You want to find me a head of state that wasn’t or isn’t?
Perfection is the enemy of good.
Perhaps, and I didn’t get a philosophy degree so take this with a grain of salt, but slavery and child rape seem to be even greater enemies of good.
And in what way are America’s presidents unique in these atrocities among world leaders of their era? Other than “America Bad” is trendy right now?
Don’t recall saying that child rape or slavery are unique to anyone, just that they are a worse affront to “good” than “perfection”. I’m against them in all their manifestations. Don’t really care who specifically tbh.
But I’d also go so far as to say that just because “America bad” is trendy, doesn’t mean these child raping slavers are being unfairly targeted. Cuz you know, they did have slaves and diddled kids.
And we’re paying special attention to American slave owning child diddlers who have been dead for 200 years and not British or Canadian or French or German or Russian slave owning child diddlers who have been dead for 200 years because…?
Because settlers are always more evil
We as in me? Didn’t think I was. Even specified that I didn’t care about the specific “who”.
We as in the royal we? I reckon because the post was making a point about not romanticizing past presidents in the face of our current super awful kiddy diddler and you took offense to the specificity?
OP is probably an American, it’s that simple.
Be the change you want to see. Post memes about past politicians from other countries. I will upvote them.
They do genocide and colonialism and slavery and they are settlers
Ok, historically some political leaders felt that raping all brides before their wedding night was a great honor bestowed upon the family. Egyptian royalty had slaves, family members and pets murdered or buried alive with them when they died.
Human history is full of it’s leaders doing shitty and horrendous things… We can either sit here and microanalyze whatever country or set of leaders we want to single out or just recognize that historically everybody in power was a piece of shit, and look for ways to do better and make our leaders do better.
Does anyone here think that the United States and the world is better off with Donald Trump in power as opposed to Kamala Harris? If your answer to that question is " but Kamala supported Israel too hard"… Then my original comment about perfection and goodness is for you.
Lol, omfg, Lemmy is nuts sometimes.
No, I dont think we are better off with the known child rapist Donald Trump. I actually also think it’s quite unlikely that Kamala has raped children or owned slaves.
But I do stand by my claim that child rape and slavery are worse enemies of good than “perfection”. And if your response to that is “child rape is still a relative concept”, then I’m sorry to say you can piss up a rope.
I voted for harm reduction like a sensible person, now can I please be offended over children getting raped or do I need to pass another purity test?
Perfection is the enemy of the good. I don’t know why you are obsessed with child rape…
Well, it was literally mentioned in the post. Unlike… Kamala and Israel.
And you responded to my comment regarding it with random facts trying to soften how terrible it is, historically speaking.
So if we are talking obsessive behavior… Not sure it’s mine that qualifies.
My comment was responding to another comment (which referred to heads of state). I wasn’t responding to the original post. You then responded to my comment which was a sub comment to the post that I guess you really wanted to respond to…Try to keep up.
Not pictured: the giant, shitty looking pile of rubble under them.
They just blasted chunks off the mountain and left the mess behind
Also not pictured: that the mountain is a spiritual site for the local tribes.
My wife and I found ourselves near Mt. Rushmore by happenstance durin a road trip several years back. We knew the history, but stopped in to see it for ourselves. We found it to be extremely shitty and underwhelming. The natural area behind the monument was incredible, and I absolutely understand why the indigenous people believed this place to be sacred, but the front was small, tacky, and depressing. I wish I could refund our admission and give it to some chill natives at a gas station instead.
You have to pay to be allowed to look at it?
Internet says there’s no admission, so I must have misremembered that part. We did look around the gift shop a bit.
Sadly I wouldn’t have put it past the US.
But yeah gift shops and stuff around it is the tourist norm.
Wait Abe too? Damn
The Republican Party was predicated on continuous western expansion. It was the successor to the Free Soil Party in the west and what was left of the Whigs in the East.
That necessarily meant seizing more land from American Natives and distributing it to Settlers. Much of the Union Army, before and after the Civil War, was focused on decimating the Native population and securing new tracks of free land for settlers. Lincoln inherited that mandate when he took office and pursued it as zealously as any Republican before or since.
