Trump's speech offered a classic case of what scholars such as Svetlana Boym have called "restorative nostalgia," a highly emotional impulse that longs to flee from the incessant swirl of change and tension in the present and find truth and comfort in a romanticized past free of turmoil and trauma. Such wistfulness is popular in our time because it promises to serve as a source of enduring truths--suspending the need for critical thinking--and free the virtuous nation from any responsibility to address wrongs it may have committed. In Trump's retelling of American history, in fact, there were no misdeeds. He offered a memory and a history free of guilt and certainly without any evidence that might support claims for justice in the present.
Boym also identified a contrasting form of nostalgia that she claimed was more "reflective." In this particular turn to the past, facts are prized more than myths and a careful assessment is made of what has worked and what has failed so that improvements or reforms can be made going forward. This more thoughtful nostalgia longs not for the return of paradise but the implementation of lessons learned from a history filled with forward and backward thrusts. It serves as an antidote the lure of utopia or an "unreflected nostalgia," which can breed "monsters" or evil forces like "angry mobs." Senator Joseph McCarthy's warnings in 1950 that there were communists or "men in high places" lurking in the government that threatened American values was a prime example of this turn to "monsters." When "mobs" appear in the streets defenders of paradise can never see their grievances as legitimate because there can be no reason to critique what is already exceptional and faultless. The only recourse is to quash the mob, drain the swamp, demand a restoration of law and order and reaffirm traditional values. Negotiations would be waste of time.
Ironically, Abraham Lincoln, whose monument glared down at Trump as he spoke in South Dakota, turned out be a nostalgic as well, but one that relied more on a sober analysis of the past he longed for than a wistful one. Drawing upon his experience from leading the nation through the Civil War, the sixteenth president yearned earlier times when America was peaceful and united. As most historians will argue, Lincoln fought the war to save the union. But Lincoln, drawing upon his view of history, saw the fight to save the United States as much more than a preservation project. He felt Americans had a debt to their forefathers to sustain not only the nation they created but what he called America's "first principles." He shared the sense that the nation was exceptional but not because it produced heroic figures but because it was born with a moral obligation to promote and protect the ideal of universal liberty and equal rights for all.