To judge by his speeches, notably an inaugural address that fear-mongered about “American carnage,” the president believes the country is in deep trouble and needs to get its own house in order. Trump is more interested in recovering past glories—the old days when “we’d win with wars” rather than now, when “we don’t win anymore”—than in creating a new tomorrow. It’s no surprise that some of the loudest complaints about Trump’s ban came from tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook that rely on the immigrants that Trump demonizes.Me: I've spent the last few years researching the history of the Erie Canal, for a book I am now preparing to publish.
The Erie Canal is surely one of the things that made America great, and it would be easy to view it in terms of nostalgia. But looking back on its development I am struck most by how forward-looking the people involved were. The canal is where American technology really began, with surveyors turning themselves into a new profession of engineers in on-the-job training. The canal also helped immigrants become part of America, as they built it and traveled on it further into America.
America looking more like past than future is one of the deepest betrayals of our heritage that can be imagined. Those interested in recovering past glories should at least have some clue what they are.
