A letter to my American friends: when did the dream die?

[nitpicker]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/19/a-letter-to-my-american-friends-when-did-the-dream-die

A letter to my American friends: when did the dream die?

Former foreign correspondent Simon Tisdall fell in love with America during his posting. Here, he asks what happened to the ‘shining city on the hill’ and wonders: how did America lose its mind in the age of Trump?

Saturday 19 August 2017 09.00 BST Last modified on Saturday 19 August 2017 09.02 BST

It is difficult for Americans to watch the presidential parody that is Donald Trump with anything approaching equanimity. But it is also hard for non-Americans – long-time friends and admirers of the United States – who look on helplessly from afar. Reactions range from amazement and amusement to shock and dismay. How has this frightening travesty come about? What does it mean for the America we love? And what does it portend for a world accustomed to sensible, reliable, rational American leadership? Every country has its political mavericks and clowns. But to put a shadow figure like Trump, a profoundly ignorant, self-obsessed narcissist lacking any discernible moral compass, in charge of the nation’s affairs looks like an act of collective madness.
(snip)

The US is better than this. It was a warm, sunny morning in Washington DC in the spring of 1992 when I finally took America to my heart. On the South Lawn of the White House, the then US president, George HW Bush, was busy extolling the virtues of American fitness. Not American fitness to rule, or fitness to serve, or American fitness to lead the world. Bush, with his wife Barbara at his side, was talking about the need to improve and safeguard the physical and mental health of every American citizen.
(snip)

For a watching English reporter, deeply imbued with the cynicism of political life, Bush’s paternalistic behaviour seemed extraordinary – and revelatory. Here was the president of the United States, the most powerful man on the planet, fretting about the bodily habits of his fellow citizens. And he really seemed to care.
(snip)

What has happened, 25 years after that sunlit day on the South Lawn, to the America I came to love? Where did the kinder, gentler vision go? Nobody is pretending for a moment that the Bush Sr era was some ideal, halcyon age. The de-industrialisation of the midwest was already well advanced. Economic dislocation, lost jobs, globalisation, international competition and disorientating, unsettling social and cultural shifts were part of the daily conversation.
(snip)

All the same, the contrast with today is striking. The many disruptive, alarming and increasingly deplorable changes in America’s attitude, both to the world and to itself, that are now a daily feature of the Trump era seem to represent a fundamental shift away from what went before. Did something break along the way? Did the dream die? America’s friends would dearly like to know.

The compassionate, caring nation of Bush’s imagining, the “shining city on a hill” lauded by Ronald Reagan, the land of equality, freedom and opportunity that Abraham Lincoln fought for, Franklin Roosevelt worked for, and JFK died for: where is it now? Has it had its day?
(snip)

Under Trump, for whom goodness, truth and generosity of heart appear wholly alien concepts, American greatness is under existential threat. Channelling its president, the country that Lincoln described in 1862 as “the last best hope of earth” risks becoming the narcissist nation – the earth’s selfish, self-obsessed nemesis, and its very own worst enemy.
(snip)

[randr]

1. Time is ripe for Democrats

It is up to us to awaken America from this nightmare and rebuild an American dream.
On edit, better yet to remain awake and face a new reality.

[PJMcK]

2. The author made a big mistake

Simon Tisdall writes that he fell in love with America in 1992 when he heard President George H.W. Bush express concerns for the health of U.S. citizens. He's wrong to imply that somehow that was a golden time in U.S. history.

The genesis of the problems our country face today began earlier, in 1980, with the election of Ronald Reagan. The policies and actions of that administration, fueled by their own racism and divisiveness, have come to full bloom with the election of Trump.

[BigmanPigman]

3. You beat me to it...Reagan!

[weydowner]

4. TOCB my foot.

It was the fantasist of the '80s, the smiling benevolent grandpa figure who coined many of these awful cliches about Shining City on a Hill or Breaking the Surly Bonds of Earth and Touching the Face of God.
etc ad nauseam.

(ps - a crook, but these days it doesn't matter.) A different sort of actor.

"I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I’m in a cabinet meeting." (Reagan)
These days, DT wouldn't even break off his golf game to respond.

If the Challenger disaster happened this year, our Dear Leader would call the dead crew-members 'losers' because they allowed the spaceship to explode.

Do call me a liar for even thinking this, but it is true.

[Aristus]

5. No. You're not a liar. It is true.

The ever-accelerating process of the USA coming apart at the seams started with Reagan. He insisted that government was the enemy, instead of a place where people from a huge, disparate, wildly-diverse nation could come together to express and put into action our common ideals.

He supported policies that disenfranchised voters who opposed his provincial view of public life. He hastened the impoverishment of people who were already experiencing overwhelming challenges in life. And fomented a culture in which these same people would be blamed for their own poverty and hopelessness.

He strengthened a view of patriotism as something that required no sacrifice, no effort, no compassionate humanity; just flag-waving, fist-pumping, and endless, mindless chants of "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!"

Reagan was the beginning of the end. A figure of vapid, feckless, ineffective national leadership that has finally found its ultimate expression in the person of Donald Trump.

[PJMcK]

8. I agree with everything you wrote

Plus, there are many more reasons to hate Reagan. For example, he ignored the advent of the AIDS epidemic. He was a criminal. He was surrounded by people who were greedy individualists and corporatists.

As you wrote, he "was the beginning of the end."

[PJMcK]

7. At least Reagan had a sense of humor

I'll never defend his policies but Ronald Reagan could tell a joke. The quote you wrote is almost as funny as when his open mic caught his ad lib aside, "My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes."

There is quite a bit of dark humor there although the open mic could've made it a terrible mistake.

Trump doesn't have any emotions except hatred and jealousy and greed, (is greed an emotion?). He couldn't tell a joke if you wrote it out and explained the punch line. He's an idiot.

[CrispyQ]

6. It died when the GOP started funding think tanks to craft their hateful message

& bought up radio stations to get it out. Rush Limbaugh told down & out Americans, who were losing their good paying manufacturing jobs, that it was the liberals fault, the minority's fault, the women's fault. It was everyone's fault but the rich (mostly) white men running the country. They convinced people to vote for candidates who openly stated that they hate government and want to destroy it. I've never understood why a voter would do that. If you owned a company & were hiring, you wouldn't hire the person who said they hated your company & wanted to destroy it. When Reagan said that government was the enemy, people should have responded with, "Then why do you want to work in government? Go back to the private sector, asshole." Americans have become stupid & complacent. My good liberal friend has three adult children that she has to badger to vote.

[Skittles]

9. Reagan made greed and idiocy fashionable

also, the number of people who voted for that asshole was the first time I remember thinking how many stupid voters there were

[elleng]

10. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954),

was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students to be unconstitutional.

Having never been truly implemented, we live in a segregated country; children > adults do not know 'others.'

[bronxiteforever]

11. To me it was the case of Buckley v Valeo 1976 US Supreme Ct

the Court ruled that financial expenditure limits contravene the First Amendment provision on freedom of speech because a restriction on spending for political communication necessarily reduces the quantity of expression.

From this point on ,and after a full litany of cases ending in Hobby Lobby, free speech and opinion became just another commodity and not a "cherished right". The rich then owned the government completely.