Worse than Buchanan, worse than Jackson, worse than Nixon, worse than Reagan

  • sovietknuckles [they/them]
    ·
    9 months ago

    4th most upvoted comment in a thread of 843 comments:

    Jan 6th made him the worst, say what you want about Buchanan or Jackson but at least they did their atrocities within the system they were elected to uphold.

    "Say what you want about genocides, at least they weren't Jan 6"

    • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      jesus fucking christ lmao that comment feels like it was written in some kind of laboratory as a distillation of pure liberalism

      • duderium [he/him]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Liberals only talk like this about 1/6 because they’re convinced that it will be used to stop Trump from winning the presidency. Their TDS means that stopping Trump is more important than even acknowledging the many genocides the USA has and still is perpetrating.

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]
      ·
      9 months ago

      A tacit admission that liberals construct their morality around what the state deems acceptable

      It a worldview like that, a half-hearted insurrectionist riot becomes worse than countless massacres and dispossessions

      A literal upside-down ideology

      • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]
        ·
        9 months ago

        A literal upside-down ideology

        A privilege held by those safe from the state violence that's levied against others that they carelessly protect; the moment they get a taste of this violence (and I hope they do), now they want reasonability and humanity and they start being rational. An infantile view of life is a privilege of the safe.

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      wtf

      Isn't it also not true of Andrew Jackson? He refused to enforce a supreme court ruling, famously. Lol.

    • buh [she/her]
      ·
      9 months ago

      now that I think about it Jan 6 was actually good since only chuds and cops were killed

    • VILenin [he/him]M
      ·
      9 months ago

      You can tell how reluctant they were to use the word “atrocities”. It won’t be long before even that is too much to ask for from these genocide apologist fucks

    • emizeko [they/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Jackson brazenly flouting a supreme court decision is "working within the system", apparently

    • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Say what you will about the guy who actually kicked off a Civil War, but look at these TikToks.

    • huf [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      once again, admitting that their main problem with the nazi genocides was that they were illegal...

    • blobjim [he/him]
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      edit-2
      9 months ago

      these are definitely sockpuppet accounts (at least the upvotes). Please don't assume even the average PMC labor aristocrat is like this lol. but idk maybe pmc labor aristcrat redditors are.

  • Zodiark
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    edit-2
    4 months ago

    deleted by creator

    • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
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      edit-2
      9 months ago

      The only hatred deeper than what I have for George W Bush is one that would lead me to throwing my life away to end his. I hate him even more for unlocking this degree of hate. There isn't a word in any human language for my contempt for that loathsome wretch and it's probably good that we as a species cannot conceptualize this level of hate in words. I have Ahab hatred for him and even though ill for sure outlive that despicable cur, with my last breath I will curse his name as he lays dead and that is an absolute promise.

      And I. Canadian, imagine how someone from Iraq might feel.

      • Zodiark
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        edit-2
        4 months ago

        deleted by creator

    • MF_COOM [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      You want to get a lib to say the most deranged shit possible ask them who they thought was a worse president, Bush or Trump

    • sexywheat [none/use name]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Yeah, do you want to measure how bad a president was in terms of his "decorum" or "violation of norms", or how "respectable" they were? Or number of human deaths caused by their policies?

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        9 months ago

        I mean the point is that even according to the most stupid liberal points, the one they right now whitewash was much worse than the one that is their enemy #1

    • SacredExcrement [any, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      And Bush starting two wars that tore the entire region to pieces, along with the added side effect of accelerating the existing nationalistic fervor this shithole has

      And Bush bringing the "they're jumping the border and taking our jobs" talking point forward

      And Bush signing the Patriot act

      And so many other little things and big ones

      Fuck Trump to hell and back, but he isn't even the worst president of my life lmao

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Liberals have completely forgiven Bush for the 2000 election and in fact seem to like the guy now. That's such a whiplash to me and it's proof that in 20 years liberals will have positive opinions about Trump

  • Rom [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    There were presidents who were literal slaveowners but okay

    • barrbaric [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      Also multiple who directly oversaw the deliberate genocide of the indigenous peoples of north america.

