Depending on how the next four years go I’m on the fence between Bush Jr. and Trump but I’d like to hear from you
Edit:
Top 10 suggestions so far (unordered):
- Andrew Jackson
- Andrew Johnson
- George W. Bush Jr
- Ronald Reagan
- Richard Nixon
- James K. Polk
- Woodrow Wilson
- James Buchanan
- Franklin Pierce
- Donald J. Trump
Does worst mean:
- least able to achieve their stated agenda, ie worst at their job. (Trump)
- worst vision for America, ie most evil (Reagan)
- worst overall impact to America, ie one you’d kill with a time machine (Bush Jr, but Trump might catch up in term 2)
- Worst for the world, ie the one I’d kill with a time machine (Washington)
Although I’m not American and don’t know your history that well.
Idk I think Jackson beats Reagan there. He was the trail of tears guy. He ran on genocide against the indigenous peoples of the continent and delivered
You probably know it way better than the average American. I say this not only as an American, but as one who has been outside North America. I find that our own perspective on us is pretty skewed, and it takes a lot of work to set it straight. More than most of us are willing to do.
Ronald Reagan did more damage to this country than any president before or after him.
Before or after him so far
I feel like the “so far” is implied…unless you’ve somehow figured out how to 100% accurately predict the future and you haven’t told anyone.
…By the way, if that’s the case, rude.
I’m continually shocked by how often I learn of some structural systemic issue, pull the thread to see where it started and- oh, surprise, it was once again Reagan.
Most of Reagan’s agenda came from the heritage foundation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eeCPRD0Hgg&t=0
The capital class controls the heritage foundation and through their countless think tanks, lobbyist, donations, SuperPACs, etc they control the Republican party and even a large part of the Democratic party.
Marx was correct when he argued that economic democracy was necessary for political democracy. When the wealthy get to own the economy they have the entire country by the balls.
Marx was correct when he argued that economic democracy was necessary for political democracy. When the wealthy get to own the economy they have the entire country by the balls.
Funnily enough even Adam Smith warned about that even before capitalism went in full swing.
Adam Smith: you gotta bust up monopolies because competition drive’s innovation
the rich: you heard the man! all the wealth has to be consolidated with us! greed is good!
It’s no coincidence that Reagan and Margaret Thatcher had such a close relationship - they thought alike.
In Britain, Thatcher is still reviled by many for sweeping changes. Killed the coal industry without giving support to the many thousands employed there and put the North into recession, took milk away from children, depowered the unions (which were too powerful at the time, tbf) and generally put the Tory Party on the London & Banks first mantra that they’ve been on ever since.
Just wait until the turd tanks the economy 1920s style.
…i don’t know, man: i’m sticking with george the lesser for now…
(trump was a tabloid train wreck but his first term was comparably benign incompetence)
Reagan
George W Bush Jr.
Yes I am handing him the worst president title, even over Trump.
Because, it was his mishandled War on Terror, that plunged the country into massive national debt. He crashed the housing market. He literally had waged a war on obese people, minorities and other things as distractions from his failure to capture Osama. He allowed American Surveillance with Patriot Act I and II. His cabinet were all crooks and he was just a dumb puppet.
He is essentially the ripple effect of everything we’re dealing with today and Trump is merely the symptom of that.
He allowed American Surveillance with Patriot Act I and II.
People at the time were begging for that. There were a very, very few civil libertarians that realized just how dangerous those acts would be, but the people, as a whole, were really behind them. Just like the people went in gung-ho for the start of GWoT.
He is essentially the ripple effect of everything we’re dealing with today and Trump is merely the symptom of that.
I’d put that at the feet of Reagan first. Reagan was the one that cozied up to the ‘moral majority’, which was based in racism and misogyny, what with Bob Jones University being forced to desegregate. That’s where the birth of the alt-right (which I guess is now just mainstream Republicans) happened.
People at the time were begging for that. There were a very, very few civil libertarians that realized just how dangerous those acts would be, but the people, as a whole, were really behind them. Just like the people went in gung-ho for the start of GWoT.
“Do you want the terrorists to win?!?” was hurled at me a bunch back then.
I agree. Bush Jr. was the one who broke the window, Trump is just the inevitable crackhead who climbed in and started living on the couch.
