The phrase “Make America Great Again” lands with a thud because, to anyone outside the Norman Rockwell frame, “again” is doing all the heavy lifting. Again for whom? Again compared to what? Again as in the 1950s sitcom reruns where everyone on the block was white, straight, and safely tucked behind a picket fence, while everyone else was either invisible, criminalized, or cleaning up after them.
That’s the mythology MAGA longs to return to: a nostalgic rerun of someone else’s starring role. But the American Dream has never been universally cast—it’s been gatekept, edited, and fenced off with HOA bylaws written in invisible ink that read: Not For You.
The Reason America Was “Great”
Here’s the irony that MAGA banners never quite catch: the reason America could ever be called great in the first place wasn’t because we started perfect, but because, at least in theory, we were trying to get better. The story we told ourselves—the story of American exceptionalism—was not that we were flawless, but that we were restless. That we knew we had fallen short, and with each generation, we clawed forward anyway.
We abolished slavery, however imperfectly, and then had to keep fighting to make freedom mean something real. We expanded suffrage, giving women the right to vote, even though property laws and cultural chains kept them half-free. We cracked Jim Crow, stone by stone, even as the rubble buried entire communities in new forms of discrimination. We inched queerness out of shadows, from the raid at Stonewall to marriage equality, even as closets like the one Lindsey Graham seems unable to leave reminded us how costly authenticity remained.
The greatness wasn’t in the “again,” it was in the forward. Every stumble toward progress was still a stumble away from the cliff of permanent exclusion. That was exceptionalism at its core: the idea that we could be honest about our failures, self-correct, and broaden the promise of the dream to include people once told they didn’t belong.
Rolling back rights isn’t greatness. It’s regression. It’s saying women should go back to asking permission to sign for a mortgage, gay people should go back to lying to their employers, and people of color should go back to living with fewer protections, fewer opportunities, and fewer ways to dream.
A Dream That Always Came with Fine Print
The American Dream was marketed as a package deal—hard work, steady job, nice house, family vacation in July, retirement with a pension. But that promise was never equally distributed. For Black Americans, it came with red lines on maps, sundown towns, and “Whites Only” signs that made clear the dream stopped at the county line. For Latino immigrants, it was backbreaking labor in fields and kitchens with the dream dangled just far enough away to keep them running. For women, the dream was conditional: you could taste freedom if you didn’t mind being underpaid, overworked, and told you were “lucky” to be here at all. For queer people, the dream wasn’t even acknowledged—your house and partner weren’t a dream, they were evidence.
And yet, the brochure kept circulating, promising opportunity while stapling whole populations to the margins.
MAGA’s Golden Hour Was Someone Else’s Midnight
The call to go back is not nostalgia—it’s reclamation. It’s saying the system used to tilt in my favor more aggressively, and I’d like that back. When Trump-era rallies chant “again,” they’re not talking about gas prices or wages, they’re talking about hierarchy. They’re saying:
- “Again” when straight white men were default, and everyone else was “niche.”
- “Again” when police answered only to some neighborhoods and terrorized others without consequence.
- “Again” when two women couldn’t marry without losing their jobs, or two men couldn’t kiss in public without risking their lives.
- “Again” when feminism was dismissed as shrill, civil rights were “later,” and immigration meant you work while we rise.
The greatness in MAGA is measured by exclusion, not abundance. It’s the yearning to reset the clock to an hour when others were still locked out of the room.
The Dream vs. the Data
The numbers don’t lie, even when politicians do. The middle class—the supposed backbone of the dream—has been steadily hollowed out since the 1970s. Wages stagnated, housing ballooned, healthcare mutated into a luxury, and higher education became a debt sentence. The so-called dream now looks like a generational Airbnb: you rent security for a little while, but ownership is out of reach.
And yet, MAGA insists the dream is broken because others got in line. They’ll point to Black homeowners, Latino small business owners, queer families raising kids and say: See? That’s the problem. But the truth is, the system wasn’t sustainable for anyone—it just collapses faster when more people actually expect access.
The HOA Rules of Nostalgia
Think of the American Dream as one of those suburban neighborhoods with manicured lawns and pastel siding. The HOA—Homeowners Association—has rules: no tall fences, no bright paint, no visible poverty, no reminders that the world outside looks different. For decades, the rules kept the illusion pristine.
But then:
- A Black family moved in.
- A gay couple landscaped their lawn with rainbow flowers.
- A Latina single mother opened a food truck that parked nearby.
- A trans kid rode their bike down the street in a glitter helmet.
Suddenly, the HOA board panics. The illusion is broken. The dream is threatened. Not by foreclosure, not by medical bankruptcy, not by student loans—but by visibility. That’s the MAGA panic: the dream doesn’t feel like theirs if others are dreaming too.
The Exceptionalism Escape Hatch
For decades, America’s self-mythology had an out: exceptionalism. We told ourselves that while we often didn’t get it right, we were at least trying. Progress wasn’t a straight line, but the arc bent forward—abolition, suffrage, civil rights, Stonewall, Obergefell. The dream was flawed, yes, but the story we sold ourselves was that we kept moving toward it. That motion—halting, uneven, infuriating—was the one redeeming thing about the whole enterprise.
Going backwards is not exceptionalism. It’s surrender. To claim greatness in regression is to admit the dream was never about progress at all, just about who got to hold the keys. MAGA isn’t about fixing the dream, it’s about locking it back up and hanging a “members only” sign on the door.
The Real Dream Was Always Collective
Here’s the truth MAGA can’t stomach: the only sustainable version of the American Dream is collective, not exclusive. It looks like wages you can live on, healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt you, housing you can pass down without a fight, schools that don’t reinforce poverty, and dignity that isn’t conditional on your skin, gender, or who you love.
But that version of the dream isn’t a Hallmark card. It’s messy, loud, plural, and deeply inconvenient to those who’d prefer the HOA model where dissent is banned and diversity is “decorative.”
The Stinger
The American Dream was never a promise; it was a performance. A stage set that looked believable until the lights flickered and the backstage was exposed—cheap plywood, unpaid labor, and a cast list missing half the country. MAGA wants to dim the lights again, to sell the illusion one more time.
But illusions don’t pay rent. They don’t clear debt. They don’t protect bodies in the street. The dream, if it ever arrives, will not look like a sitcom rerun or a Norman Rockwell painting. It will look like something messier, queerer, browner, more complicated than comfort allows.
And maybe that’s why the dream still terrifies those clinging to “again.” Because once you let everyone in on it, the dream stops being a property you own and starts being a world you share.