Patrick Murphy: Dear Donald, when exactly was America ever great?

Dear Donald Trump.

Some of us on this side of the Atlantic are rather baffled. You see, when we hear that you intend to make America great again, we wonder when exactly you believe America was great.

For a start, the United States was built on slavery. From 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million men, women and children were forced on to ships (mostly British) in Africa and about 10.7 million arrived in America.

The other 1.8 million were thrown into the ocean. Most, but not all of them, were dead.

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Slaves built American cities from Atlanta to New York City, including the US Capitol building (the one your supporters stormed in 2020), which was built with slaves rented from their owners by the government.

Slaves not only helped to build the White House, but seven US presidents owned slaves during their time in office there: Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Tyler, Polk and Taylor.

Like “Great” Britain, America’s claimed greatness was built on oppression.

Then there were the US government’s 1,500 wars, attacks and raids on native Americans, the most of any country in the world against its indigenous people.

By the late 19th century, fewer than 238,000 native people remained, down from the estimated 5 to 15 million when Columbus arrived in 1492.

The 1830 Indian Removal Act forced some 100,000 native Americans to move from their ancestral lands. Thousands died along the way from hunger, cold, exhaustion or disease.

The Choctaws, one of the tribes involved, later sent $178 for famine relief here (about $5,000 in today’s money). That’s one of the rare pieces of American greatness.

Hollywood then glorified the slaughter of indigenous Americans in a series of 20th century Western films, which depicted the native Americans as savages. One of your predecessors, Ronald Reagan, acted in some of those films.

Although US slavery ended in 1865, black Americans remained second-class citizens until the civil rights campaign (1954-68) abolished racial segregation and discrimination.

One million black Americans fought for freedom in World War II, but they came home to remain unfree in their own country.

Today the US has the world’s largest known prison population. It has 5% of the world’s people, but has 20% of the world’s prisoners.

Black Americans make up 13 per cent of America’s population, but 37% of its prison population. Not a great record, is it?

Since 1945 the US has invaded or intervened in 96 countries around the globe, as part of what successive administrations have unashamedly referred to as America’s ambition to rule the world.

Despite that (or maybe because of it), America’s national debt today stands at over $36 trillion.

Compared to its overall economy, that’s the highest national debt in the world. America now owes more than it produces, so it is effectively bankrupt.

Meanwhile, the US has spent billions of dollars supplying arms for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

While America was supporting the deliberate killing of Palestinian men, women and children last weekend, Ireland’s GAA was taking some refugees from Gaza to see Errigal Ciaran’s historic victory. Which country would you describe as great??

The man most recently responsible for that genocide is Joe Biden, whom many regard as a war criminal.

In fairness to Joe, he has an interesting attitude to crime. He granted his son Hunter an unconditional pardon for tax and gun convictions. That’s not great. That’s just the stuff of a banana republic.

Of course, you too escaped prosecution. The US Attorney General said this week that if you were not about to become president, you would be convicted of “criminal efforts to retain power”, for failing to respect the democratic will of the American people in the 2020 election.

Yep, that’s a banana republic all right – attempting to undermine democracy, followed by one law for the powerful and another for the people.

So it all comes down to what you mean by “great”. To you it means world domination. That’s why America has 800 military bases abroad and why you are threatening to take over Greenland and Panama.

You fail to see that greatness is built on respect and not aggression.

So your proposed path to greatness is to repeat American history at home and abroad, this time with the help of the world’s richest man. He has the power to control the flow of what you and he regard as information.

With you two in charge, America is heading for more greatness, this time in the form of the Great Delusion.

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