Trump’s Role Model
(Andrew Jackson)
In the photograph, we see Donald Trump with VP Mike Pence, but ominously, the ghost of President Andrew Jackson hovers behind them. He was Trump’s role model, in his words, a swashbuckler, who could have prevented the American Civil War. No doubt in the same manner that he would have stopped Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
There is little doubt that a case for genocide could be made for the man
whose portrait graces the $20 note. Here is a quote from a letter he wrote to his wife Rachel:
“I detached General John Coffee with part of his Brigade of Cavalry and mounted men to destroy Creek Town … General Jackson wrote, that he had performed this slaughter in elegant style. More than 170 Native Americans were killed. Still, there was more killing to do. He was determined to march on to the heart of the creek nation.”
In 1830, as president, he instigated and signed the Indian Removal Act, an early example of genocidal ethnic cleansing, whereby, 60,000 Native Americans were legally removed from their territory in south-eastern United States, thousands of miles to Oklahoma, to make way for white settlers, after gold was discovered on their lands. This involved legalised expropriation of their homesteads, marching hundreds of miles, dying of hunger and cold, with a quarter of them killed. Twenty-three million acres of land were seized from the original inhabitants with no compensation. This epic injustice is known as The Trail of Tears.
He had the utmost contempt for all non-white races. He summed up his view of the Cherokees thus:
“Established in the midst of a superior race, they must disappear.”
He did make one attempt at ensuring that History would remember him kindly: After his soldiers committed a wholesale massacre of Creeks, one little toddler was unharmed, and Bleeding Heart laid claim to him, and adopted the child, Lyncoya. One imagines how valued he was by considering that he was apprenticed to a saddler and died of tuberculosis at 16.
