A Brief Thought: A Very White House

NinaIllingworth May 3, 2017November 17, 2022 A Brief Thought, Abe Lincoln, abolition, Abolitionist Movement, American Civil War, Amerikan Musik, Andrew Jackson, Bannon, Bigotry, civil war, Confederacy, conservative media, David Duke, dishonest, Donald Trump, Essays, FA1, fascism, Fascism Ascendant in the USA, Fort Sumter, Gorka, historians, History, Holocaust denial, interview, Islamophobia, Jackson, Jeff Sessions, John Calhoun, KKK, liberal media, Meme, Miller, mistakes, MP6, neoconfederates, neonazi, News, Nina Illingworth, North, Nullification Crisis of 1832, Old Hickory, Opinion, peculiar institution, Politics, President Andrew Jackson, rascism, rascist, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, Salena Zito, Sean Spicer, Six Things I Think, slavery, South, Southern intellectuals, the Emancipation Proclamation, Trump, Trump Administration, Union, US history, white supremacy, yes Trump is a racist, yes Trump's government is racist

Editor’s Note: well, wouldn’t you know it? Not more than 24 hours after I expressed my general distaste for weaponizing false claims of racism to defend the goddamn financial industry, Donny “Tiny-Hands” Trump decided to share a little revisionist history about racist shitheel president Andrew Jackson in a moment that could only have been more predictable if Trump told interviewer Salena Zito to “hold my beer” before he started.

While I’m quite certain that you could fill an entire bloody library with the things the president doesn’t know about American history, today’s Brief Thought explores a far more terrifying question – “what if Donald Trump knew exactly what he was implying with his gushing praise of Andrew Jackson?”

Note: Please be reminded that if you’re having trouble reading this info graphic, you can right click on the picture and select “view this image” to pop out a larger version. Additionally, don’t forget to check out my comments after the sources section of this article.

Sources:

Trump Quotes About Andrew Jackson and the Civil War

Lord: Trump’s Andrew Jackson remark ‘perfectly reasonable

Distortion of Trump’s Civil War comment is reason few Americans trust the media

Internet shreds Trump’s historically illiterate Andrew Jackson comments’

The Danger of Trump’s Civil War Ignorance

Why President Trump Might Accidentally Have Been Right About Andrew Jackson

Trump’s Absurd Civil War Comment and the Limits of Deal-Making

Donald Trump’s historical ignorance reveals a great truth

Historians see a dark underside to Trump’s Civil War riff

Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy?

Confessions of a former neo-Confederate

Lost Cause of the Confederacy – Wikipedia

Steve Bannon Pushed Trump to Go Full Andrew Jackson

Indian-Killer Andrew Jackson Deserves Top Spot on List of Worst US Presidents

WH Says It Deliberately Omitted Jews From Holocaust Remembrance Day Statement

Why It’s Fair—and Necessary—to Call Trump’s Chief Strategist a White Nationalist Champion

Stephen Miller, the Other Big Racist in the White House

Trump adviser Gorka swore a lifetime loyalty oath to a Hungarian pro-Nazi group: Report

Donald Trump Refuses to Condemn KKK, Disavow David Duke Endorsement

Signal received: White nationalists ecstatic over Trump’s proposed policy change on terrorism

There will of course be fanatical Trump supporters who lose their shit after reading this article and wish to dispute the factual analysis in the above info-graphic; likely by denying that Trump is a racist, distorting history around the causes for the Civil War and/or selectively quoting from Andrew Jackson’s presidential record to support the swine emperor’s claim. These people are either misinformed or arguing in bad faith; a term scientifically known as “wrong” when last I checked:

Any critical study of Donald Trump’s life, controversies and statements makes it absolutely clear that the current President of the United States is a racist. Furthermore, even if Trump weren’t a racist (which he definitely is), the president has surrounded himself with known racists selected to be part of his administration; at some point the plausible deniability created by having a Jewish son-in-law and appointing some minority cabinet members wears a little thin.

The primary cause of the American Civil War was slavery; period. Confederate sympathizers can go on about economics, state’s rights and secession all they like but the economics we’re talking about here are the economics of slavery, the state right in question is the right to keep slaves and Southern officials were more than clear (in writing) that the reason the South was seceding was Lincoln’s abolition of slavery; none of these facts are in dispute among serious historians. Ergo, despite the protestations an entire cottage industry of pro-Confederate, pseudo-intellectuals the only way any president could have prevented the Civil War would be to either allow the continuation of slavery or convince the South not to secede from the Union and attack Fort Sumter; we’ll get back to this in a moment.

Which of course, leaves us with former president Andrew Jackson himself; a man who famously once told his vice president “John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation I will secede your head from the rest of your body.” It’s a magnificent quote to be sure, but assuming that it means Jackson could have or would have prevented the Civil War is more than just a notable stretch; Jackson was himself a slave owner who actually made his adult fortunes in the slave trade and owned 161 human beings at the time of his death. During the Seminole War, Jackson had massacred escaped slaves during the US invasion of Native territories and he tried to outlaw abolitionist (of slavery) literature during his term as President. In short, Andrew Jackson clearly loved himself some human bondage and if he was going to be upset about a Civil War (that admittedly *was* already brewing during his presidency) there’s a pretty good fucking chance he’d be upset about Northern calls for abolition; not the “peculiar institution” of slavery in the South.

With these objectively proven facts in mind, it then behooves us to ask precisely what it is that our buffoonish swine emperor is saying here? He certainly can’t be suggesting that Jackson would have abolished slavery without bloodshed and by sheer force of personality; it’s not like Lincoln was a coward who refused to fight – why would threats it seems highly-unlikely Jackson would want to issue be a more effective deterrent that honest Abe’s Union Army?

In my opinion, this leaves only two possible answers; neither of which are particularly comforting. The first and most obvious answer is that Donald Trump is a thundering fucking moron who is completely ignorant of US history and was just babbling about shit he’d read on the internet to impress a friendly journalist. While I personally suspect this answer might be a little too simplistic, I honestly cannot entirely rule it out because so much of what Trump does is clearly based on his random, momentary whims.

The second, far more terrifying answer is that the swine emperor knows exactly what he’s saying; that he’s arguing that there would have been no Civil War under Jackson because Old Hickory would never have signed the Emancipation Proclamation and indeed would have continued to actively persecute the Abolitionist Movement – it would never have gotten that far because Andrew Jackson would have “worked it out” by simply keeping slavery! Whether Trump also subscribes to the highly-dubious belief that the South would have soon ended slavery on it’s own without the war is largely irrelevant here; if he understands the historical context of what he’s saying, then the President just implied that keeping slavery (even to maintain peace) would have been a better idea than emancipating the slaves and that is fucking horrifying.

So which answer is a reasonable observer to believe after a year-long campaign of horrifying bigotry, the construction of an objectively racist government and “mistake” after “mistake” that strongly implies the white house is full of dangerous goddamn hatemongers?

If it looks like a duck…