There's almost no national leader that is going to be a “good person”.
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Carter was a pretty good person, at least post-Presidency, can't really speak on how he was in the White House though.
Reagan, otoh, was irredeemable all the way through, given while he was in the White House, that guy effectively destroyed the middle class, created the current disaster that is unaffordable post-secondary education, and created the current credit score system among other atrocities, not to mention that whole Contra business.
Yes, really, if it weren't for Reagan, there wouldn't be a massive and progressively-widening gap between the bottom and top of society, it would still be possible to get affordably educated, and people wouldn't be getting completely screwed by bad credit.
For a perfect foil of everything the US has stood for for at least the last four decades, look at most of the EU having universal healthcare, having an actually regulated education sector where for-profit grift schools like University of Phoenix or even the late ITT Tech or EDMC and its subsidiaries, wouldn't have ever been allowed to take root to begin with.
Everything you mention for Reagan was passed by a democrat controlled Congress. Both parties killed the middle class
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Worse now, with modern tech they kill a lot more people
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.
I hate the "it was a different time" excuse for these awful human beings. It falls apart if you do any reading from the time. Plenty of people wrote about how shit these people were AT THE TIME. Our morals haven't expanded somehow. Our systems of control have changed to be more sustainable. The ruling class learned that slavery was not sustainable. That's it.
Also, this doesn't give an excuse for the leaders of today. The slave owners of the past are not "less caring" than the current ruling class is. The current ruling class has just better distanced themselves from direct acts of violence while expanding their ability to perform mass violence. Slavery has evolved into mass incarceration for example. We've just normalized our violence into different systems and outsourced a lot of it to the global south.
If you're a Billionaire today you are the equivalent of a slave owner of the past with significantly more violence and control than a slave owner could ever dream of.
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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.
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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.
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?
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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.
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Can someone tell me more about Washington? Wiki says he purchased the teeth from slaves. I'm sure that's not entirely true, or is it?
He had dentures made of human teeth, human teeth dentures were almost always made from slave teeth during this time.
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