"[M]omentum grew among Anglos for a comprehensive plan of removal of Indian nations who cluttered the eastern side of the valley, who clung to their land, who entered alliances with European powers, got in the way of constituting new states and growing the union. Five nations in particular had to go: the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creeks, and the Seminole."
To consider the years after the 1812 War, writes Greg Grandin, in America, Am e' rica: The New History in the New World, is to understand how Anglos recognized in the indigenous a people, not worthy to be considered human. The indigenous could be "removed," or slaughtered outright.
The indigenous, different.
The same for those kidnapped and brought in slave ships to the New World to do the bidding of the Anglos in building a world fit only for the Anglo American. The one-drop rule is codified, Granlin explains, because there could no longer exist free blacks in the North voting. While in the South, "slavers wanted Indian land to stake out plantations," in Northern cities, blacks were confronting a "'belligerent white supremacism'", which saw their budding neighborhoods and churches attacked by white mobs.
The difference is racial.
In Gaza today, mothers and fathers are begging for the right of their babies and children to not starve to death before a world where the Trumps and the Netanyahus eat well. While there are bombs falling on homes, hospitals, open-air camps, the people are begging the world to see them. To not turn away from a modern-day genocide. To not send US planes with bombs and to stop calling Israel an ally worthy of the arrest and detention of protesters calling for justice for Gaza. To honor Habeas corpus. Anyone could be next.
In the meantime, Trump is encouraging billionaire investors to see what he sees: Gaza, its ruins paved over in gold. It's no accident that an American president would find it's impossible to see the Palestinians as human beings.
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