Jimmy Carter
He oversaw East Timor
deleted by creator
JIMMY CARTER: “Well, as you may know, I had a policy when I was president of not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world, and some of our allies were very irate about this policy. And I have to say that I was not, you know, as thoroughly briefed about what was going on in East Timor as I should have been. I was more concerned about other parts of the world then.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide
That sounds like a completely believable explanation to me. I can completely believe that that the military advisors didn’t give him the full picture of what was happening there.
Of course, the classic “don’t ask, don’t tell” of the national security state. The careerists don’t want oversight and the president wants plausible deniability so they’re left to just do whatever tf they want with no democratic accountability whatsoever.
deleted by creator
And that in itself is a reason why the intelligence community cannot be allowed to exist in its current form.
deleted by creator
From the article you linked.
The CIA, in the spring of 1977 and into 1978, told the Carter administration that Indonesia was literally running out of weapons, running out of bullets and bombs, because of the intensity of its bombardment of East Timor, and that the Suharto regime was requesting a doubling of military assistance so it could more effectively prosecute that war. And in 1978, the Carter administration actually increased military sales to Indonesia, including the provision of ground attack fighters, such as OV-10 Broncos, A-4 and F-5 ground attack fighters, which the administration knew would be used to bomb and attack the defenseless civilian population of East Timor.
What’s more, let’s pretend to be the most gullible person in the world, totally unaware of how the US has historically operated, and take Carter at his word. Was anyone prosecuted for lying to the president? Was anyone court martialed, did anyone in the CIA, State Department, or Department of Defense face any sort of legal repercussions? No?
Then I guess the US must have been pretty satisfied with the outcome, to not make any provisions to ensure it wouldn’t happen again or even punish those who led to it. And of course they were, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman must have made a literal killing.
deleted by creator
Ah, so you’re not actually interested in learning, but in sealioning.
That’s cool, I’ve been around democrats before.
deleted by creator
-
You don’t have to treat it as a source, that’s why they link to sources. Being posted by NBC or NYT makes no difference to the validity of the sources. Learn to fucking read.
-
Kissinger worked for Carter. Did he get executed? Did he get jailed? Oh, he got even more influence? Then Carter is guilty for approving.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
-
Please keep your mouth shut about politics (and frankly everything else) if you are an adult and still this ignorant
deleted by creator
I’m sure you’d have more fun on the Daily Stormer or 4chan as you clearly feel the right to talk about things you are ignorant of. Keep your mouth shut about things you don’t know about.
deleted by creator
I get you must feel some embarrassment from not knowing about Carter’s involvement but digging yourself a deeper hole doesn’t seem, to me, to be the best solution because you just make yourself look worse. You could just accept that you should stay quite about things you are ignorant of, because not a sole wishes to hear your voice drone on about them.
deleted by creator
You know it doesn’t take much to use the internet to be educated, right? It practically does the work for you now…
Jimmy Carter’s administration faced significant criticism for its handling of the East Timor situation during Indonesia’s occupation. Despite Carter’s reputation as a champion of human rights, his presidency saw a continuation and even expansion of military support to Indonesia while it committed atrocities in East Timor[1][2].
In 1977-1978, as Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction of East Timor through massive bombardment and forced relocation of populations, the Carter Administration increased the flow of military equipment to Indonesia[1]. This included supplying OV-10 Broncos, planes designed for counterinsurgency operations, which were used in ferocious attacks that devastated East Timor[1][2].
The administration’s response to the crisis was particularly troubling:
-
U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, misled Congress about the situation in East Timor, downplaying the severity of the conflict[2].
-
When the CIA reported that Indonesia was running out of weapons due to the intensity of its bombardment, the Carter administration responded by increasing military sales to Indonesia in 1978[2].
-
The administration provided ground attack fighters like OV-10 Broncos, A-4s, and F-5s, knowing they would be used against East Timor’s civilian population[2].
Carter later expressed regret for his lack of intervention, admitting in a 2007 interview that he was not as thoroughly briefed about the situation in East Timor as he should have been[2]. However, this does not negate the fact that his administration’s policies contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of East Timorese during his years in office[1][3].
