Trump is doing us a great favor by forcing us to think about what America is, or could be, or should be.
The back story-- there's never been a consensus on what America "means." Early on, America was designed and defined by two very different groups of people-- white businessmen who wanted government to help white businessmen, and white businessmen who wanted government to help white businessmen, but also address the concerns of white men who weren't in business but would like to be. I've read books about conservative philosophy where the ownership of property appears to be the main thing government is designed to protect; in this framing, a government that gets involved with anything else is skating dangerously close to barbarous overreach.
Eventually, there was a grudging acceptance that many situations would require government to do other things than keep non-businessmen off your lawn. Angry hordes of foreigners seemed to be gathering everywhere at once; this phenomenon was occurring mostly in foreign countries, but to a great extent foreigners could even be found on our own soil, many of whom spent so much of their time in America it was almost as if they lived here. It was an intolerable situation, of course, and we didn't tolerate it.
But it became necessary to put our money where our mouth was; as the youthful nation discovered, you can't just pay white businessmen to make laws protecting their money and call it a day. Laws are just words on paper, and a lot of criminals don't take the time to read them. To be fair, sometimes this is because they don't speak English. But the point is that these laws must be enforced, and the white businessmen are busy writing the laws and then spending the money they make, or inherit. Someone else will have to do the enforcing, and they're not going to do it for nothing.
Beyond the problem of having to pay these guys to walk around with clubs and whatnot, protecting property, side issues arose. When law enforcers were off the clock (in those simpler times, they were considered to be "off the sundial"), they sometimes stayed home reading, but more often repaired to a local tavern, where current events and women's asses could be discussed in stentorian tones by white men in a drunken stupor. This was very good for businessmen, as the non-cost-of-living-adjusted salaries of the enforcers were fed back into the system to pay for the liquor, but not so good when the clubs and whatnot were used on citizens to settle drunken disputes, or as a bargaining chip in a negotiation with a wench. This kind of thing could only go so far without some do-gooder writing about it in the accursed media, which at that time had to be physically carried and handed to people in order for them to read it. Sometimes a bunch of media would be printed up, and left in piles on street corners or in taverns. (This distribution method was not without its flaws; illiterate non-businessmen would often appropriate the media and stuff it into their clothing to ward off death, and whatever remained was generally spread out on long tables in order for taverngoers to eat shellfish.)
Fortunately for the white businessmen, a large number of people couldn't read, as public school hadn't been invented yet. When a few do-gooders attempted to invent it, there was resistance from many prescient white businessmen who guessed correctly that once the non-businessmen learned to read, it would require a lot of work to convince them not to. Eventually, the white businessmen figured out that money could be made by designing shiny things that were much more entertaining than reading. This eventually led to our current obesity epidemic, for two main reasons.
1. Mechanization increased leisure time by making it possible for workers to get more work done faster, and in some cases leisure time for workers was now available 24 hours a day.
2. Between meal snacking is easier to when you're watching shiny things; it's awkward to hold a piece of reading material while you're eating. Especially if fondue is involved.
END OF PART ONE IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES
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