While W. sucked in many ways, there is no way he is the worst. Off the top of my head I can easily think of four better contenders: Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan (both guilty of pro-slavery fuckery before the Civil War), Andrew Johnson (fought to let the Confederates off the hook after the war and opposed the 14th amendment), and Donald Trump (first president to be impeached twice, first to be convicted of a felony, and may be remembered by future historians as the spark that ignites the next Civil War).
donvict ain’t done yet, either. i think the damage and legacy he leaves behind, leaking out that giant diaper, will be the worst of the bunch.
Btw. question from Germany regarding Trumps Felony: I read that people convicted of a felony may not vote yet I also read that Trump cast his in Florida. Hoe does it actually work?
He was convicted in New York so Florida doesn’t care.
It is complicated because the rules are different in each state. Also, Trump was convicted in New York state but he resides and votes in Florida.
For out-of-state convictions, Florida defers to the other state’s rules. New York would allow Trump to vote if he resided there because he is not currently in prison, so Trump can vote in Florida legally.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-felony-conviction-can-he-vote-b95e7b4c9158d999e8bc89b00fbda911
America doesn’t have laws and isn’t a functioning society.
He’s rich and white so laws don’t apply to him.
He is kinda orange
Andrew Jackson???
Andrew Jackson was also a bastard, especially for his treatment of natives. But I meant Johnson.
I know you did, I was just adding 1
Ah, gotcha. I misunderstood.
Question from another European about that, he’s convicted but never got a sentence? Or did he and why in that case isn’t he serving?
Sentencing was delayed until after Nov. 5th, and now it’s been permanently delayed. I’m sure the conviction will be overturned at some point while he’s in office
But have can you delay a sentence?
I mean it sounds so foreign to be told in court that “Yeah you’re deemed guilty… but we’re telling you your punishment later. Maybe.” instead of just BAM guilty, straight to jail it will be!Sentencing isn’t always done at the same time a verdict is given. Often a judge will take time to research the punishments available in the law. Sometimes they’ll take advice on a person’s character, and consider the level of remorse the convict has for the crimes.
There was a small public outcry last year when a celebrity was convicted of sex crimes, and other celebrities known for their work against sex trafficking wrote to the judge to ask for leniency. It made the news because famous people were involved, but it’s a common occurrence.
He also wanted to wait to see what the Supreme Court would rule in the presidential immunity case, and I honestly can’t blame the man for delaying indefinitely following the results of that. This judge and his family received a lot of death threats and harassment from Trump’s supporters, but he also had to consider that Trump is immune to whatever crimes he chooses to commit in office.
Non burgers here: I believe the sentencing for the conviction was delayed till after the election. And since that they have announced it has been delayed indefinitely.
How is this even possible? Aren’t sentences supposed to come with the verdict?
The punishment might come at a later date (it might in my country where you can be told that in 3 months you will serve jail time), but the sentence?
I’d probably say someone like Andrew Jackson before even thinking about Trump being the worst. Jackson did a literal genocide with the Indian Removal Act
Touché. His first term wasn’t that horrible (although it wasn’t good either). I’m still mad they organised a meeting with Kim just to tell him to go fuck himself. That character development could become spicy. On the other hand would we even have had a meeting with Clinton in power?
But hey, he still has four years and a lot of plans to claim a podium place.
That meeting with Kim was probably to woo him like US previously did to Iran to make them abandon nuclear armaments, but thankfully DPRK govt can read and do know what happens to countries who believe empty US lies. So since that didn’t work, US in a second abandoned their friendly mask and went back to previous policies.
It’s tempting to pick someone recent, but the real answer is probably Andrew Jackson. He successfully engineered a genocide, trampled the Constitution and human rights, and was actively hostile to limits on Presidential power.
We’ll see if 47 surpasses him. He’s set up to do so. It’s going to be wild to see what happens when Trump order troops to fire into crowds of American citizens.
We always seem to get this crazy hyperbole that Trump is going to be some competent fascist that’s going to perform some great coup that will end the US, but in reality it always seems the real damage he does is the evil bureaucracy that erodes rights and liberties while exacerbating things in foreign policy.
Jan 6th was very flashy, but comparatively speaking, nothing really happened.
I’m not afraid of Trump’s competence. I’m afraid of Trump’s cult of personality and the competent people that are now handling him. We didn’t elect Trump, we elected Project 2025.
Handling is a somewhat strong word here though. For better and worse, he’s very impulsive and egotistically sensitive. His last administration left a huge wake of people that haven’t been rehired and likely won’t be.
Even if we assume his new lackeys care enough about the Heritage Foundation to attempt to implement their plan, I’d be amazed if they could corral his attention long enough to get him to sign anything in.
Have anyone but him and Biden overseen genocides?