Citations: [1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/jimmy-carter-the-false-savoir/ [2] https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide [3] https://inthesetimes.com/article/jimmy-carter-foreign-policy-palestine-legacy [4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/1/10/historians-say-jimmy-carters-human-rights-legacy-includes-grim-failures [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Jimmy_Carter_administration [6] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/indonesia/2019-08-28/us-sought-preserve-close-ties-indonesian-military-it-terrorized-east-timor-runup-1999-independence [7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/08/12/carter-assails-indonesia-over-east-timor-security/b128a1a8-b856-404c-a84a-2202332e6fb5/ [8] https://sporastudios.org/mark/epluribusunum/carter.htm
-
Teddy Roosevelt never said “The only good indian is a dead indian.” That quote is typically associated with Philip Sheridan.
A number of sources claim a similar quote (“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are…") alleged to be from an 1886 speech in New York, but this still goes against how he treated native americans generally and I can’t find the original speech so I’m a bit suspicious of this as well.
Just a little reminder that governments have killed more people than any other entity and it isn’t even close. You could try to point at religion - and that history is also fucked - but even if you exclude “holy wars” waged by religious government leaders, religious killing still doesn’t add up to what has been done by governments where religion wasn’t really a factor. The proletariat must not be disarmed. You might trust your current government, but give it a generation (or even an election) and things could be very different.
I wouldn’t call that a particularly insightful observation. Ever since humanity settled down in agricultural societies there have been governments, and with governments come a monopoly on force, so obviously governments have killed more people than anything else. Any organisation of humans is gonna have at least some threat of lethal force backing it.
I wouldn’t call that a particularly insightful observation.
I would even say it’s incredibly trivial. But even making such observations points to the fact that such person is somehow treating that as apparently undesirable, wanting what, going back to hunting-gathering?
What a weird, self defeating line of thought. Yes, wielding the collective power of a larger group of people will do more damage. Was anyone under the impression that a loose tribe of 30 dudes could physically accomplish the same feats as 30 million?
Seems like a good time to link the list of US atrocities
Okay, fella - take a few breaths and relax. People are products of their times. The better ones fight for virtues and values they see as better at the time. They see an opportunity others do not and rally people around those.
Others they don’t see and continue wi5h those norms, or they see the wrongs but don’t believe they can rally people around fixing them.
Do not demonize people in the past who do not meet current norms. There will never be anybody who will meet those standards.
Judge them against the standards of their peers.
What if MLK did not support feminists? Would he now be considered scum, thus negating everything good he ever did?
Heck, i don’t know if he had a stance on women’s rights explicitly. Maybe he didn’t. Is he evil if he didn’t?
What if MLK did not support feminists? Would he now be considered scum, thus negating everything good he ever did?
he literally addressed the national organization for women in 1966 and espoused their ideals.
giving a pass to the people from history is problematic because the same ideals of progressiveness that we pride ourselves on today were present in the past and people knew that it existed; they simply weren’t as popular back then as they are now and anyone espousing them back then were treated like tankies of their own time.
giving them a pass only helps to excuse regressivism and anti-progressive sentiment like both the republicans and democrats (respectively) practice today; this is a key reason why we have trump as president today and probably jd vance tomorrow.
Excellent job taking what I wrote and reframing it to make it appear i asserted something I did not.
Reading the room, I can see this forum is filled with people who have an axe to grind and have already decided I am a “part of the problem” because I had the audacity to suggest that we should not demonize the American founders.
Good luck finding a nation that has any redeeming qualities, given that no founders are unimpeachable for anything.
you’re missing the point and no nation’s founder’s character is unassailable.
we give grand canyon sized passes to these specific founders to white wash their truly horrific behaviors (that we know about); but don’t do the same thing for founders that we consider our enemies and that’s indicative of the propaganda that we keep perpetuating when we repeat this whitewashing to each other; as well as the reason why we’re descending into fascism.
no one is immune to propaganda so, yes, you are part of the problem like i am; the only difference is that me along with most of the people commenting on this post are aware of this specific propaganda and you’re not; hopefully unwittingly so.
