President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I've admitted as much.

I'm still not shedding tears for Nazi trolls.

 

I feel no need to defend Andrew Jackson. He's a part of our history, both the good and the bad parts of him, and so I have an interest in his life.

I don't expect someone born before the American Revolution to hold the same beliefs about race as I do today.

I also didn't hold him up for admiration for over 100 years, as the Democratic Party did.

To try and equate any admiration Trump expressed for his toughness or leadership, to admiration for his beliefs on race is absurd.

 

Correct. The limited federal government, states-rights conservatives of the Democratic Party held Andrew Jackson in high esteem for more than a century.

Which party today would you say holds more closely to the political beliefs of Andrew Jackson and the Democratic Party of the 19th century?

 

Right and wrong is not hard. Even before the Civil War, many, many people understood that owning and often raping or mutilating other humans was wrong. As was stealing land from the rightful owners and sending them off to die.

People haven't changed that much that these are "aha" moments.

 

Good God. All this debating about Jackson -- especially the "who today is most like him?" -- is so much teleological nonsense, leavened with a good deal of grade-school history. There were admirable elements of his character and there were detestable elements as well. Going much beyond that for mere amateurs -- e.g., everyone here -- is a fool's errand.

 

OK. Let's agree on all of this.

So, why was he held in such high esteem by Democrats for over 100 years, and well into the 21st century?

 

We stopped loving him because we now realize he could have stopped the Civil War even when he was dead.

 

Because he's on the $20 bill. Duh.

 

Personally, I find Jackson fascinating.

I also find Trump's election fascinating.

That word doesn't always have to carry a positive connotation.

 

Almost 100 years after his death:

In 1940, at the annual Jackson Day dinner, Roosevelt paid tribute to a “great man”: not “Jackson the Democrat,” he said, “but Jackson the American, who did the big job of his day — to save the economic democracy of the Union for its westward expansion into a great nation, strengthened in the ideals and practice of popular Government.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/us/politics/trump-andrew-jackson-grave.html

 

He was badass. No doubt.

 

I know my timeline is right because I wrote about heated intra-party discussions to rename the dinner in my local community at a newspaper I worked at in 2004. The movement picked up a lot more steam after the 2015 Charleston shootings when many people were finally persuaded that honoring symbols of the old South was no longer acceptable in modern society.

He's an integral part of the Democrats history. That's not something they should shy away from, but it also doesn't mean they're locked into perpetually honoring him. Partisan views shift over time, especially a century and a half. He has as much in common with the modern Democratic Party as Abe Lincoln does with the Republican Party.