OMG! Trump admires strongmen who murder their citizens more than anything. He's hosting Duterte in the White House. Maybe he won't have to build a wall after all. If he kills all the drug users in the US, then he won't need to worry about the cartels anymore. And he says he'd be honoured to meet with Kim Jong-Un, saying he admires the way he was able to take over from his father at such a young age. We're lucky Hitler's dead or the red carpet would have been rolled out for him too. Now there was a strong guy - wow, he took on the world and almost won ...
He also has climbed aboard Steve Bannon's Andrew Jackson bandwagon. He says that Andrew Jackson would have been able to do a deal to stop the Civil War and that Jackson was angry about what happened. Leaving aside the fact that Jackson died 15 years before the start of the war, so reports of his distaste for the war may have been greatly exaggerated, does Trump realise that the war was fought over slavery? Would Jackson, who apparently inherited 150 slaves, have made a deal short of abolition? Maybe he might have capped slave ownership at, say, 150. Then everybody would have been happy.
Of course Trump and Bannon would like to pretend that the Confederacy was all about the southern states defending state rights - they were sticking it to Washington, just like Trump says he's doing. But as with Trump's many alternative realities, you can only make that case if you ignore the facts. The Southern States were, in fact, angry that the Federal Government didn't enforce its own laws against the Northern States. There was legislation called the Fugitive Slaves Act which required States to assist slaveowners track down and recover runaway slaves. But the Northern States refused to comply. Far from defending States rights, the southern States wanted the Federal Government to use the military to enforce that Federal law. That set the scene for the Civil War. When Lincoln was elected on an anti-slavery platform, the Confederate States specifically seceded in order to maintain the right to keep slaves. They fought the war to be able to keep slaves, NOT because they were mounting a resistance to Federal power.
He also has climbed aboard Steve Bannon's Andrew Jackson bandwagon. He says that Andrew Jackson would have been able to do a deal to stop the Civil War and that Jackson was angry about what happened. Leaving aside the fact that Jackson died 15 years before the start of the war, so reports of his distaste for the war may have been greatly exaggerated, does Trump realise that the war was fought over slavery? Would Jackson, who apparently inherited 150 slaves, have made a deal short of abolition? Maybe he might have capped slave ownership at, say, 150. Then everybody would have been happy.
Of course Trump and Bannon would like to pretend that the Confederacy was all about the southern states defending state rights - they were sticking it to Washington, just like Trump says he's doing. But as with Trump's many alternative realities, you can only make that case if you ignore the facts. The Southern States were, in fact, angry that the Federal Government didn't enforce its own laws against the Northern States. There was legislation called the Fugitive Slaves Act which required States to assist slaveowners track down and recover runaway slaves. But the Northern States refused to comply. Far from defending States rights, the southern States wanted the Federal Government to use the military to enforce that Federal law. That set the scene for the Civil War. When Lincoln was elected on an anti-slavery platform, the Confederate States specifically seceded in order to maintain the right to keep slaves. They fought the war to be able to keep slaves, NOT because they were mounting a resistance to Federal power.