I find it ironic that you think I am unaware of some propaganda, presumably related to this thread.
I learned about the imperfect personalities of our founders and their peers in elementary school. No passes were given. I also learned that many of the founders sought to explicitly outlaw slavery, but compromised in order to get unity vs. king Charles and a viable nation.
Had they not done that, we would have been divided against an overwhelmingly powerful existential threat and probably would have lost. It is an example of making incremental progress and postponing a conflict until later so that there will be a later.
You are missing my point. “Canceling” historical figures or rewriting history because “bad” is a disservice to everyone. Acknowledging both the good and bad is the better approach. We learn by studying history, identifying the failures and successes precisely to learn from them and hopefully do better.
Our current president is an example of what happens when we don’t learn from history. I don’t know any reasonable person who whitewashed our founders. For those people, you need to look at movements that seek authoritarian control over a population, the people who follow them, and their victims who were denied the necessary education in history and critical thinking.
Additionally, I think most on this thread need to brush up on logical fallacies. Even the best of us forget some of them, but it is endemic in these forums.
your point misses THE point; nothing is being cancelled; and incrementalism only serves to perpetuate our unjust society.
the way you describe authoritarian movements and mass genociders as “imperfect personalities” is an unironic and unaware manifestation of the our blessed homeland meme
you advocate for critical thinking and learning from history without acknowledging that your own country is an authoritarian oligarchical regime that denies its victims the necessary education that would teach the history and critical thinking they need and it has lead the election of an openly authoritarian president who seeks control; as all presidents in the past have done; and it will lead to more.
i don’t know what your education is like, so i don’t know what you learned in elementary school about these founder’s crimes against humanity; but if it’s anything like how most american voters’ education of these men, it’s seriously lacking on this topic.
There were plenty of peers, even UK and European ones, that opposed the US colonial project. Read Losurdo - Liberalism, a counter-history if you want an in-depth look at the debates of the time.
People are products of their times.
You hear this a lot, but then you and look at “the times” and find arguments in favor of cultural integration dating back thousand of years.
It is true that people are the products of their time, but those times are not as radically distant moral wise as it is usually assumed.
Product of the times isn’t a great way to put it, but you can certainly make the argument that most people have shades of grey morality.
Science can back you up, too, as I teach social psychology and when you dig in, you find that normative human nature is pretty complex but generally very supportive for in-group and mildly empathetic even with strangers. It’s only when you dehumanize a group do you get the worst behavior, and in all four cases you see that, be it slaves or indigenous people.
When you look at those times, it’s people who recognized their humanity that ended up in the just side of history.
Lots of “what-ifs” to dismiss people highlighting historical genocidal slavers.
Do not demonize people in the past who do not meet current norms. There will never be anybody who will meet those standards.
“Nazis were just a product of their time!”
So you believe the entirety of the United States’ existence is an affront to humanity as it’s very foundation is as evil as Nazism, right? Nothing America ever stood for was any better rhan thw worst of humanity.
It is telling that you can so lightly equate my comment to waving off Nazism as if across the developed world Nazism was the norm of the time. Yes, most peoples in the European culture were naturally Nazis, and only a few morally sound people were against it. I see your troll… And I set your straw man on fire.
So you believe the entirety of the United States’ existence is an affront to humanity as it’s very foundation is as evil as Nazism, right?
considering that
- it was founded on genocide
- it was built by slavery
- it still has not completely outlawed slavery
- lebensraum was explicitly based on manifest destiny
- it has killed far more people than the nazis ever managed
yes, the usa is an affront to humanity and is on par with the third reich
Okay. There were staunch abolitionists across the US and especially in the UK. Many of whom were operating on the basis of equality, i.e. not the American belief that black people are a subspecies that were sent from heaven to serve whites, like all the leaders of the US though before the 1900s.
So by your own method, Washington was a disgusting human being, one would argue a demon.
Really? You think because people existed who held our view of what is right means all who did not have an epiphany, and whole-heartedly agree, are horrible subhuman beings?
