You remember 2016, right? That was the year the Republican Party slapped on a red hat and gave itself a whole new personality—Make America Great Again. 

Now look, if the hat had just said Make America Great, well hell, that’s a message anybody could get behind. Sounds like progress, like we're building something better. Forward motion. American as a two-lane highway and a thermos of black coffee.

But it’s that little word Again that gets stuck in my craw.

Again? As in… when, exactly?

You talkin’ about the Great Depression? Jim Crow? The '50s when women knew their place and minorities better not forget theirs? Or maybe the ’80s, when Wall Street got rich and the working man got pink-slipped?  The 80s Farm Crisis?

Seems to me "again" depends a whole lot on who you were and where you stood. For some folks, maybe it was great. For others, it was just another fight to get by.

Growing up, I loved watching reruns of The Lone Ranger and every cowboy western that came on the TV. I’d sit there thinkin’, “Man, I was born a hundred years too late, I shoulda been a real cowboy.”

But then I found out the average life span back then hadn’t even hit 40, and steppin’ on a rusty nail before tetanus shots was basically a death sentence. Living, or in this case dying because antibiotics hadn’t been discovered yet made me rethink my fantasy real quick.

So when folks say Make America Great Again, I start askin’ questions.

If we’re talkin’ again, then what era are we pining for, exactly? ’Cause if it’s some slice of the 20th century, let’s take a little ride through those decades without the rose-colored glasses and storybook memories. Just the plain truth, like a trail boss tellin’ it straight.

-1900s:
America kicked off the century with sweatshops full of kids, no safety rules, and meat factories that’d gag a buzzard. No real rights for workers. If you got hurt, you just lost your job and probably your home. The rich were riding high, the poor were stuck in a muddy ditch…sometimes literally.

1910s:
We sent boys to die in World War I while Jim Crow laws kept half the country segregated. Women still couldn’t vote, and a flu pandemic showed up that killed more folks than the war. If you were Black or an immigrant, the “American Dream” was more like “don’t get lynched.”

1920s:
Sure, flappers and jazz sound fun…if you were white and wealthy. But underneath the glitz was the Klan marching in full daylight, farmers barely scraping by, and banks playing roulette with people’s savings. The stock market roared right up until it face-planted in ’29.

1930s:
The Great Depression hit like a freight train with no brakes. Bread lines, foreclosures, Dust Bowl winds turning topsoil into air. Families lived in tents and cooked dandelion soup. FDR helped, but it took a decade just to stand back up.

1940s:
World War II. We beat the Nazis, sure. Rosie got a rivet gun and folks pulled together. But we also rounded up Japanese-Americans into camps, and when Black soldiers came home, they still couldn’t sit at the same lunch counter as the white boys they fought beside.

1950s:
This is the era folks usually point to when they talk about "Again." But it was only “great” for a narrow slice of people. Women were expected to stay silent in the kitchen and couldn’t even open a checking account without their father’s or husband’s signature, and if you were gay or Black or poor, you sure as hell weren’t livin’ the American Dream. Meanwhile, McCarthy was accusing folks of being communists for reading books.

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1960s:
Civil rights battles, assassinations, and a war in Vietnam nobody could explain. Martin, Malcolm, and Bobby all gunned down. We sent poor boys to fight and die overseas while the rich boys got deferments and business degrees.

1970s:
The war ended, but America came home broke and bitter. Nixon lied and quit, gas prices shot up, and factories started closing like saloons on Sunday. If you were middle class, your wallet got thinner and your job more shaky.

1980s:
Reagan came in with a cowboy smile and trickle-down economics…though most of us just got trickled on. Farms failed, unions crumbled, and Wall Street had a party. If you weren’t already rich, you weren’t invited. Crack hit the streets and filled the prisons.

1990s:
The internet boomed, but so did prison populations. We passed trade deals that gutted American manufacturing towns and called it progress. If you lived in a holler or on the edge of town, good luck finding work or affording a doctor when so many had no health insurance

.So when I hear Make America Great Again, I wanna ask:

Which part? And for who?

Because if you're talkin' about a time when women had no say, when folks were jailed for who they loved or the color of their skin, when the rich had all the say and the poor had to beg for scraps…then no thanks.

I say let’s quit lookin’ back for some fantasy that never really existed for most of us. Let’s build something better, right here, right now.

Not Again—but At Last.

Til next time, that’s the story from the Back Forty!

John W Peace II

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John W. Peace II is a fifth-generation farmer from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, where he grew up on his family’s dairy, Clinch Haven Farms, and still lives today farming hay and beef cattle. He’s a proud father to Trey and Shelby Peace, and partner in life to Cathy Swinney. A Virginia Tech graduate with graduate studies at Penn State, he served as the youngest Chair of the Wise County Board of Supervisors (2004–2008). John co-owns SafeHavenServices.co and urTOPIX LLC (urTopixLLC.com), a Democratic campaign consulting firm focused on reaching rural voters that is sponsored by www.RuralAmericaRising.com PAC. He’s also a two-time Amazon bestselling author. Learn more at www.JohnWPeace.com.