Christ. most of them.
George Washington got to be in charge of a country that enshrined chattel slavery in its constitution for 20 years. Thomas Jefferson provided military aid to France’s efforts to quash a slave revolt in Haiti. Andrew Jackson personally orchestrated a genocide against the Cherokee, Creek, and Choctaw (all of whom were aligned with american interests). Zachary Taylor put a bounty on bison, in an effort to starve the native Americans of the great plains. Abraham Lincoln allowed his western military expeditions to do basically whatever to the native Americans. Andrew Johnson started the process of letting confederate leadership be who directed reconstruction rather than being punished for it.
And here we reach Ulysses S Grant. one of America’s favorite punching bag presidents because he got scammed rather frequently, but when you dig into why he was prone to getting scammed, it’s because he thought it was America’s duty to use its economic power to help the lowest people in society. it’s hard to be mad at a guy who was trying so hard to help people that sometimes he let someone con him into thinking they deserved help.
i can keep going on how a ton of our historical presidents have sucked. i’m still personally willing to say the top 3 are Andrew Jackson, Ronald Reagan, and Donald trump
overseen? Yes.
With Jackson, it’s not overseen, it’s orchestrated
Just wondering if you had a few other overseen examples off the top of your head since you seem knowledgeable on this.
Pretty much all of them actively participated in various genocides and massacres, either directly like native genocide or Philippines or all the aerial massacres of XX and XXI century (even the one who was president for a month), or indirectly like even the “most peaceful president” Carter supported the massacres in Indonesia.
Every president since the 70s has overseen genocide, even ignoring the one you’re likely alluding too.
deleted by creator
Agree with most of the comments about jackson being the worst, but I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Eisenhower and Hoover, who would easily go in the top ten.
I also wanted to throw Truman in the ring for signing off nuclear strikes on mainly civilian targets (i.e. cities) and for the American war crimes in Korea (but I mainly blame MacArthur for that) but he also fired MacArthur and roasted him and the other generals whilst doing so. So maybe somewhere in the top 15 to 25. If MacArthur’s run for president had succeeded tho we’d have another strong candidate.
Andrew Jackson and it’s not even close. Not to downplay the horrible crimes committed by many of our other presidents but I don’t think anything rises to the level of the Trail of Tears.
Remove Jackson from the running and it’s a more interesting conversation, however thinking about it reveals just how interconnected all of this stuff is. While the current genocide is occurring under Biden, we can’t forget that the conditions that lead to Oct 7 were created under Trump. For that matter so were the conditions that lead to the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
I think the worst in my lifetime by a mile is Dubya, but while his wars were massive and consequential we can’t forget that George Senior also killed scores of people in Iraq, and Clinton carried out the sanctions regime that killed scores more. Clinton was also the one who broke Labor’s influence within the Democratic Party - but it was Obama who was swept into power on the promise of a working class revolution only to smother it in its crib.
But yeah my top two are Jackson and Dubya but beyond that I’m not sure there are a lot of crimes in the history of America’s presidency.
For that matter so were the conditions that lead to the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
That’s Obama. Sure Trump continued but it’s mostly on Obama for pushing the neonazi monstrosity to power and Biden for constant escalations to proxy world war and possibly to real world war soon.
For that matter so were the conditions that lead to the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
Complete mind palace nonsense. We literally impeached him for threatening to not send weapons there for the civil war that ended up exploding into the full scale invasion.
Not that he had good reasons to do a good thing, but your recollection of history is completely fucking inverted
but beyond that I’m not sure there are a lot of crimes in the history of America’s presidency.
okay maybe I’m expecting too much from you
…you know we genocided an entire continent of people, right? And continue to?
We literally impeached him for threatening to not send weapons there for the civil war that ended up exploding into the full scale invasion.
Ah yes, the impeachment that accomplished so much and is extremely relevant.
I don’t care what Trump said or would have preferred, under his administration our government continued to fuel and escalate tensions in the region when we should have been pushing Ukraine to implement Minsk II and end the civil war. Maybe you could classify it as a mistake on his part instead of malice that he didn’t stop the arms shipments even though he really wanted to, but people are still liable for mistakes.
you know we genocided an entire continent of people, right? And continue to?
I literally cited an episode from that genocide as my reasoning for Jackson being the worst president.
putting trump in the top 5 is lib shit
I agree there have been (way) worse presidents than pre 2nd term Trump but he has a lot of potential.
