Ever since Donald Trump announced his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” something about it has troubled me. But what?  The slogan implied that somehow the United States was no longer great.  He apparently was thinking of some past time- some much better time- but what period did he mean?  Could it have been the time of our founding?  After all, we defeated the world’s foremost power to win our independence.  Then some of the wisest men who ever lived, perhaps even smarter than Trump himself, and anticipating the “Art of the Deal”,  fashioned our Constitution through a series of compromises.  No, not that period because that deal, great as it was, had a fatal flaw: slavery.

Perhaps Trump was thinking of all those western movies, some starring Ronald Reagan, which glorified our centuries long westward expansion: the Gold Rush, the transcontinental railroad, and the taming of a continent.  No, that period included the purposeful extinction of the American Indian.

Trump was born in 1946, the first year after World War II, when America was a super power beyond belief.  For the next decade we enjoyed unparalleled prosperity while much of the rest of the world lay in ruins.  Life was good.  Life was great!  Whatever problems we had would be taken care of by our national Grandpa, Ike.  He had the warmest smile and was the embodiment of strength, wisdom and graciousness.  He was the greatest general ever and would make sure the communists left us alone.  In my hometown our door was never locked, all was safe.  For me and perhaps for Trump that seemed like the ideal time.  At least for me it coincided with that wonderful period of childhood when I enjoyed the love of warm and doting parents who were, of course, the best people who ever lived: life was far better than great, it was perfect.  Perhaps this is the magical period of greatness to which Trump harkens back.

But underlying that time, so idyllic in memory, was so much unrest, unrest that has defined the civic life of our country for these past sixty years.  The civil rights movement and the fight for equal rights for women are proud parts of our ongoing efforts over the last 240 years to make and keep America great.  Our history has always been about struggles by individuals and groups to do better than the last generation. We have never been rooted in the idea that there is one final ideal time.  Our attention, from the Founding Fathers to now,  has always been on shaping a better tomorrow.  The existence of today’s issues from climate change and income distribution to police treatment of minorities and how to regulate migration are not symptoms of something drastically wrong with our country.  These and other issues are part and parcel of how Americans shape a more perfect union.

Trump’s suggestion that somehow we need to get back something we lost, to return to a past period that was better, is a total misreading of what America means and is.  America is an idea; it is change; it is a striving for an always better, more inclusive, society.  America is about the future, not the past as incredible as our many achievements have been.