Trump's Deportation Directives link back to Jackson's Indian Removal Act
The news today includes amazement that Donald Trump, not known for his knowledge base, said that Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the Civil War would have stopped it. He also said that his campaign was a lot like Jackson's and that Jackson was a role model.
This makes more sense than it appears.
Jackson did stave off an early rebellion by holding that the federal laws were supreme, but he did so in the context that slavery was legal. He himself bought and traded slaves and owned 150. In addition, he gained fame for massacring native Americans. In this regard, his Trail of Tears has an analog in Trump's aim to deport 11 million immigrants who have been denied legal status. Both employed slaves: Trump's workers in Dubai from Pakistan were loaned money to travel and promised $3 an hour but earn only $1.50 and cannot get out of debt...so their passports have been confiscated and they are literally slaves; his garment workers in Bangladesh make $60 a month!
The only Trump clothing made in the USA are his Make America Great again caps..or is it?
"The AP review included a microscopic analysis of five hats bought from Trump's campaign website, which showed the fabric in one was of a different type than that made by the supplier the manufacturer told the AP provides all his hat fabric.
In addition to the fabric analysis, two of the manufacturer's employees, including a top sales agent, said the hats' fabric, bills and stiffeners were imported.
Federal law requires that items labeled "Made in USA" be made from materials "all or virtually all" from the United States."
And both worked to expel those with brown skin, Jackson as an Injun fighter, Trump as the man who promised to deport 11 million immigrants who have been denied legal status, including their 5 million US citizen children.
I will briefly flesh out these parallels.
Indiancountrymedianetwork.com reports of Jackson:
"A man nicknamed "Indian killer" and "Sharp Knife" surely deserves the top spot on a list of worst U.S. Presidents. Andrew Jackson "was a forceful proponent of Indian removal," according to PBS. Others have a less genteel way of describing the seventh president of the United States.
"Andrew Jackson was a wealthy slave owner and infamous Indian killer, gaining the nickname 'Sharp Knife' from the Cherokee," writes Amargi on the website Unsettling America: Decolonization in Theory & Practice. "He was also the founder of the Democratic Party, demonstrating that genocide against indigenous people is a nonpartisan issue. His first effort at Indian fighting was waging a war against the Creeks. President Jefferson had appointed him to appropriate Creek and Cherokee lands. In his brutal military campaigns against Indians, Andrew Jackson recommended that troops systematically kill Indian women and children after massacres in order to complete the extermination. The Creeks lost 23 million acres of land in southern Georgia and central Alabama, paving the way for cotton plantation slavery. His frontier warfare and subsequent 'negotiations' opened up much of the southeast U.S. to settler colonialism."
There is nothing like having a mass murderer of women and children as your hero!
Jackson's efforts to get rid of native Americans is matched by Trump's vow to deport 11 million who at the time of Jackson's genocide, had ancestors who lived in the land they are to be deported from. Of the 3.5 million households led by those denied legal protections, with 2/3 having lived and worked here for over 10 years, there are 5 million children who are US citizens. Trump never explained what would happen to these children or how he could force 5 million children to be removed from their homes. And what would happen to the homes and businesses owned by those deported. Would they be sold off at firesale prices as the property of US citizens of Japanese descent were during WWII?
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