Monday, May 1, 2017
Mothers! Don't let your children grow up to be stupid like Trump!
More proof that this sad excuse for a POTUS doesn't know much, maybe nothing, about the history of the great country he leads.
What an example he is to American students of all ages. He's shown them that as POTUS, you can b.s. your way through the presidency and think no one will notice. He's devalued education by pretending he knows American history, when in fact all he knows is b.s.
What an embarrassment!
From USA Today:
In audio posted on Monday, President Trump said Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, was "really angry" about what was happening with the Civil War."
There's one major problem with that statement: Jackson died in 1845, nearly 16 years before the Civil War began.
Let's dissect the full quote, sentence by sentence:
"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little bit later, you wouldn't have had the Civil War." (This is in the vein of imagining various alternate histories of the United States.)
"He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart." (Jackson was known for his temper and his loyalty to his friends, so this is OK.)
"He was really angry that-- he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War."
( Jackson did not, because Jackson was dead.)
Trump admires Andrew Jackson, whom historians have called "an atrocious saint." He admires a man he knows next to nothing about and is too lazy to read about. He shot off his mouth and revealed to America and the world how astoundingly ignorant he is.
Welcome to Trumplandia where b.s.ing is the Holy Grail of Trumpism.
Here's Josh Marshall from TPM:
"I see this morning President Trump isn’t sure why the Civil War happened. In line with your standard Trumpian militant ignorance, he assumes that since he isn’t sure what happened that “people” aren’t sure either.
In fact, they haven’t even asked the question. “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
As I’ve noted, President Trump is not only wildly ignorant. But, utterly unaware of the scope of his ignorance, he assumes everyone else is as ignorant as he is and frequently preens with new learnings that either everyone knew or in other cases are just completely wrong."
David Blight, Yale University historian:
Well, I just read these postings? So he really said this about Jackson and the Civil War?
All I can say to you is that from day one I have believed that Donald Trump's greatest threat to our society and to our democracy is not necessarily his authoritarianism, but his essential ignorance—of history, of policy, of political process, of the Constitution. Saying that if Jackson had been around we might not have had the Civil War is like saying that one strong, aggressive leader can shape, prevent, move history however he wishes. This is simply 5th grade understanding of history or worse. And this comes from the President of the United States!
Under normal circumstances if a real estate tycoon weighed in on the nature of American history from such ignorance and twisted understanding we would simply ignore or laugh at him. But since this man lives in the historic White House and wields the constitutional powers of the presidency and the commander in chief we have to pay attention. Trump's "learning" of American history must have stopped even before the 5th grade. I wish I could say this is funny and not deeply disturbing. My profession should petition the President to take a one or two month leave of absence, VP Pence steps in for that interim, and Trump goes on a retreat in one of his resorts for forced re-education. It could be a new tradition called the presidential education leave. Or perhaps in New Deal tradition, an "ignorance relief" period. This alone might gain the United States again some confidence and respect around the world.
Trump needs to memorize this wise aphorism:
"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
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14 comments:
There’s a special kind of irony in Trump saying that Jackson — a slave owner — might have stopped the Civil War had he lived longer. As president, Jackson ordered the Post Office to block the distribution of abolitionist pamphlets in the South. When I spoke to J.M. Opal, a historian and author of a new and well-reviewed history of Jackson’s influence on America, he told me that Jackson was “the first president to have no qualms whatsoever about slavery.” In essence, Trump is claiming that an avowed pro-slavery president would have somehow stopped a war caused by growing opposition to owning human beings.
Trump is a special kind of moron, a moron who was elevated to the highest honor in America by millions of other morons, but not by a majority of Americans, only the dumbasses. A majority of Americans rejected the Supreme Moron.
Trump is obviously not well educated or intelligent. Sadly, many of his followers aren't either.
"He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart."
------
Just ask the Cherokees.
Ducky, Andrew Jackson was a mess and a mass of contradictions. He had a horrid temper, was easily riled up, and did not respect the U.S. Constitution. He absolutely was responsible for genocide of the Cherokee nation, and he was the owner of 100 slaves.
His father died before he was born, and his mother and a brother died of illness during the Revolution, and he lost his other brother to heat exhaustion while he fought in the Revolution. He became an orphan at a young age and made his "bones" as a military leader in the War of 1812 -- he had no education or training as a military commander, yet he won one of America's greatest victories against the British in the Battle of New Orleans. He was fiercely loyal to his Rachel, who died before he was sworn in as president, and he never forgave the people who gossiped and denigrated her as a jezebel (she ran away with Jackson while she was still married to her first husband, and she married Jackson after her husband divorced her -- the first divorce granted in Tennessee). She was reviled, unfairly, as a tainted woman all her life because of her love and loyalty to Jackson. Very sad story. Jackson never got over her death.
I actually enjoyed reading Jon Meacham's bio of Jackson, a fascinating, horrid, and compelling man. One historian called him an "atrocious saint."
