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USA’s presidents have all been awful humans (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] Boddhisatva 1 points 1 day ago (5 children)

That's four of them. I rather think Carter was a good human being, regardless of whether or not you think he was a good president.

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[–] TommySoda -3 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (7 children)

You could look at any country in the world and find leaders that were just as bad and even worse throughout history. I think the takeaway should be that shitty people exist. Some of it is a product of the times, some of it just being awful people. Shitty people have and always will exist.

Edit: With these downvotes it almost seems like y'all thought I was defending them. I absolutely was not defending them. :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 18 hours ago

This is an ml community. Anything that praises the USA or normalizes it (that is, reducing the awfulness) is gonna get down votes.

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[+] MasterBlaster -17 points 23 hours ago (13 children)

Okay, fella - take a few breaths and relax. People are products of their times. The better ones fight for virtues and values they see as better at the time. They see an opportunity others do not and rally people around those.

Others they don't see and continue wi5h those norms, or they see the wrongs but don't believe they can rally people around fixing them.

Do not demonize people in the past who do not meet current norms. There will never be anybody who will meet those standards.

Judge them against the standards of their peers.

What if MLK did not support feminists? Would he now be considered scum, thus negating everything good he ever did?

Heck, i don't know if he had a stance on women's rights explicitly. Maybe he didn't. Is he evil if he didn't?

[–] taiyang 1 points 21 hours ago

Product of the times isn't a great way to put it, but you can certainly make the argument that most people have shades of grey morality.

Science can back you up, too, as I teach social psychology and when you dig in, you find that normative human nature is pretty complex but generally very supportive for in-group and mildly empathetic even with strangers. It's only when you dehumanize a group do you get the worst behavior, and in all four cases you see that, be it slaves or indigenous people.

When you look at those times, it's people who recognized their humanity that ended up in the just side of history.

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