The Rearview Mirror Isn't a Navigation Tool

There's a question I keep coming back to that nobody seems to want to answer directly: when, exactly, was America great?

What Does "Great" Actually Mean?

The phrase "Make America Great Again" carries a built-in assumption. We were once great, we somehow lost it, and the path forward is to look backward. But who gets to decide which chapter of our history counts as the golden era? And more importantly, great for whom?

Was it the 1950s, when the economy was booming but Black Americans couldn't sit at the same lunch counter as their neighbors? Was it the early 1900s, when industrialization made the country wealthy and children were working in factories? Was it some other era I'm not thinking of, where things were apparently perfect for everyone?

I'm not asking to be cynical. I'm asking because the answer actually matters. You can't navigate toward a destination you can't define.

Progress Doesn't Come With a Reverse Gear

Here's the analogy that keeps coming to mind, and maybe it's because I have two young daughters: imagine telling your teenager, "You're a disaster right now. You were so much better when you were ten. Just go back to being ten." Nobody would say that. It's not just impractical, it misses the entire point of growing up. You take what you learned, you acknowledge what went wrong, and you move forward with that knowledge. You don't regress. You build.

Nations aren't that different.

I want America to be great. I think most people, regardless of what flag they wave, actually want the same thing. What we disagree on is the path. And the path that makes the most sense to me isn't blame and nostalgia. It's accountability and forward motion.

The Real Problems Are Hiding in Plain Sight

We have real problems in this country. Not manufactured ones, not imported ones. Problems we built ourselves over decades. A healthcare system that bankrupts people for getting sick. An education system where your zip code determines your future. Poverty that persists in the richest country on earth. Racism and bigotry that we've never fully reckoned with, let alone resolved.

These aren't comfortable conversations. But they're the ones worth having.

Pointing at immigrants, or any other group, as the source of these failures isn't just wrong. It's a distraction. It's choosing a villain over a solution. And we don't have time for that. The problems are real and they're compounding, and the longer we spend arguing about who to blame, the worse they get.

It Starts With Who We Elect

So where do we start? I think it begins with who we elect. There are good ideas on both sides of the aisle. Democrats have them. Republicans have them. The problem isn't a shortage of solutions, it's a shortage of people willing to actually talk to each other. We need representatives who can sit across from someone they disagree with, hear them out, find the common ground, and push forward an American vision instead of a party one. That's not a radical idea. It's just basic leadership.

I'm not naive enough to think any of this is easy. But I do think we're capable of more than we're currently doing. That's not idealism. It's just a baseline expectation I have of a country with our resources and our history of getting hard things done when we decide to.

The rearview mirror has its uses. You check it to understand where you've been and avoid repeating mistakes. You don't steer by it.

Let's figure out where we want to go, and then actually go there.