A True History of the United States: Indigenous Genocide, Racialized Slavery, Hyper-Capitalism, Militarist Imperialism and Other Overlooked Aspects of American Exceptionalism (Truth to Power)

by Daniel A. Sjursen

Trump is a standard alliance of four distinct interest groups and peoples that put Republicans in office for decades and maintained American imperialism and internal oppression long before that political party had even been founded. These are anti-taxation (usually hyper-wealthy) libertarians, foreign-policy hawks with imperial proclivities, intolerant brands of evangelical Christians, and racist xenophobes.

In reality, Trump and his supporters have simply rebranded older forms of racism, nativism, and homegrown militarism that had long been crucial links in American society.

Taken as whole and in proper context, then, Trump is an all-American president, and his promise to “Make America Great Again” is little more than a recasting of regular calls to return to the whiter, more oppressive, less equal United States of the past.

America carries the baggage of four dark historical themes. These are genocide, racism, hyper-capitalism, and empire.

English colonists and later self-branded Americans never seriously considered coequal coexistence with indigenous peoples.

For more than half of its history, Anglo-American society built itself largely on the literal and figurative backs of black slaves.