- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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Slavery was the original automation. If you wanted an educated class that thought it was a progressive society you needed slaves, and it freed up time for invention and research.
There were slaves of every race as well.
Jimmy Carter too?
Especially him!
“he’s history’s greatest monster!”
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.
There’s almost no national leader that is going to be a “good person”.
This is lemmy.ml, I’m sure you can name a few that they would agree with. Stalin, Putin, Pol Pot, Mao…
I have never seen anybody on any platform anywhere defend Pol Pot.
I think it’s tremendously funny that you saw a list including Stalin, Putin, and Mao, and your only response was "I’ve never seen anyone defend Pol Pot.
Proves my point, there are plenty of leaders that users of this instance think were good people.
And I think it’s funny that you’re blatantly lying about what other people believe, and your response to that is, “Ha! Not every word that comes out of my mouth is a lie, only lots of them!”
My biggest complaint about Lincoln was the people he didn’t hang.
Kinda like how the only thing John Brown did wrong on May 24th, 1856 was stop at 5
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.
For Carter the worst thing I know is that alot of the free iran Iranian people really hate Carter for his actions in the Whitehouse and blame him for the current oppressive Iranian regime. I don’t really think that was something malicious on his part, just a policy mistake.
They aren’t wrong! Carter may have been the best president post office, but he is also the American most responsible for the religious dictatorship that took over Iran and much of the middile east.
I’m a leftist, but after finishing “Reading Lolita In Tehran” and watching the PBS documentary “Taken Hostage” I understood completely how Reagan defeated him in a crushing landslide. The outpouring of grief after Carters death was difficult to stomach understanding the damage he had done. Yes the man built houses and gave generously late in life, but that’s because he knew he had a lot to make up for it. The man destabilized several nations, including his own, with entirely foreseeable negligence.
Everything you mention for Reagan was passed by a democrat controlled Congress. Both parties killed the middle class
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.
I agree with most of this, but slave owners could dream of a lot of violence.
Also, don’t ignore shipping jobs overseas to where labor might as well be slavery if it technically isn’t.
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.
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?
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?
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?
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.
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?
They do genocide and colonialism and slavery and they are settlers
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?
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?
Put it this way. No one in their right mind would have their healthy teeth pulled out without anaesthetic and sell them, if they had any real choice.
We know that he “bought” teeth from slaves, and that he was a slave owner, we also know that he had dentures made of other people’s teeth. No one knows for sure that the teeth he took were for his own use or from the people he enslaved himself, but it seems probable. More info here.
He had dentures made of human teeth, human teeth dentures were almost always made from slave teeth during this time.
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.
He didn’t steal any land. The battles fought between Natives and non-native populations were rarely a fight that had “good” vs “evil” sides.
They executed those that wantonly murdered innocent people. It tirns out murdering people for their food, goods, and horses is something the government did not want to encourage.
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”
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.
The settlers have always been 100% evil
You’re a fucking deluded moron. Educate yourself, form a realistic opinion and come back.
Bro he literally freed the slaves.
They still have slaves. They are just in prison. That’s my point.
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?
the constitution even condones it. Fucked. Prisoners get paid like 70c an hour or some shit.
Instead of actually working towards something better, let’s just spend our time arguing over things we can’t change. /S
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.
William Henry Harrison should have ate it at Tippecanoe but at least he corrected his misstep during his first month in office
Jimmy Carter
He oversaw East Timor
No he did not. Indonesia waged that campaign from the mid 70s to 1999. Blaming Carter is a stupid choice.
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:
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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].
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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].
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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
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What does that mean? The name Carter doesn’t show up on the Wikipedia page for timor from what I can find.
Please keep your mouth shut about politics (and frankly everything else) if you are an adult and still this ignorant
No?
Oh its lemmygrad, that’s why you’re unreasonably hostile right out of the gate.
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.
Methinks you might protest too much about other people being nazis. You seem well, well versed in where nazis hang out and what reading nazis like to do. I hope you’re not secretly a nazi hiding out in lemmygrad.
If it’s not clear cause youre not the sharpest, I’m saying you’re just another nazi.
(1) don’t think for a second Im treating a geocities site as a real source
(2) Carter’s name is not on that page. I saw “oversaw” as the claim. If he oversaw, his name goes on the page. His name is not on the page. Ex: Kissinger is on the page, and is a war criminal and he should rot in hell.
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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.
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Kissinger worked for Carter. Did he get executed? Did he get jailed? Oh, he got even more influence? Then Carter is guilty for approving.
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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.
I know you want to imagine something darker, but once you get your first job you’ll realize how very very very very easy it is for simple things to slip through the cracks, let alone complex things like a conflict on the other side of the planet from you in a region your country hasn’t traditionally cared about.
And that in itself is a reason why the intelligence community cannot be allowed to exist in its current form.
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.
So you’re moving goalposts from the original claim “Carter oversaw east Timor” to “maybe someone in the CIA should have been prosecuted” and “the military industrial complex is bad”?
Big shift if true.
A shift from actually new information to “turns out the bad guys are bad, guys”
Ah, so you’re not actually interested in learning, but in sealioning.
That’s cool, I’ve been around democrats before.
Also it continued until 1999 which makes blaming him for it an odd choice.
