America First, America Only, or... Superman?

What hurts America is acting like we're not special

“America First” (in recent usages) started I think as a slogan in MAGA and then as a response to MAGA who think Trump is too nice the Jews. And now Matt Walsh has introduced “America Only,” and I’ve seen some of the fringery politicians jump on it. I guess the idea there is America First wasn’t America-focused enough, so now not only do we need to put America first, we can’t even think about other countries.

It’s all pretty dumb.

I mean, yeah, there are some people who don’t put America’s concerns first (*cough* Democrats *cough*), but America First was mainly in response to people who do put America first, but think that it’s in the best interest to get involved with other countries. So America First is an attempt not to debate that but to shut it down by trying to control the language.

A very leftist tactic (which is why you see it favored by the woke right).

And America Only is just a dumb fart of a slogan. It immediately gets a lot of negative reaction because people are like, “Are you saying we can’t even help another country even if it would save millions of lives?” And then they explain that no, they don’t mean America can never help another country — they just mean America First… but even more! Thus, it’s a lot like the “defund the police!” slogan in that gives normal people a visceral negative reaction and then proponents have to spend all their time explaining that the slogan doesn’t mean what everyone thinks it means, i.e., it’s a great slogan if you want attention as a podcast host, but it sucks as politics.

So, it’s all rather stupid — America First and America Only — so I will instead suggest a better third way: America should be Superman.