Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead
A few years ago, I stayed in a hotel in Miami owned by a certain Donald Trump.
I did not need to guess or Google the owner. The word “Trump” was written across the entrance in massive letters. I have not seen “Richardson” in massive letters across the entrance of the Grand and Abbey Sands Hotels in Torquay.
But is the bizarre presidency of Donald Trump an aberration, or has the USA returned to type? Was it the last 80 years that were abnormal by American standards?
If we look at some of his ideas, they hark back to the USA of the past. Wanting to expand into Greenland, Panama and even Canada would not have seemed surprising in the nineteenth century. In 1845 the US annexed Texas, which was then a part of Mexico. American settlers had already moved in, claiming the land. This led to the Mexican-American War from 1846 to 1848. Following victory the US added not only Texas but several other states, including California, to their country.
He has also proposed turning Gaza into a Mediterranean Riviera and throwing out the local population. It sounds horrific, but it has occurred before on the American mainland. Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, 60,000 members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations were forcibly removed from their historic homelands on the eastern seaboard of America to the west of the Mississippi. Thousands died in what became known as the “Trail of Tears”.
This released land for the new European settlers. Despite the worthy words in the Declaration of Independence that every man is equal, this did not apply to the indigenous peoples or black slaves. In a part of the Declaration rarely quoted, the indigenous peoples are described as “merciless Indian savages”. Is there a parallel with throwing out the Palestinians from Gaza to create real estate for luxury hotels?
Trump also argues that Ukraine should pay back the costs of the US defending them from Russia. Again, this is not new. After World War II the Americans insisted that the British pay back a loan of $3.75 billion ($60.47 billion today). Despite the efforts of the most famous economist in the world, John Maynard Keynes, we were saddled with a massive debt which was not paid off until 2006.
In the 1960s, when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, despite successfully keeping Britain out of the Vietnam War, he refused to criticise the Americans. When asked why, he commented, “You do not kick your creditors in the balls,” a comment most modern politicians might not use.
The final irony is that if Donald Trump believes a country should be made to pay for their own defence, America should not have started their Revolution or the War of Independence. In 1750 North America had both French and British colonists. Between 1756 and 1763, they were at war. This was a part of a wider war which, unsurprisingly, was called the Seven Years' War.
The colonies were at risk, and so we sent a large army to protect them. The colonists were British citizens, and some of these Brits, such as George Washington, fought alongside the British Army. I am not sure what happened to this brave British officer.
After the success of the Seven Years' War, the thirteen British colonies were secure, but Britain was left with a huge debt. Parliament decided that the colonies should pay towards their own defence and so imposed taxes. This led to revolution and, eventually, American independence.
We all rewrite history, and, as a part of the American story, they argue that they escaped the tyranny of the British King, George III. By the late 18th century, the British monarch was no longer an autocratic ruler. There had been a civil war when one king had been executed and another fled after a coup in 1688. George III had far less power than Donald Trump today.
Before we all worry that the USA has not moved on from the past, we should be reassured by the quote attributed to Churchill, “Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
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