What’s wrong, snowflake, are you triggered by this conversation? Don’t worry, if his cabinet succeeds in their plans to eliminate vaccines and shut down life-saving agencies such as NWS, you’ll get to see genocide at home. And even though he hasn’t eliminated the department of education yet, there’s a chance you may already be one of the victims of the conservative agenda.
Trump’s not even bad by republican standards, he’s just vulgar and baffoonish. Replace him with Jeb! or Ron DeSantis or your garden variety Republican and you’d get the same defunding, same deregulation and same enshittification as him, just more subtle.
Come back when he’s killed a million Iraqi civilians over fictional WMDs or getting several million people addicted then dead over opioids by deregulating prescription.
He didn’t commit war crimes in Vietnam, spill over to Laos and Cambodia. Come back when he pardons the perpetrators of My Lai. Come back when he interns Japanese and nukes civilians. Come back when he Manifests Destiny.
Top 5 my ass
You have grossly misread the intent of that comment, chief. She’s saying that putting Trump in top 5 worst (atm) downplays America’s historical atrocities such as invading Vietnam, killing 20% of the population of North Korea, Iraq war, Afghanistan war, etc
Sorry, I wasn’t looking at it in terms of just the senseless loss of lives, but also how much damage was being done at home. Yeah there’s a lot of hard lines there to cross but Trump has made a policy of tearing the nation apart instead of trying to bring people together, and that weighs a lot to me.
Imagine it being a bad thing to tear apart an evil empire
If it’s about domestic damage, then every president who owned slaves or supported segregation still beats him.
E: Also every president who was involved in the genocide of the indigenous peoples of America to an extent more than Trump (IE he probably ties Biden and Obama on this).
Even by that metric he isn’t the worst.
critical support to Trump collapsing the genocidal American empire
WTF, I love Trump now.
im not even amerikkkan lol get a life you weird loser?
In addition to what everyone else has said to point out how absurd it is to put Trump in the top 5 worst presidents, there’s also the fact that almost every significant Trump policy was continued or worsened by Biden. Even the ones that democrats pretended to care about when it suited their agenda like kids in cages, building the wall, and increasing fossil fuel extraction. So if you want to talk about all the ways Trump is an evil piece of shit (which he most certainly is) to put him in the top 5 worst, then you had better make sure Biden is even higher on that list.
Scratched liberal.
uh lets see,
- Andrew Jackson
- Harry S. Truman
- William McKinley
- George W. Bush
- Woodrow Wilson
pretty easy if you actually read a book
I’m still on the fence about W. just because he didn’t really do anything on his own, he just took the excuse to continue his daddy’s war. I think if Sr. had gotten another term in office he would have ramped things up, but either way I think the family as a whole pushes up there on the list.
For the rest of the list… yeah it’s not hard to find a lot of presidents who have killed a lot of people. However the original question was about the worst president overall, which to me includes the damages done here at home. Trump is high on my list simply because of how far back he has set us in terms of equal rights, moving beyond the pettiness of racism, dealing with important things like the unfolding climate disaster, and his nonchalant attitude that Palestine and Ukraine need to just surrender because being in the news cycle is inconvenient to him. Looking at Trump’s agenda of just how much he wants to destroy things here, I find it concerning that the only thing stopping him is a few Republicans that still have a moral compass.
Republicans that still have a moral compass
Lib status confirmed. They don’t have a moral compass lmao they just don’t like him saying the quiet part out loud
terminal West wing brain lol
He single-handedly launched the war on terror tf are you talking about
I’m still on the fence about W.
Don’t worry, if his cabinet succeeds in their plans to eliminate vaccines and shut down life-saving agencies such as NWS, you’ll get to see genocide at home.
So it’s ok when it’s happening to the browns? Fucking racist shit heel, liberals are all the same under whatever facade they’re mouthing off about.
Do they? I wouldn’t know, the only racists I’ve ever met were conservatives. Dems at least try to pass laws beneficial to everyone and not just rich white folks. But Liberals? No clue, I don’t pay much attention to them.
Dems, you mean the ones that were willing to throw immigrants in the trash and give Republicans everything they wanted wrt the border so they could fund a war directly leading to ww3? The ones also willing to throw as much money as possible and ignore the most popular position in their own constituency (permanent ceasefire) to allow Israel to keep killing Palestinians? The ones that intentionally barred Palestinians from speaking at their conventions? The ones that immediately turned to blaming Muslims, Mexican immigrants, and black people when they lost the election? OH YEAH THEY DEFINITELY TRY FUCKING MORON
his nonchalant attitude that Palestine and Ukraine need to just surrender because being in the news cycle is inconvenient to him.
