History of the Phrase Make America Great Again

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Did you always wonder why Donald Trump's "Brand America Keen Over again" slogan took such root amidst the Republican base? Did it symbolize a return to an age when wages were higher and jobs more secure? Or was it coded racial language designed to signal a rollback to a fourth dimension when people of color (and women) knew their place? In the soul-searching and recrimination among Democrats after Hillary Clinton's defeat, both theories have their champions.

But a closer look at bourgeois rhetoric in recent years reveals that "Brand America Bully Again" was non Trump's invention. It evolved from a phrase that became central to the Republican establishment during the Obama years: "American exceptionalism." People often equate the expression with the notion that God made America "a city upon a loma," in the words of the Puritan colonist John Winthrop. Nevertheless, every bit University of California-Berkeley sociology professor Jerome Karabel noted in a 2011 commodity, this usage only came into vogue later on Barack Obama became president. Previously it was mainly used by academics to hateful that America is an exception compared with other Western democracies, for better or worse, equally illustrated past its top-notch universities or its blank-bones gun control.

Prior to 2008, "American exceptionalism" appeared in news manufactures a scattering of times a year, but afterwards Obama was elected the references skyrocketed, largely because of a drumbeat from Republicans. Once the tea party wave made John Boehner speaker of the House in 2010, for case, he summarized the growing consensus among Republicans: Obama had turned his dorsum on the Founding Fathers to the betoken where he "refused to talk about American exceptionalism." (In fact, in 2009 the president had stated, "I believe in American exceptionalism.") The phrase'south popularity in GOP talking points—oft in attacks on Obama's "socialist" policies—paralleled the spread of conspiracy theories virtually his citizenship and supposed jihadi sympathies.

Defending "American exceptionalism" was a theme of Mitt Romney's 2012 entrada; he blasted Obama for supposedly thinking that "America's just another nation" destined to become "a European-way entitlement society." Romney's campaign co-chair John Sununu added that Obama should "learn how to be an American." (He later apologized.)

The 2016 Republican presidential candidates and their surrogates sang the aforementioned tune. When Fox News pundit Sean Hannity asked Jeb Bush for his thoughts on exceptionalism, Bush replied, "I do believe in American exceptionalism," dissimilar Obama, who "is disrespecting our history and the boggling nature of our country." Rudy Giuliani was more explicit. "I do not believe that the president loves America," he asserted, suggesting Obama did not think "we're the about infrequent country in the world." During a speech a month later in Selma, Alabama, the president pointed out that the ongoing fight for ceremonious rights is a cornerstone of what makes America infrequent.

To become more than of a quantitative sense of the phrase's development, I analyzed the Republican Political party platform. All party platforms typically emphasize religion in American greatness, just between 1856 and 2008, the GOP never used the expression "American exceptionalism" or even the adjective "infrequent" to describe the country. Past dissimilarity, the last section of the 2012 Republican platform lambasting the Obama presidency was titled "American exceptionalism." The 2016 platform put the phrase into the first line of its preamble: "Nosotros believe in American exceptionalism." The evolution of "American exceptionalism" into an anti-Obama rallying cry with nativist overtones evoked earlier appeals to "states' rights" to rouse whites resenting the stop of segregation.

In his book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, Trump, also, framed his agenda every bit a defense of "American exceptionalism." "Peradventure my biggest beefiness with Obama is his view that there's zippo special or exceptional about America—that nosotros're no different than whatever other country." Trump later adopted a catchier slogan, "Brand America Great Over again," only it retained the nativist overtones and racial dog whistles of the showtime. Paired with Trump'southward open conspiracy-mongering nigh Obama's forged nativity document and supposed Muslim faith, it amplified and dramatized the Republican establishment'southward slyer assertions about Obama's un-American values.

Trump would eventually carelessness dog whistles in favor of blunter race-baiting. What remains to exist seen is whether he and the Republican institution volition continue flashing the "exceptionalism" indicate in the mail service-Obama years—to pigment new opponents as un-American—or whether that linguistic communication was uniquely deployed to delegitimize the nation'south first black president. At the very least, it provided fertile basis for Trumpism.

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Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/american-exceptionalism-maga-trump-obama/

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