Make America Jackson again

Contrary to the public’s perception of him, Donald Trump isn’t all that unpredictable. His playbook was scripted a long time ago by none other than Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the US, and the henchmen who inveigled to get him elected in 1828.

John Eaton’s biography of Jackson, mostly a catalogue of evasions, half-truths and outright lies, was written for the sole purpose of promoting General Jackson’s candidacy for president by focusing on his military campaigns. Jackson decimated the Muscogees, a native American tribe, during the Creek War of 1813-1814 and then went on to decisively defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. The natives were forced to surrender 21 million acres to white land speculators, which included Jackson. After Jackson was elected President in 1828, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act in 1830 with his support. More than 60,000 American Indians from at least 18 tribes were forced to move west of the Mississippi River, where they were allocated new lands in present-day Oklahoma, an arid region of the country. The United States east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes was emptied of its American Indian population. Trump’s (and Israel’s) stated desire to empty out Gaza and turn it into an American Riviera of the Middle East echoes Jackson’s vision for 19th-century America.

Here is a direct quote from Jackson. “What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms, embellished with all the improvements which art can devise or industry execute, occupied by more than 12,000,000 happy people, and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilisation, and religion?”

Jackson was a law unto himself and flouted all authority, be it the constitution, Congress, the courts or his military superiors. He unilaterally waged war on Florida, then a Spanish territory, without congressional approval and annexed it on grounds of national security. Attempts to censure his behaviour proved futile. He exacted revenge on all who opposed him; throughout his career, he jailed legislators, judges, prosecutors and attorneys, and censored newspapers critical of him. He was compared to Caesar, a comparison not wholly unwarranted; his advisers planted stories in his favour in
the newspapers to sway public opinion.

Trump’s recent decision to change the name of the Department of Defence to the Department of War should be viewed as a tacit acknowledgement of how much Trump tries to mimic Jackson. In Jackson’s time, there was no Department of Defence, only a Department of War. A portrait of Jackson occupies pride of place in Trump’s Oval Office in the White House. Since Jackson’s image appears on the $20 bill, Trump has been angling to have his face depicted
on some form of US currency, be it paper bills or cryptocurrencies.

When a federal grand jury indicted Trump for conspiring to overturn the results of the November 2020 election, he moved to dismiss the indictment based on presidential immunity. The Supreme Court, stacked by his appointees, ruled in his favour. Given his vindictive nature, Trump has gone after those who sought to bring criminal and civil charges against him or the Trump Organisation.

Jackson did not have any qualms about owning slaves (he had between 95 and 150 slaves during his presidency) and mistreating them; he marked his human ‘property’ by cutting off their ears just as he had lopped off the noses of native Americans whom he had killed during the many wars started with them, both as a General and as President. By separating children from their parents during his ongoing war on illegal immigrants and sticking them in iron cages, or in what can only be described as reverse slave trading, grabbing migrants off the streets, shackling and deporting them to distant third countries, Trump has shown that he is no less cruel. With sympathetic senators and representatives of Congress beholden to him, he is currently engaged in a crusade to roll back the landmark civil rights and voting legislation enacted in the 1960s to correct past injustices against African-Americans.

Jackson speculated in real estate, usually on tribal land — land deemed of little value because it was inhabited by American Indians. He coerced the natives into leaving through ‘negotiated’ agreements, usually involving bogus peace treaties he had no intention of honouring, and profited immensely. Viewed in this light, Trump’s ongoing tariff war with China, India, Canada, etc., is a textbook example of blackmail, one designed to extract maximum favourable concessions from the nations involved.

History does inform, but few read these days.

(The writer is a retired professor; he has written extensively and presented lectures on the societal and geo-political implications of technology)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.