That humans are human?
Yeah, I’m willing to draw the line in the sand there. Equality in the face of nobility (i.e. class vs race based discrimination) is more fair and equal than the view espoused by our founding fathers. But all caste systems have always been bad. Universally. And no matter the culture or time period with this idea, you’ll find a loud minority or a large majority of people that disagree with the caste system in place.
Because that’s how they work, a minority can only benefit, and are the only ones that need it to work, so the less stratified they are the more people are against it but are rendered powerless by the system in place.
Every human that didn’t believe in equality, and by that I just mean that all humans are human, is a bad person.
For fucks sake orangutans got their name because we as a species treated them as human at one point. If we can do that to a fucking monkey there’s no epiphany needed to do it to actual humans.
Your prose belies your ideology, which indicates said ideology depends on defining those who don’t fulfill said ideology as sub-human. So far, most responses have been attempts to indirectly assert that the idea that people who were wrong about some things cannot possibly have been right about anything (and by the way, any who think otherwise are just as horrible).
I am quite aware there is nothing i could possibly say to get anybody to address the actual issue i raised, never mind “win” a debate over it.
There are people today rightly pointing out the looting of the global South by the global North, and yet nobody in the north is volunteering to give it all back. What disgusting human beings, if they had any decency they’d give it back and ritually kill themselves
Perhaps I’m not seeing the sarcasm in this. The level of hatred one has to have for a whole population to genuinely want them all killed in disgrace reminds me of something that happened in recent history several times… hmm… what could that be? Cambodia, Serbia, Germany… hmm.
Mighty high horse there. Got a mirror? Consider using it.
That line only works when most of the global north aren’t more poor than those in the south.
Most people in the western world do want to remove the stolen wealth and return it, since they’ve never seen it either.
??? Do they really though? I rarely see the sentiment that literally all ill-gotten gains forming the foundation of their nation’s power and stability should be returned (and definitely not from people benefitting). Mostly it’s just tossing a few cultural artifacts, some meager reparations, and cutting back on some luxury like chocolate because it makes them feel bad. That’s the same as freeing a few slaves after you profit off them for your whole life (and we established that makes you a demon).
Or are you arguing about injustices in classes? If everyone being exploited by the rich agreed to dismantle that system it would be done by now. Doesn’t matter if you’re poor, you participate in the problem.
You probably just want your exploitation to be marginally less than the guys on the bottom, you don’t care about the core issue. Therefore being opposed to the compete dismantling of our current economic system is regressive and 90% of earth’s population are demons
My dude I’m dual citizen Chinese and us, stealing from the rich and building the fundamentals of society equally is kinda my jam, even if someone did fuck up and make me a us citizen by default.
The American working class, despite making far more than their peers in the global South, are usually more poor than their peers in the global South. Home ownership is a myth and favelas are banned here; you’ll not only never retire but even if you manage to get to retirement age all your money is going to go to medical care. You might have a car but you need it to live since there’s more distance between your house and the only grocery store than there is between most villages in poor countries. Hell all the wealth the US stole still has more people living near open sewage lines than any country in South America. Shit even the cops are more corrupt than those in the south but you can’t even bribe them since they’re paid so much by the rich to protect their property.
The American poor are happy to give up the wealth their country stole, because they never saw any of it.
You must hang with a pretty progressive crowd, which is exactly my point. You could pick 10 of the poorest quartile of Americans and I’d bet the house that every single one wants to redistribute that money to themselves.
They’ve probably never left their state, let alone visited another country. You don’t have to benefit from an injust system to want to perpetuate it.
Why do you think ending USAID resonates with the poor? Why would someone struggling to pay rent volunteer a huge chunk of their nation’s wealth to go halfway across the world?
61% of Americans explicitly don’t want to increase foreign aid, which is a much less controversial topic than actual reparations.
In 200 years, after theoretical major reparations, would it be unfair to call 61%+ of Americans people of their time? Or are they all demons for participating in a regressive system?
Getting back to George W., total abolition was a severe minority position at the time. Even up to the divisive start of the Civil War, estimates are well under 10% support for northern voters and functionally 0% for southerners. Add in the 18% of the population in slavery, and a random sampling would get you in the low 20% supporting total abolition.
