Donald Trump's message seems to be that Americans are a bunch of losers and that our country is in the toilet. He is quick to add that it's not our fault - that the establishment elite has lied to us, cheated us and turned us into a nation of losers. He promises that he is going to turn us from losers into winners. (He doesn't explain how).
So I've got a problem with his premise. I don't feel like a loser. Ok, I've got a college degree and a decent job. But I look around at my neighbors and friends, and they don't seem like losers to me. Well, you might say that I live in a nice, safe neighborhood away from crime, terrorism and all the other perils of "loser America." Still, I have a lot of friends and co-workers who live in not-so-nice, not-so-safe neighborhoods, and I wouldn't call them losers. They certainly don't think of themselves as losers. Some are veterans, cops, immigrants, minorities, unemployed and poor. They may be struggling, but I wouldn't say they are losers.
I have had a chance to travel a lot to other countries. I have seen children begging in the Middle East, whole families living on the street in Asia, and young people in Europe suffering with unemployment rates of thirty or forty percent. I have experienced power shortages, rampant crime, economic hardship and repressive dictatorships. If I had to compare the lives of most Americans to those of people around the world, I certainly wouldn't call us losers.
Even as Europeans have experienced real economic decline, and China, India and other developing nations have struggled to provide a bare subsistence for their populations, America has remained the strongest and freest country on earth, with the economy best poised to compete in the global marketplace and with still the greatest opportunity for its citizens. The American dream lives on for people around the world and for most Americans, if not for Donald Trump.
Everyone understands that there have been losers in the race to globalization and the rapid pace of economic change, just as there have been winners and losers in every transformation in human history. In the transition from an agricultural nation to an industrial nation, the United States underwent enormous upheavals - including terrorism, assassinations, labor unrest and even civil war. But that didn't mean we wrote off our entire nation as a bunch of losers. Are we so beaten-down that we have to turn our country over to a bombastic narcissist who has nothing good to say about America? Where is our pride? Where is our patriotism? Or are we really, as Trump says, a bunch of losers?