Posted on 04/14/2018 8:13:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
They had specific orders to stand down and do nothing, and they were all disgusted by the piece of sh*t we had as President at the time.
The monopoly on access to the broadcasting system, and control of all facilities necessary, have prevented the public from knowing the truth about how Kennedy deliberately left men on the beaches to die.
There ought to be a movie made about how big of a piece of sh*t John F. Kennedy was, and how big a piece of sh*t his entire family was.
Here are the 8 worst in my opinion.
Abraham Lincoln
Barack Obama
Jimmy Carter
Bill Clinton
Lyndon Johnson
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin Roosevelt
George HW Bush
It does show the power of the popular mass media that JFK isn’t vilified as he should be. I suppose martyrdom will do that for you./
Ditto for Abraham Lincoln.
Here are the nine worst.
Abraham Lincoln
Barack Obama
Jimmy Carter
JFK
Bill Clinton
Lyndon Johnson
Woodrow Wilson
Franklin Roosevelt
George HW Bush
Absent Lincoln, there’d be no United States in its present form. I’m always curious what a person who views Lincoln as the “worst” considers what a viable alternative to him would’ve been and the consequences of such.
That is likely true, but you can't use a future event to justify past misconduct. Perhaps a rape produces a pregnancy which becomes a wonderful human being that saves millions. It still does not justify the rape.
I’m always curious what a person who views Lincoln as the “worst” considers what a viable alternative to him would’ve been and the consequences of such.
Well the "worst" part is his starting a war that killed 750,000 people directly, and possibly another 2 million indirectly, as well as destroying the original foundational principle of our own government (that people have a right to independence) and establishing Washington DC as a seat of power that was never intended by the Founders. States rights have been effectively revoked, and their sovereignty has been surrendered.
The overbearing Federal leviathan was more or less the consequence of Lincoln usurping for his government more powers than the Federal government was ever intended to have.
Add to this the corruption and influence trading his government established, and it pretty much becomes the root cause of most of the problems we are facing nowadays.
Lincoln not only got a lot of people killed needlessly, he created the Federal monster with which we have to deal today. People blame Wilson, but it really started with Lincoln.
Probably so.
This is the thing that turned my head on John Kennedy. He let those guys go thinking that they had the backing of the United States and just let them flounder. He could have sent help and we would not have had all these years of that jackass Castro. He was easily beatable with just a little help from the U.S. He, however, let those men get pounced on by Castro’s forces.
It’s unfortunate that Lincoln can very well be classified as both the best and the worst as a result of his election and administration. It’s a very complicated situation, but frankly, a lot of it was merely the “perfect storm” of delaying dealing with the issue of slavery until both sides could not longer tolerate the other.
Had it been abolished at our founding, so much would’ve been avoided, but that was not possible without a decided split between the colonies, and disunity would’ve allowed a victory for the British monarchy.
The South was clearly playing with fire, and in areas where you had free Whites outnumbered by slaves by margins as high as 10-to-1 (such as Charleston), how long did they think they could maintain a status quo before you had a Haitian situation or more Nat Turner uprisings ? Even without arms, sheer numbers of people could use brute force and then obtain said arms.
As I’ve addressed in other posts, though, the North was hypocritical as well. They abhorred slavery, BUT, did not want an exodus of ex-slaves to their hometowns. They were fine with Black folks so long as there were few nearby and the remainder far, far away from them (something even the Black comedian and satirist Dick Gregory observed as late as the 1960s).
The election of subpar to near-incompetent Presidents from 1836 to 1856 didn’t help matters, delaying what was the inevitable. If only because both the Whigs and the Democrats had balances between their pro-slave and anti-slave wings forced both parties to have to appeal to both sides, allowing for that corrosive status quo to continue.
The explicit creation of the Republicans with the collapse of the Whigs, allowing for a singular anti-slave party meant that the election of even one would spark a war. Had Millard Fillmore not tried a third-party bid in 1856 with the remnants of the Whigs continuing to try for a status quo situation, it would’ve just as easily begun with a President Fremont, and hence would’ve been on his head instead.