  • Egon
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    edit-2
    3 months ago

    deleted by creator

  • Wheaties [she/her]
    ·
    9 months ago

    experts who only know about the 21st century, apparently

  • yuli [she/her]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Disagree. Millions dead is nothing compared to attempting to destabilize the world's most powerful democracy. That could lead to untold global suffering. Millions would have died of covid even if he had responded well (and had not axed the pandemic response thing back in like 2018). Trump's response was bad, and he definitely had an impact, but not as much as you might think.

    xi-plz

    • BovineUniversity
      ·
      9 months ago

      Trump's response was bad, and he definitely had an impact, but not as much as you might think.

      Unironically true, millions of Americans would've died of covid under any realistic American president. There's literally no circumstance in which an American leader puts forward actually good covid policy, and in which the American people actually follow said policy.

      • Wheaties [she/her]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Yep! Between the AIDS epidemic and Covid, it's beyond question: the USA has zero capacity to respond to new plagues.

        • Bay_of_Piggies [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          9 months ago

          I think you would get more interesting answers from historians if you don't include presidents from the last like 50 years, partially to remove recency bias and partially because they're historians not political scientists or whatever. You're basically just begging them to default to the most recent bad dude. I think it's easier to make an argument that is grounded in history once a decent amount of time has passed from their regime and we can see the knock-on effects of their policies and choices.

  • JohnBrownsBussy2 [she/her, they/them]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Broke: Trump is the worst president because norms.

    Woke: Buchanan or Andrew Johnson were the worst since they betrayed their country to uphold slaver power.

    Bespoke: Jimmy Carter is the worst since the neoliberal turn and the Volcker Shock destroyed the economies of the 3rd world and set back the global movement towards liberation and socialism back by a 100 years.

    • Des [she/her, they/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      set back the global movement towards liberation and socialism back by a 100 years.

      roughly 2070s? god i hope not. i don't think we're going to make it that long into climate hell under the current system

      • nohaybanda [he/him]
        ·
        9 months ago

        Some of those years have a way of getting compressed down into weeks

    • nightshade [they/them]
      ·
      9 months ago

      I think you could make an argument for Jefferson, given how the Louisiana Purchase set the stage for a lot of the subsequent expansion and genocide. It's probably inevitable that America would expand to some degree, but it could have been slower if they didn't make the purchase, possibly resulting in a smaller and less powerful America.

      Of course, there's also the part where he owned slaves and upheld slavery.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
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        edit-2
        9 months ago

        For the normbrained libs, Jefferson also greatly expanded the power of the executive through the Louisiana Purchase and an undeclared war in the Mediterranean. Just from a "disregarding what the constitution says" perspective he was bad.

      • LeZero [he/him]
        ·
        9 months ago
        cw sexual violence

        He also raped his slaves

  • Teekeeus
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    edit-2
    23 days ago

    deleted by creator

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Washington was just the guy who showed up to look nice and show off war medals. He was America's hunky himbo. He also only took the job of presidency because he was broke.

      Hamilton, Jay, and Madison were far more responsible than him. But I guess only Madison was president.

  • Discopanda [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    Trump is not even close to Reagan and Bush, what the fuck are they talking about.

    • Wheaties [she/her]
      ·
      9 months ago

      I'm open to arguments for the worsitude of other presidents,

      but fuck Johnson got to define the reconstruction era practically by himself -- a country not even a full damn century old yet, blown apart by civil war, and he decides to save the southern plantation aristocracy WHAT THE FUCK what the fuck would world history look like without either Booth or him in the VP slot, it's fucking unimaginable --; I damn well want to see those timelines, I desperately desire to know the weight and magnitude of that little shitstain's life on the fabric of causality. I don't believe in hell, but he makes me wish i could.

  • FugaziArchivist [he/him]
    ·
    9 months ago

    right before the 2020 election, Chomsky predictably got liberal press attention by saying trump is worse than hitler... for climate change denial. Uhhhh ok

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      9 months ago

      The big villain there is honestly H.W. Bush, who initially had a decent take on climate change ("this is a real problem that is not necessarily political that we should address") but quickly reversed course, calcifying U.S. inaction on the matter.