Washington was a third generation slave owner, and by all accounts he died supporting the gradual abolition of the slavery via ending slave trade. Not exactly a paradigm of virtue but it made him a tiny bit progressive relative to most of his peers.
We can’t retroactively apply our modern moral framework just because there are a handful of historical peers who were more progressive. Save the fire and brimstone for the people that actively deserve it.
For example Mark Twain built his career around being a racist funnyman, and held genuinely regressive views for the time. He doesn’t get half as much shit because his face isn’t carved on a mountain. He literally fought in the Civil War for the slavers. Why do we care more about Washington’s dentures?
That statement does not make any sense. You need to review the concept of ‘logic’. This is another excellent example of twisting a statement to discredit the person who said it rather than addressing the concept put forth by that person.
Yeah, nobody at that time knew slavery was wrong. Well, I mean, except for all the slaves, obviously, they knew, but there was no way for them to get their perspective heard because they were cut out of the political process. Who cut them out of the process? Well, uh, well you see…
What a horrible, out of touch thing to say in response to this image and all its context
This is why I find it surprising when USAians say “This is not us.” When talking about Trump. No bro, it was always you, maybe you just weren’t paying attention.
I didn’t have a choice to be born here, and, had I had the option, I wouldn’t have defaced a Native American monument in the first place. This is on top of the fact that the US is currently trying to find ways of disowning/executing me (trans).
Quite honestly, maybe I shouldn’t be offended by being lumped in with other Americans, because maybe I’m not actually being included in these kinds of sweeping statements. However, it rubs me the wrong way when people imply that Americans as a whole are responsible for the things our government has and is doing.
Again, I didn’t ask to be born in the US. I don’t like that I’m “American”. No one asked me, please don’t lump people like me in with the others.
I mean, in so much as a single person representing a county goes. The first colonies were a mix of religious zealots, Virginian drug dealers (well, tobacco but that’s almost worse), and a little Dutch (who were quite active in slave trading at the time). Quickly got a few more from French and Spanish, too.
However, the US also includes annexed Mexican territory (which has its own mixed history of subjegation and torture) and slews of different immigrant populations (with their own mixed intentions). A section of my own family is here cause they tried for Scottish independence, although there’s a good chance they were sent here for being belligerent drunks.
That said, ain’t a single country on this earth without their fair share of bullshit. America is just a lovely mix of those assholes, honestly.
As a Native American this attitude is so grating. People outside the US really don’t seem to understand that it’s 55 different states, districts, and territories, along with dozens of sovereign tribes, all being forced to pretend to be one nation. Many of us can and do claim “this is not us” in the same way many Europeans would say the same about Viktor Orban.
I can’t and don’t want to argue with your point, however in the faceless internet space unless you specify you speak from the name of a specific subgroup, the blanket ‘American’ is implied. It’s not a lack of understanding, it’s a lack of context.
Contrary to that Europe doesn’t have one cohesive identity, your example of Orban is multiple country borders removed from me personally. I don’t have the power to vote for/against him or influence that country in any way, where that’s different in your case.
Yeah, uh, last I checked American territories don’t have the ability to vote in federal elections. Someone from Puerto Rico can’t vote for the US president despite being governed by the US. It’s one of many bullshit systems designed to keep the GOP-Democrat right-wing ratchet going.
Contrary to that Europe doesn’t have one cohesive identity, your example of Orban is multiple country borders removed from me personally.
Orban would probably be best compared to a state governor. Just a reminder that Texas is literally larger than the largest EU country with some space leftover for a city-state or two.
The idea that the US has a cohesive identity is just… unbelievably ignorant. I’m actually amazed that you believe that considering that no one in their right mind would say the same thing about places like Africa, Europe, or South America.
I’m not sure why you would reply if you didn’t want to argue but okay.
Thinking that individual European countries have local identities and states or others don’t is absolutely a lack of understanding and not a lack of context.
That you seem to think that everyone in the US has the power to vote for or against the president would also seem to be a lack of understanding, I chose the leader of a specific country in Europe as my example for that reason.
