ABSTRACT
The volume’s sixth chapter introduces an American “parallel life”: “Old Hickory,” President Andrew Jackson, the first great national populist leader in the United States. Jackson proved his mettle to the American public by showing extreme hostility to indigenous nations and rebellious slaves. He rode the wave of the ordinary (white) man into power, oversaw the ethnic cleansing of American Indians, and took on American institutions such as the Electoral College and the Second Bank of the United States. Close to two centuries later, Trump’s presentation similarly resonated with a white demographic under threat-in Trump’s case, more pure decline, with an embittered non-elite white population that saw broken political and economic structures limiting its wealth, family stability, and generational mobility. But while Trump consciously borrowed from the playbook of the immensely popular Jackson, Opal reminds us that Trump remains deeply unpopular in this present political context. Critically, Trump’s populist tactics seem to be constrained by the need to sow division, not meaningful unity.