Motivations aside, if he really does want Ukraine to “just surrender” (which remains to be seen beyond rhetoric) then it’s one of the only good positions he has. Ukraine 100% needs to surrender. Absolutely nothing good comes from it continuing to fight. It only means more death and emisseration of working people and more profits for the military industrial complex. It’s honestly rather repulsive when people lump Palestine and Ukraine together like that as if they’re even remotely the same thing. One is fighting a deeply asymmetric struggle of survival against their own genocide by a settler colonial ethnostate that seeks to eradicate them from the earth, the other is a nazi coup government fighting a proxy war for imperialists that uses their own working class as cannon fodder in a conflict that could have been resolved years ago with no loss of life.
What the heck is going on with this reaction
☝️🤓
George Washington. This thing should have been nipped in the bud.
Would that have changed much (Except for his name & face being literally everywhere in the US) or would they just have taken another founding father as their idol?
Woodrow Wilson was so racist that he was quoted in an epigraph for “The Birth of a Nation.” You know, the 1915 movie about how awesome the KKK was, which became the first true “blockbuster” film and which led to a huge resurgence in KKK activity. Not only that, but Woodrow Wilson also personally invited the filmmakers to screen the movie in the White House - the first movie ever screened in the White House, by the way. Honorable mention!
As well as hating black people he also hated Slavs too and laid the foundations for anti-soviet US foreign policy
what? He gave the Slavic nations self-determination, there are roads named after him in e.g. Czechia, Slovakia; and wtf is bad about anti-Soviet foreign policy?
and wtf is bad about anti-Soviet foreign policy?
-adolf hitler
wtf is bad about anti-Soviet foreign policy
The Soviets wanted deescalation after WW2, and supported self determination for liberated countries including Korea, Vietnam, Greece and Italy. Whatever you think of communism, the American policy of “containment” is directly and indisputably responsible for the suppression of democracy in dozens of countries and wars which killed tens of millions of people all because some of those people would have elected communist and socialist leaders we didn’t like.
He gave the Slavic nations self-determination
Absurd claim. Slavic nations risen due to collapse of the three european empires in WWI.
lol
lol trump is bad but not like Andrew Jackaon bad.
Probably
- Andrew Jackson - Crimes against native people
- Andrew Johnson - Fucked up reconstruction
- Ronald Reagan - Trickle down economics
- 45/47 🤮 - We all know why…
- Richard Nixon - The Infamous Crook
Might have some memory gaps, but these are what I can remember from the top of my head.
If you think Trump is worse than
you’re telling everybody that you think norms are more important than a million dead brown peopleObama killed WAY more brown people than W. Millions of dead brown people only matter when it’s not your team, huh?
[citation needed]
See: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.
Don’t be willfully ignorant.
you said millions. I can not find a citation for that. Nothing close…? sooo provide a citation for your outrageous claim, don’t call me ignorant for asking you to back up your own words, fucknut.
Wikipedia doesn’t seem to agree but Im sure YoU dID Y0uR rESeARcH
‘Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau.’
Wait, how much though?
I’m confused… how much kill on Middle East?
Reagan definitely deserves a top 5 spot.
I dunno, Nixon’s fuckery is downright provincial these days.
Don’t forget that the SCOTUS appointed by 47 ended the American experiment since Presidents are now effectively kings. Thanks to Presidential immunity, we no longer get to say nobody is above the law.
Elected Temporary Dictator with small restrictions.
They still have to get rid of elections to make thing permanent, and time will tell if they actually managed to do so.
The federal government doesn’t run elections, states do. Whether or not states decide to resist the tyranny of the federal government will decide if we will have legitimate elections.
Swing States do not all have a republican trifecta.
Also remember there are non-maga republicans, like Brad Raffensperger.
And president does not yet have unlimited power, only immunity from breaking laws. The president still have to find those yes-men to do their bidding.
He cant just say “Kill all Democrats” on day one. That aint happening. The military isnt maga yet.
It takes time to purge the military. Not every non-maga military member is gonna announce their beliefs. You cant find them all and purge them all in 4 years. Hitler already had a majority of loyalists in the military when he became chancellor. trump does not. Not yet.
When the federal government becones tyrannical, states can declare federal actions unconstitutional and use their state national guards. Then our country’s fate is up to the military and national guards.
The US can totally become a dictatorship forever if we don’t change course, but there is still time to reverse course.
