A reflection upon the inauguration and political defiance of America’s returning president.

Jan. 20 was an odd day. It was a day of celebration, and it was a day of despair. It was a day of genuine remembrance, and a day of false nostalgia. It was a day that offered a glimpse of the polarization across America, leaving some of us – including me – wondering how our nation can still exist as one. 

I found it practically amusing – if not for its detrimental undertones – that Jan. 20 was both Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the second inauguration of President Trump. 

On one hand, we observed a day that celebrated the battles and successes of the Civil Rights Movement – one of the most significant social movements in U.S. history – as well as one of its most prolific and well-regarded champions. 

On the other hand, we saw a self-obsessed man retake one of the most important offices in the world, someone who would probably want to label a day of each week with his name — Thursday could surely be renamed to Trumpday, couldn’t it?

While musing over the irony of these diametric celebrations, if you could call the latter as such, I found myself wondering what King would think of Trump’s constant promotion of the MAGA cause — to “Make America Great Again.” King certainly would think we’re doing better now than in his heyday, given our great advancement in social justice issues since then — but, then, when was America great (or at least greater than now)? 

Does Trump know when? Do his die-hard MAGA supporters know? I certainly don’t know when – or if – there has been a time in U.S. history that I would have been happier to live in than today.

When I spoke with Dr. Jenoge Khatter, a South social studies and English teacher, about why many voters bought into the idea that America was once great and must be rebuilt to its previous glory, he mentioned that Trump, to them, represented a “quintessentially American person,” a white man, like many of them, who envisioned a United States that conformed to their American ideal. 

“Trump represents a certain kind of success,” Chandler James, a political science professor at the University of Oregon, remarked. “He’s extremely wealthy, he’s famous, he’s on TV, he’s swaggering, his wives are beautiful in a certain kind of way… many people buy into that.”

So maybe it is not the promise of a return to greatness which invokes a sense of nostalgia in voters, but rather the “prophet” who delivers that promise. This theory, however, still leaves us with that question: what does Trump believe is the greatest time in U.S. history?

For instance, it would be hard to argue that Trump reminisces about the “good ol’ days” of Bush or Reagan, given the policy differences between his administration and each of theirs. Though all three of them are modern Republicans – people who have supported striking tax cuts, especially for the rich; a smaller centralized government; and fewer corporate regulations, as James explained – Trump takes a more nationalistic and isolationist approach to foreign policy. This contrasts the approaches of Trump’s fellow Republican Commanders-in-Chief, such as Bush’s hawkishness (i.e. the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq) and Reagan’s embrace of American intervention in foreign affairs. 

“Bush wanted to expand the global order using the military,” Khatter told me. “Trump wants to put America at the top of that global order.” 

Trump did, at his inauguration speech, reiterate his strong conviction that the U.S. should retake the Panama Canal, and in the past two weeks has again declared his interest in taking Greenland as a U.S. territory, even going so far as to note that it wouldn’t be out of the question to use American military power to do so. He also recently suggested that America could take Canada while we’re at it, and upon taking office issued an Executive Order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” On his first day in office, he withdrew from the World Health Organization, arguing that the U.S. pays more than its fair share to be in the organization. 

“[Trump is] interested in the transactional approach to foreign policy,” James explained. “He wants to use the fact that America is sending money into places to get something in return.”

Such self-interest is not always conducive to bettering the quality of life for the American people: Trump’s hostility toward other nations – including his promise to implement ultra-high tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico – makes the U.S. increasingly vulnerable to higher rates of inflation than previously seen, as increased manufacturer expenses are passed to the consumer. According to many economists, such extreme tariffs would also hurt the GDP of all three countries — an outcome that perversely affects the majority of Americans. 

One might find Trump’s isolationist policies redolent of late-19th century pro-tariff, pro-corporation politicians, but I doubt he considers the late 1800s as America’s “great” age. It was too agrarian, too archaic, too foreign for a city-born New Yorker like himself. No, I think that he possesses, like most of his followers, a false sense of nostalgia about America’s past. He’s attempting to realize this vision of an ideal past by implementing cherry-picked policy to create a collage of America’s past; in a way, he’s trying to reinvent his “great” America for the first time. 

Whether it is “great” is up to the next four years. In the meantime, we can follow in the footsteps of the great Dr. King to set the precedent straight in 2028.

Article by Basil Dracobly