One Year On: How Much Greater Is America Again?
AN ELECTION victory that stunned the world provided billionaire Donald Trump with the unique chance to come good on a patriotic pledge to Make America Great Again. On the anniversary of his historic victory over Hillary Clinton, WWN asks one year on, how much greaterer is America again?
Our team of investigative reporters followed in the well trodden path of journalists based in the big metropolitan cities of America and traipsed around the heartland of the country which has been ravaged by inequality and neglect, talking to the disenfranchised and impoverished people who voted in their droves for a man who marketed himself as their saviour.
Greatness is a hard thing to quantify even through research, experiments and the forensic analysis of data from multiple sources. However, WWN got the sense that it could be quantified and its progress charted, under the right conditions, questions and observations.
“We never had big city journalists come around here in the 20 years since the plant closed, but now they outnumber us 50-to-1,” explained Kentucky resident Ashley-Anne Boden, who has been interviewed by over 4,000 journalists since Trump’s victory.
Has Ashley-Anne seen the re-greatification of America first hand since Trump took office?
“Yes,” was the simple answer, no further evidence needed to bolster the factoid she had just imparted. Her observation a boon to Trump and his administration who had made the pledge to Make America Great Again and now, thanks to Ashley-Anne’s confirmation, it could not be denied; it had been achieved.
“No,” the answer to a follow up question about whether or not any of her family or friends, neglected by successive political regimes, had secured employment since Trump’s victory.
While the greating again of America cannot be measured in such simple black and white terms as gaining employment, it can be better understood by leading academics whose work seeks to shine a light on the problems and solutions to modern American problems.
“If you take those people over there, shouting ‘U-S-A U-S-A’ over and over again while waving Confederate flags, they seem pretty happy,” explained leading greatologist Gerald Comberband, providing the starkest example of just how Trump has transformed the fortunes of the country he swore he would greatify in between selling hats made in China.
Despite the joyous realisation that every long-standing problem America has faced in the last 30 years had been solved, WWN remembered it had a journalistic duty to uphold and pressed further with more questions.
What of the issues of Russian interference? Of emboldened white nationalists? Of the dismantling of affordable healthcare? Of a deepening of the rich/poor divide? Legislation lessening consumer rights with financial institutions? Trying to start a nuclear war with North Korea? To name just a few issues because there is a 120,000 word limit on articles in this publication.
“If you take those people over there, shouting ‘U-S-A U-S-A’ over and over again while waving confederate flags, they seem pretty happy,” repeated Comberband, utterly rebuking our points, dismantling any semblance of decent argument we may have held in our hands.
How much greater is America again some 12 months after the election of Donald Trump? The scale of greatifying doesn’t seem to measure the amazingly high levels of America’s greatness. Job done President Trump. Job done.