By Edwin Cooney
It isn’t that I haven’t seen my buddies Lunkhead and Dunderhead recently. I have, and I always tremendously enjoy our discussions. It’s just that D. J. Trump as candidate and as president is sufficiently contentious to dominate everyone’s attention.
My favorite watering hole the other night was only sparsely populated when they walked in. Lunkhead, both tall and massively built, had the usual unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. Dunderhead, small and lean with his perpetual worried look, had the latest edition of the New York Times under his right arm. He darted ahead of the lumbering Lunkhead and grabbed the nearest seat as though Lunkhead would otherwise claim it. Thus, with Dunderhead to my left and Lunkhead on my right, I barked out my taunting question for the evening.
“Gentlemen,” I began, “is America great, beautiful, both, or none of the above?”
‘’That’s a stupid question,” growled Lunkhead, “It’s both!”
“Wow!” shot back Dunderhead, “I love it when you contradict your hero Trump! It’s Trump that’s going to ‘make America great again’! Not even Trump can make America great if it’s already great, can he?’
“Of course, he can! He can make it even greater,” said Lunkhead, unnecessarily stirring his whiskey and water with a swizzle stick.
“Wait a minute, guys,” I cried. “Let’s not debate great vs greater! First let’s define ‘great’.”
“First of all,” insisted Lunkhead, “Every great nation is first and foremost militarily superior to every other nation in the world!”
“Nuts!” exclaimed Dunderhead, squeezing a lime into his beer. “Are you saying that Adolf Hitler’s Germany was a ‘great’ nation when it went to war in 1939? Greatness has little to do with military strength and much more to do with character.”
“Okay, hotshot,” Lunkhead challenged Dunderhead. “Name me a ‘great nation” that wasn’t, or isn’t, superior militarily!”
“Let’s see,” said Dunderhead. “There’s Great Britain and Switzerland, both of which are significant in international monitory affairs. There’s Japan, and how about Canada or even Germany? I don’t know of any country that’s trembling in fear of them, but all of those countries are respected by most nations of the world. Then, there’s the case of China. China is increasingly significant economically and militarily, but I don’t know many people who would call China a ‘great’ nation.”
“Aside from military strength,”I asked, “when has America historically been great?”
“Get it straight,” Lunkhead insisted. “America has been great ever since the Revolutionary War and it has never stopped being the greatest nation!”
“Look,” Lunkhead said, as Dunderhead took a handful of peanuts from a bowl set conveniently between us, “since no one is perfect, no nation is perfect or ‘great’ all the time. Were we great when we wrote into our Constitution that blacks and Indians should only be counted as 3/5ths of a person when calculating a state’s population for representation in Congress? Were we great throughout the 17th and 18th centuries in our policy toward Native Americans? Did we demonstrate greatness when, just before the Civil War, our Supreme Court ruled that blacks were property? Were we great when we imprisoned Japanese Americans during World War II, a decision which was far worse than FDR’s 1937 effort to pack the Supreme Court?”
“We’ve been eternally great since our adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776,” Lunkhead declared, ‘because by so doing we issued a promissory note to perfect all of our economic, social, and political institutions!”
“So, Dunderhead,” I inquired, “since you’ve just listed a set of instances in which you think America has demonstrated a lack of greatness, does that mean you think America isn’t a ‘great’ nation?”
“Not at all,’ said Dunderhead. “Lunkhead is right about the Declaration of Independence. Certainly the adoption of our Constitution, even with its imperfections, was a great act. Passage of the Twentieth Amendment which granted female suffrage, as well as the establishment of the United Nations, and the Marshall plan to restore Western Europe after World War II were all great accomplishments. Establishment of the 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Acts were overwhelmingly great achievements. Thus, America, like other nations, has demonstrated greatness from time to time. However, the fact is that America has no monopoly on greatness,” asserted Dunderhead taking his first sip from another beer.
“Yes, indeed,’ said Lunkhead, “and our splendid new president Donald John Trump is going to make America even greater!
“How’s he going to do that?” demanded Dunderhead.
“By strengthening us militarily, economically, and then defeating Radical Islam among other things,” said Lunkhead.
Finally, although I love both of them, I’d had enough of their political baloney!
‘Look fellows!” I remarked, “you’re both living a fantasy! First, no nation is permanently or by nature ‘great.’ Second, certainly no nation is made great by a goal or proclamation of its leader be his name Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Reagan or Trump. National significance is energized by the character of all its people and the institutions that have been established to assure the freedom and security of its people! Even more to the point, no single leader can force greatness on people. Neither Hitler nor Stalin, with all their political and military authority and power, were capable of making Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia great. Finally, you don’t need a better example of what President Trump complained about during his inaugural address when he insisted that his predecessors were basically selfish men and women looking out for themselves rather than for the country.
“Although you can cite instances when presidents have played a role in American greatness, you can’t name one president who singlehandedly has made America great. To even suggest that a president can attain ‘greatness’ for America is exceedingly deceptive. It could conceivably be an impeachable offense!”
What was ironic as Lunkhead and Dunderhead left the watering hole that night, leaving me to pay the check, was that none of us even tried to debate the idea that America is beautiful!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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