If you don’t have the power to vote for the president, you don’t live in a democracy.
Precisely…
Thinking that individual European countries have local identities and states or others don’t is absolutely a lack of understanding and not a lack of context.
That’s not at all what I said. It’s in fact the opposite and because of that I said I can’t argue with most of your previous points.
On your latter point, I do lack some understanding on the native reservations, but as far as I know they’re still under the governance of the US to some extent. My assumption was they can at least participate in the ‘democracy’ which affects them immensely. It’s very sad that’s not the case…
I am a little confused then as you seemed to me to be implying that American as a cultural identity precludes Oklahoman as a for instance but that European would not preclude Scottish as a for instance.
It wasn’t until 1965 that the right of non white citizens to vote was protected and it has been a constant fight since. Currently the administration is arguing that Native Americans arent citizens at all.
In the mean time it’s probably worth pointing out that nobody’s vote for president really counts for anything because of the electoral college. On top of that many of us, including myself, live in ‘winner take all’ states where the person with a plurality or majority of popular votes is awarded all of the electoral votes of that state.
In my lifetime there have been 9 presidential elections; 5 have been won by Democrats, with all 5 also winning the national popular vote. 4 have been Republicans, however only two of those elections were won by the candidate who won the popular vote.
Ah, but your regressive and racist system built by rascist white guys 250 years ago entrenches the power of regressive and racist white guys. Therefore you are a bad person.
Let’s ignore the fact that every single poll shows more Americans favoring progressive policies. Let’s ignore the systemic disenfranchisement of everyone who’s not a rich white man (and their candidates still lose the popular vote every time). Any random person in San Diego is the exact same as someone living 1600 miles away in Omaha.
Why don’t we apply the same revulsion to, idk, Belgians? King Leopold II directly killed ~10 million people in his own private colony. Doing that 116 years ago is better than George Washington freeing his last 123 slaves when he died 228 years ago?
States, districts, territories are not the same as different countries. Viktor Orban is not an European leader same as Jagmeet Singh is not an American leader.
My distinctions are real, yours are just lines on a map
Typical American answer all Europeans are the same while America supposedly changes every any arbitrary distance.
“Why don’t Americans just march on DC and take their country back??”
If I lived in Lisbon, Portugal, Moscow would be the equivalent distance of how far away DC is from me.
As a European, I think it’s because of all the “land of the free”, “we’re #1”, “the american dream” and “the american melting pot” bullshit.
Whatever that means when looking at history. It was only as an adult that I found out america is the villain.
Agree. I think it’s the very convenient "All of us USA #1* when it’s propaganda, but “oh it’s the BAD Americans, not us” whenever push comes to shove.
In California I don’t think I even see these so called USA #1. Maybe “I love LA” but that’s mostly cause it the fires. Pretty sure the consensus here is that Finland or Sweden or some other northern European country are #1 because they actually have socialist programs, like parental leave and real healthcare and education.
Every single democracy in Europe is younger than America’s by an order of magnitude. Most have gone through 2 or 3 forms of government since it was founded. You have the luxury of not “being the villains” because your governments haven’t been around long enough to have nasty shit stick to them. They were all emphatically on board with doing vile stuff to stop the communist boogeyman, they just let America’s guns to do it.
The American exceptionalism narrative was born out of WWII, because they really were the “best” industrialized country by virtue of not being a smoking crater. Every state that has reached or is on the path to being a modern nation has blood on their hands, America just hasn’t had the chance to symbolically wash them.
Me sowing: Hell yeah this is great
Me reaping: This is not us. What a somber moment in world history 😔
William Henry Harrison should have ate it at Tippecanoe but at least he corrected his misstep during his first month in office
Yeah, but that resulted in John Tyler who was a pro-slavery democrat in all but name. Can’t really win.
It’s easy to pick on “the levels of bad”, when you’re not the one one enslaved in a priaon, but writing behind a screen.
@Confidant6198 That’s why I like to call them the Genocidal Regimes of America.
