Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
Amazingly enough, some people outside the US do also read up on the domestic issues affecting the citizens of the world's most powerful nation.
Has George W Bush been the worst President in history?
- Thread starter Belushi
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Amazingly enough, some people outside the US do also read up on the domestic issues affecting the citizens of the world's most powerful nation.
I commend them for it, seriously, and I don't less of them if they don't. State and local government can be hard to understand. But in all honesty the average US citizen can't tell you what's wrong with any of it due to a lifetime of propagandized education.
turing test
Nearly Toowrong
Andrew Jackson and I made the suggestion based solely on his treatment of Native Americans.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Aye, a truly unpleasant man.
If treatment of Native Americans and African-Americans is going to be taken into consideration then I nominate George Washington as the shittiest American president in history. If the insurrection he led had failed, both groups would almost certainly ended up with a better deal over the next century.
Maybe the Africans, but I'm afraid the natives were doomed whatever happened. I second the vote for Jackson. Dubya's bad, but he hasn't actually attempted genocide.
I reckon they got a better deal and slightly better treatment in Canada (or proto-Canada) - although of course not the kind of deal that involved them keeping much of the land that white people wanted.
Wasnt one of the causes of the revolutionary war the British Governments refusal to allow expansion west of the Appalachians?
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One thing to keep in mind is that list of the "worst presidents" isn't so much about the actual president rather than just trying to make a statement. So you fault one for slavery and one for the natives. Truth is you can fault lots of them for that.
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Lets not forget that most of the eastern natives were doomed or gone before there was a President of a United States.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Please expand.
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Are you serious?
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
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Are you being obtuse?
I was thinking the same thing about you.
The polls pretty much show what I would have guessed, even without knowing how each president was summarized. So Buchanan has slavery laid at his feet and Jackson has ill treatment of the natives at his. That's how it works. American history is written to be as less traumatic to the ideal as possible if it can't ignore something entirely so instead of telling it like it was it tells it with a spoonful of sugar or not at all. From that I wouldn't expect anything more than a scapegoating.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
I was thinking the same thing about you.
The polls pretty much show what I would have guessed, even without knowing how each president was summarized. So Buchanan has slavery laid at his feet and Jackson has ill treatment of the natives at his. That's how it works. American history is written to be as less traumatic to the ideal as possible if it can't ignore something entirely so instead of telling it like it was it tells it with a spoonful of sugar or not at all. From that I wouldn't expect anything more than a scapegoating.
You seemed to have a bee in your bonnet about it. Do you disagree that these presidents were bad...for want of a better word? How about Grant? A thoroughly useless president who was taken to the cleaners by a crook. Or Harding, who filled his cabinet with millionaires, some of whom allowed their chums to help themselves to the contents of the Treasury. Or there's Tippacanoe and his ineffectual VP-turned-President, Tyler. Let's not go there - eh?
I think you're just taking issue with the fact that slavery has been mentioned, as well as the very obvious period of ethnic cleansing that began with Jackson, both of which have cast long shadows over the country's history/story.
dilute micro
esse quam videri
You seemed to have a bee in your bonnet about it. Do you disagree that these presidents were bad...for want of a better word? How about Grant? A thoroughly useless president who was taken to the cleaners by a crook. Or Harding, who filled his cabinet with millionaires, some of whom allowed their chums to help themselves to the contents of the Treasury. Or there's Tippacanoe and his ineffectual VP-turned-President, Tyler. Let's not go there - eh?
I think you're just taking issue with the fact that slavery has been mentioned, as well as the very obvious period of ethnic cleansing that began with Jackson, both of which have cast long shadows over the country's history/story.
Hey no argument from me. I've got George Washington himself on my list, somewhere. Most can be found to have something on their rap sheet. No I'm not taking issue with 'slavery'. My thing is with the mindlessness of scapegoating a single person and not mentioning it for anyone else. And trying to tag Jackson is even worse.
Meltingpot
Living in our pools we soon forget about the sea
He's the worst in my lifetime, no question.
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