In 1789, a Constitution was ratified to create the United States of America. The Constitution began, “We the People of the United States” and put the power of governing the United States in the hands of the People of the United States, “We the People” (WtP). From 1861 to 1865, WtP engaged in a very bloody Civil War after several southern States seceded from the United States, calling themselves the Confederate States of America (the Confederacy). After four years of bloodshed, that Civil War came to an end and the southern States, the Confederacy, rejoined the United States as President Abraham Lincoln began the process of reuniting the divided country and restoring “a more perfect union” as had been described in the Constitution.
It took 145 years waiting in the shadows and another fourteen years of Civil War (2010-2024), but the sympathizers of the Confederacy had finally avenged its loss against the United States back in 1865. Because this Civil War was fought almost exclusively in the political arena with very little bloodshed, most Americans weren’t even aware they had been at war with themselves. With a vast majority of white men among WtP, alongside a substantial minority of white women and a spattering of black and brown votes, one half of WtP voted to give up the power that had been entrusted to WtP by the Constitution to the leader of a small subset of WtP that made up a group proclaiming themselves MAGA, from their battle cry of “Make America Great Again”.
When I had first begun to hear the term MAGA around 2015-2016, I found myself constantly wondering what era in American history MAGA had been referring to as having been great. Once the power to govern had been handed over to MAGA, it became quite clear. The intended era was pre-1861 when minorities were enslaved and women, along with those enslaved minorities, were not allowed a voice in how the United States was to be governed.
Unlike with President Lincoln following the Civil War of 1861-1865, this time there was no leader that would attempt to reunify the divided country. Instead, a single Party system with a dictator at the helm was chosen, a model very similar to that of the Communist Party in Russia.
The United States of America, once perceived as a strong example of democracy in action, was no more after only 235 years in existence.
