[SJackson]

I'm no historian, but my first thought is that the poem recalls the fun and good times of the roaring twenties. I think Kerry wants to go back to the good old roaring 90's.

The poem's in post 5. We aren't going back anywhere, it could be titled, if you include the refrain

Let America Be America Again--(America never was America to me.)

Or, as the author's bio notes,

no "Jim Crow," no anti-semitism, and education and medical care for everyone. Stalin delivers., the ideal, Stalinist Russia

[Shermy]

Laissez l'Amérique être l'Amérique encore!

[geopyg]

Thanks for making me do a closer read.

From his bio: "The 1950s brought the Cold War and the horrors of Senator Joseph McCarthy's ... Holding fast to his own dream of sustaining his career as a writer, Hughes salvaged his image as a loyal American citizen by insisting that the pro-Communist works he had published no longer represented his thinking. ..... He retained speaking engagements and his works continued to sell, but he lost the respect of some political activists. Communists bitterly resented the way he abandoned professed members of the party......Hughes chose self-preservation and sustained his career as a writer.


Sounds a lot like John "Fonda" Kerry doing a flip-flop.