Not to mention defacing a mountain by putting a bunch of faces on it
It’s [not] funny actually - Trump would absolutely come up with this idea for himself while alive, had it not been done before.
Since it has been done, now he’s going to want a bigger mountain face.Not just a mountain. A mountain holy for native americans
It’s a lot more holey now
Defaced then refaced
303 natives were convicted and sentenced to death following the Dakota War of 1862. Lincoln actually commuted the sentences of 264 of those natives, allowing the convictions to stand only for those he believed personally engaged in the murder of innocent women and children.
Therefore, the last one is deliberately and intentionally misleading.
The Dakota War came out of a strategic starvation campaign imposed by the Union Army over Sioux Territory. The original tribes had been forced off the productive soil around the Minnesota River and displaced into barren wasteland. Subsequent crop failure and long winter made trading for foodstuffs from their home territories the only means of survival. And the settlers took maximum advantage, deliberately scamming and price gouging the Sioux for the remains of their family wealth. This, after a series of treaties had been casually violated from administration to administration.
The war was quite literally a fight for survival by the Sioux. Lincoln’s largess in hanging only the young men directly involved in the raid did nothing to prevent the Sioux population from continuing its rapid decline, as the surviving elders were left to starve to death in the wilderness and the children were forced into Christian schools notorious for brutalizing and killing the kidnapped youths.
OK, but america had already been established. You have to ask who were the groups that pushed those policies. AoC is part of the machine that invades countries doesn’t mean she advocates for it.
Something stuck out to me in your response and that’s the religious aspect of the oppression.
He didn’t kill ALL the innocent, whose land he stole and whose relatives he murdered. Only those that dated fight back.
Yeah, sounds like Trump.
removed by mod
No, they were, very much. Europeans were invaders, taking land that didn’t belong to them by force. The government explicitly encouraged murder and turned a blind eye to any abuses. If you don’t want people to defend their land and avenge the love domes you murder, maybe don’t invade and ethnically cleanse the are to begin with?
Do you also think Russia v. Ukraine or Israel’s genocide don’t have “evil” vs “good” sides?
Because if you’re invading and murdering innocent people, its a clear cut for most people.
It tirns out murdering people for their food, goods, and horses is something the government did not want to encourage
unless you’re a settler, then it’s called “manifest destiny”
The settlers have always been 100% evil
Bro he literally freed the slaves.
and hitler was a pretty good painter …
I’m sorry, did you just compare painting TO ENDING SLAVERY*
*some exclusions apply
That’s objectively false. His line work was shit and this meme is inaccurate.
When has art ever been objective?
True, he was a horrible painter. I’ve seen better paintings from Alex Jones
Decent architect trying to be a painter
They still have slaves. They are just in prison. That’s my point.
the constitution even condones it. Fucked. Prisoners get paid like 70c an hour or some shit.
That’s still far from as bad.
Oh okay. I didn’t realize “a little” slavery is okay. As a treat if your white I guess.
What. Are you genuinely fucking with me or do you think enslaving a third of the population is the same level of bad as prison labor.
Do you straight up think there’s no difference between before and after the civil war.
No, I don’t think any slavery is okay at all. Do you?
Instead of actually working towards something better, let’s just spend our time arguing over things we can’t change. /S
You’re a fucking deluded moron. Educate yourself, form a realistic opinion and come back.
That’s four of them. I rather think Carter was a good human being, regardless of whether or not you think he was a good president.
Read “The Jakarta Method”
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
I can’t really agree with that given how he treated Cambodia and supported the Khmer Rouge, as well as other crimes against humanity in the name of “opposing Communism.”
Yeah but if you ignore some of the most heinous atrocities ever perpetrated he’s a nice guy
George W. Bush’s treatment by the media in recent years in a nutshell. Thank goodness for Blowback reminding people of his atrocities.
It’s sad how lacking of recent historical context people have. They always point to Carter and it’s like… frustrating.
Absolutely, the media machine does a great job of “cleansing the records” on US figures.
The truth is that they want to see non-white people killed. They support Carter because he supported groups like the Khmer Rouge and they killed Vietnamese people. It’s just racism at its core