By this analogy, where does Biden, the American Paul von Hindenburg, land? Like obviously it’s worse to actually abolish democracy, but surely working with those doing it and doing nothing to stop them is also evil?
E: As a disclaimer about my political views, I believe that Trump and every other US president should be executed for crimes against humanity.
He’s more like Hindenburg if he lived to 1945. And still have few months left to start WW3 which he apparently tries to do and reach the title of The Worst Human That Ever Lived.
If Trump makes your top 5 and the Bushes don’t, you’re a lib
Y’know, Nixon was also ultimately responsible for the extensive bombing of Cambodia and the extension of the Vietnam war, both of which killed millions (the former by laying the ground work for the rise of the Khmer Rouge) BUT the important part was that he spied in Democrats! Not to defend Trump, he’s a vile removed that would serve the world best as fertiliser, but his legacy doesn’t even remotely hold a candle to the likes of Nixon, Dubya, Truman/Eisenhower etc.
Woodrow Wilson? He’s the founder of modern US imperialism and a part of the reason most people are on this site due to the legacy of US imperialism.
Trump is definitely in the bottom quintile, but also anyone putting him in the bottom 5 is just recency bias.
Most people who argued for Trump said it’s because of Jan 6th and his other felonies and that he was allowed to run again and became reelected (even tho a partition of the us citizens are to blame for the latter). I also think people already value him lower because of Project 2025 and out of fear what will happen during his 2nd term.
andrew jackson (or johnson can never remember which) for the trail of tears. absolutely awful
Andrew Jackson was Trail of Tears, but I actually think Andrew Johnson was arguably worse. He was Lincoln’s Democrat vice president (he was brought on to help “balance the ticket” instead of sticking with his strongly abolitionist first term VP Hannibal Hamlin), who started dismantling reconstruction and giving the power back to the former slaveowners.
You can pretty much lay Jim Crow at his feet.
kinda hard to argue apartheid is worse than genocide imo
I’m not really trying to weigh and decide if 6000+ deaths and forcible removal of 100k+ people from their homes is better or worse than 100 or so years of systemic oppression followed by more, quieter oppression. Instead, I’m looking at this from the perspective of alternatives.
After the Civil War we very nearly had a moment when we could have maybe did something real for racial equality beyond anything we’ve seen even up to the present day. The Freeman’s Bureau was fighting for wages for former slaves, and was generally a force for working class empowerment. Black congressmen were already being voted into office rapidly. If it were left to do its work, it might even have helped to innoculate the Irish- and Italian-Americans against future union busting on Black/White racial lines a few decades down the line.
Instead, after only about a year, Andrew Johnson started fighting and dismantling the Bureau, placing the former slaveowners back into a de facto master/slave relationship with their former slaves, giving the old Southern Democrats back their political power, and generally restoring the status quo as much as possible. The Bureau itself lasted only 5 or 6 years, don’t remember. The KKK rose up because reconstruction wasn’t there anymore to prevent it, because the Democrats wanted so bad to just put all of the states back in the union and go back to bad old days, and so on.
That was never a realistic moment that I know of in American history where people against war with the native tribes of this land had outsized power and influence. Jackson completely ignoring the Supreme Court’s ruling was awful, but while the ruling was grounded in good moral and legal principles, it was, like it or not, extremely unpopular. There wasn’t an entire party with a supermajority in Congress that could have kept up the pressure on this issue.
To only count the direct deaths of the forced march and not the deaths resulting in having your land stolen and along with it your ability to reproduce your society is straight up genocide denial.
After the Civil War we very nearly had a moment when we could have maybe did something real for racial equality beyond anything we’ve seen even up to the present day.
And this is absolving responsibility of all the people who maintained slavery, which one could argue is even worse than jim crow.
I think you’re reading more intent in my post than was actually present. I’m not denying we did genocide to 100 million natives. All I’m denying is that Jackson specifically is significantly worse than the historically reasonable alternatives to the position. Had (for instance) John Quincy Adams, one of the authors of the Monroe doctrine and a big proponent of western expansion, won the presidency, I do not doubt that a similar overall trajectory would have taken place. Maybe we wouldn’t have specifically had a trail of tears moment, but there’s more to the genocide of native americans than just the trail of tears.
And this is absolving responsibility of all the people who maintained slavery, which one could argue is even worse than jim crow.
How so? I believe you’re arguing in good faith, but I honestly don’t see how you come to this conclusion from what I wrote?
Jackson was trail of tears, Johnson was the one who killed reconstruction. Both very bad.