BlueBull, Trump's supporters are willfully blind to his incompetence.
Here you are! Now I have you on my roll.
When people were making comparisons to Jackson, those people, of course, were talking about the sort of 'anger on the streets,' social tensions of the times, and the political ramifications, one of which was Jackson himself. The comparison is, of course, a little hyperbolic. Jacksonian America (which is what the analogy really was) was embroiled in riots and anarchic expansion and major internal and external conflicts that make today's look very petty. And Jackson was a lot of things, but I can think of very few that remind me in the least of Trump.
Nice to find you. I finally have some more time for these things. And sure enough - there's "BlueBull" - who I was looking for forever!
And Ducky - do you have a blog???
JMJ
I hope I posted! I didn't know you had moderation. I can't blame you. I read your little blogger bio, and you are like the bane of all conservative men, so in your case, I can see why.
JMJ
Glad to see you here, JMJ. I've put you on my blogroll as well and look forward to reading more of your posts.
I find Trump's embrace of Jackson peculiar. He was the founder of the Democratic Party and the first non-elite president, all the presidents before him were from the upper classes, what we Bostonians would call Brahmins. Jackson was the people's president, and his inaugural reception at the White House was literally a riot, a drunken riot.
Trump embraces Jackson and not, say, Lincoln, the founder of the Republican Party. Trump continues to be a puzzlement.
Trump is probably expecting Frederick Douglass to issue a statement supporting him any minute now.
Seriously, all that's happening here is that Trump has heard a couple of things about Jackson that remind him of himself, so from time to time he makes admiring remarks about Jackson. The specific content of those remarks is just random. He could just as well have said we would have won World War II faster if Jackson had been in charge, or that Jackson could have beaten anybody in the world at golf.
"what was happening with regard to the Civil War" -- who talks like that? "People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War?" Yes, nobody has ever previously considered the issue of why the Civil War happened. He's as ignorant about the Civil War as about everything else.
Such cluelessness seems to be endemic on the right wing. Remember Bill O'Reilly and the tides? Being unaware of things is like a tribal identifier with them.
BBC surveys some historians
President Drumpf (B.A Grifting, Trump University) points out that the liberal media has moved from fake news to fake history. So unfair.
Anyone think he's read a book in the lat 30 years?
In other news it appears that President Happy Hands got rolled by the new budget.
Not the cuts he wants, Planned Parenthood stays funded, no funding for the wall.
I want to think that the rethugs have received the message from their districts that there is just so much of this crap that can be shoveled. President Happy Hands is not the way forward.
Ducky,A very large number of people (74 million Americans) saw through the sham that is Don the Con. Our archaic system of electoral votes put Don the Con in office, and now the majority in this country (including many moderates in the GOP) and the world see what America has done to itself because it was too lazy, too gullible, and too angry to vote intelligently. America voted with emotion and not intellect, and we're stuck with a grifter, liar, and fraud playing at being POTUS.
Trump makes it clear to America and the rest of the world every day that he is uniquely unfit to be POTUS, but the people who support him are determined to stay blind to his enormous incompetence and ignorance.
His two biggest promises: The repeal and replacement of the ACA and the wall have gone nowhere in his 100+ days. The Great Negotiator who knows how to how to make "the best deals" fell flat on his flabby face on the two most important promises he made to his gullible supporters.
Plus, he an ignoramus where history is concerned.
The New England States and the Pacific Coast States ought to succeed and form The New England States of America and The Pacific Coast States of America. The United States of America being the rest. Or, they could call themselves The Land Of Trumpmania.
It is becoming more doubtful we'll ever be truly united again.
Rational: I considered something like that back in November. However, there's no reason why the sane part of the US couldn't remain a single country even though it would be in several geographically-separated sections. And it's obviously our side that should keep the name "United States of America", with the original Constitution and ideals. Red America in the interior could repeal the First Amendment and have an official religion and a mass media kept in line by the threat of lawsuits, as Trump has demanded. It could call itself "The Holy Trumpanzee Republic of Godhatesfagsia" or something similarly appropriate. The division wouldn't last, of course -- over time the red states would be re-admitted to the real United States one-by-one as demographic changes brought them into line with the modern world. Maybe a few of them never would be, and we'd be left with a scattering of walled-off primitive enclaves within the country, like giant Amish reservations. To each his own.
[/tongue-in-cheek mode]
You know what's funny, Shaw? The wingnuts thinking Trump will settlel down and act dignified and stop tweeting, they really believe that if he does that, hispresidency will be a YUGE success. Those poor deluded nutbags. Trump isn't capable of acting dignified, there's isn't an ounce of dignity in his whole bloated carcass. Those poor cons think because trumps rich that makes him classy. I've seen drunks wallowing in their own vomit that have more dignity than trump. Trump's been an asshole all his life, ain't gonna change at 70 years,
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