.
Not quite sure what you're getting at. America was an experiment in popular government, with Constitutional guarantees of freedom, but it was also a racist state in which some were guaranteed slavery, and others were hunted down like animals, or forced onto reservations. It was the nation state that proposed an equitable peace after the end of World War I, that would have probably prevented Hitler's rise to power, and World War II, and when that equitable peace was rejected by those who hadn't learned the lessons of that war, turned the tide against Hitler in World War II, but it was also a nation-state that propped up other tyrannies, at the behest of those who stood to profit from those tyrannies. It was a nation-state that sent men to the Moon, and brought them back alive (in one case, even after a massive failure of what was supposed to be their ride home), but it was also a nation-state that sent men to Vietnam, to die for causes that were highly questionable at best, and then treated those who did return from Vietnam as if they were the ones responsible for the mess. We are a nation-state that has done great things, and a nation-state that has done terrible things. Probably the only thing America "never was" is "perfect."
I was simply referring to having watched us switch back and forth just about every 8 years. There is always a candidate who seems to want to return America to a 50's sitcom as if that is how America really was. (You know, like Smallville.)
The America of, say, Leave it to Beaver? Like I said, "perfect" is something we'll never achieve, at least not so long as humans are in charge. We must never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. But we must never let the barely tolerable be the enemy of the good, either. Nor let the good be the enemy of the better. But let us strive to always make the good be the enemy of the bad. To be truly liberal is not to be leftist, but merely to be open-minded. To be truly conservative is not to be reactionary, but merely cautious. To be centrist is to be both truly liberal and truly conservative.
Apparently we had airports during the Revolutionary War. Once again the American educational system has failed us
Not to mention the same for two massacres in under 24 hours, a little over a week ago. On a related note, I had a recent insight into Mitch McConnell's character: he is the sort of human being who could read The Handmaid's Tale, cover to cover, without realizing that it's dystopian.
