I’m not a critic of Trump’s Golden Age.
The Gilded Age actually resonates with me. My grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great grandfather were all Southern railroad men. The Montgomery and Eufaula Railroad was built during Reconstruction and the route wasn’t abandoned until the 1970s. My family ended up settling where we are today because of that railroad line which was after the demise of slavery.
CNN:
“President Donald Trump, with his usual bombast, has declared that his second term will be a new “golden age” for the country.
Some critics have argued the US actually seems to be in something like the Gilded Age, the period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, after Reconstruction and before the Progressive era, when robber barons and industrialists built great fortunes but inequality grew.
For a better sense of the Gilded Age — which takes its name from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley’s novel “The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today” — I talked to Richard White, a Stanford history professor emeritus and author of “The Republic for Which It Stands,” which examines US history from Reconstruction through the Gilded Age. The book is part of the multivolume series Oxford History of the US. …”
“Journalists” are just now noticing the striking resemblance between Mar-a-Lago and The Breakers in Newport, RI which was built by the grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Golden Age is a much more classic term used for various nations and empires throughout history: England’s ‘Golden Age’ of the Virgin Queen and Shakespeare; Spain’s ‘Golden Age’ starting with Isabella (the Latin version of the name Elizabeth); Germany’s ‘Golden Age’ starting with Bismarck; Rome had more than one – the Republic had a ‘Golden Age’ after Carthage was defeated while the empire’s ‘Pax Romana’ extended from Trajan through Marcus Aurelius.
Gilded is not the same as golden. An object which is ‘gilded’ might look as if it were gold, but at best it only has a thin layer of gold covering (most of the time there’s no real gold involved). Trump or his advisors were smart to avoid the term gilded. The present age of America, as it has been left by the fake president “Joe Biden” doesn’t even rise to ‘gilded’. Gelded age is a far more fitting term. Will Trump turn this around to bring about a real Golden Age? I must admit that despite some stumbles he’s off to a pretty impressive start. As someone noted the other day, this goal is not a sprint but a marathon.