There was no one really in 1860 that could’ve stopped the inevitable. Perhaps John Bell (the nominee from my state of TN, whom I would’ve voted for, however futile that would’ve been — of course Lincoln was not on the ballot in TN and Bell was closest to the GOP even as an ex-Whig Constitutionalist), but that again would’ve merely delayed the situation to 1864.
Southern Democrats wouldn’t even tolerate the moderate Stephen Douglas. If the Senator from Illinois had managed to put together a coalition to win, the South would’ve considered him virtually as intolerable as Lincoln. Breckinridge ? Utterly intolerable to the Northern states and likely would’ve faced impeachment with a GOP Congress.
So, then, back to Lincoln. But, again, what was he to do ? If he sat back and allowed 11 states to secede without doing anything, he’d have presided over the effective dissolution of the nation. It would’ve been viewed by the North as gutless, cowardly and perhaps even treasonous. Such weak leadership, again, would’ve almost guaranteed his impeachment. Worse, yet, other states might’ve fully defected as well (MO, KY, MD, DE) and swaths of Southern-sympathizing areas in IL, IN and OH. DC itself would’ve been completely surrounded by enemy territory and likely would’ve resulted in the federal government having to retreat and relocate back to Philadelphia.
Any of that would’ve meant Southern victory outright. With a weakened North, that would’ve emboldened the South to go on an unprecedented territorial gobble, first with Caribbean interests (Cuba), then Mexico (as it was 20 years earlier, Southern interests wanted to annex most of Northern Mexico), and clear down Central America to the Colombian border. You’d also have had skirmishes and battles with the aforementioned weakened North to obtain Arizona, New Mexico and Southern California.
Perhaps, even audacious attempts to move on to South America. Of course, in doing all of this, the Whites would’ve been in the decided minority in such a new country, with a large group of Blacks and Native Indians, with the latter probably being formally swallowed up into a new class of slavery (however longer that would’ve lasted).
By the 20th century, the CSA would’ve probably been closer to Mexico in style and substance. An aristocracy in control of the nation with a gargantuan underclass and probably astronomical crime levels. Likely a third-world country.
The greatly shrunken USA might’ve been more like a slightly stronger version of Canada. Curiously, they’d have likely been the ones to build a wall along the border to keep Southern refugees out (read: Blacks and Indians).
If history had unfolded as it did in Europe and Asia, I don’t think the USA alone would’ve been able to stand up to Hitler, et al. Indeed, it’s even conceivable the CSA might’ve aligned itself with Germany in both wars and we’d have had yet more war between the USA and CSA.
Excuse me for going off on a tangent here. Despite all the problems that Lincoln spurred on in keeping the country together, I’d think we’d be in such a vastly different reality today to the point that it would’ve been far worse. We can only speculate, of course. I do rank Lincoln as “Great”, but with a cost, only one that might’ve been easier to pay than had he failed to win the war.
When I went through basic training at Ft. Jackson, SC, the XO of my company, 1LT Silva, was a veteran of the Bay of Pigs,
Every time I saw him encourage one of us, I felt shame of how our country’s had betrayed him and his comrades.
He was an inspiration to me and one of my heroes through my life.
Dj, as always... Impressive.
You’re a frigging living encyclopedia of history.
Wrong. The North didn't bring them here and wasn't responsible for them. The slave owners who controlled the South bare 100% responsibility for the war, remember no one was gonna take their slaves but they were unwilling to let their political and economic power continue to decline. Bunch of Soroses.
Opposing human bondage and not wanting indigent ex-slaves to live next door to you and take jobs in your area are not morally incongruous positions any more than opposing abortion and not supporting the government paying for every crack whore's kid are morally incongruous positions.
You try too hard to be even handed. And way too many people of Southern extraction needlessly defend that rebellion for no better reason than silly pride that their ancestors couldn't have possibly been on "the wrong side". Rebelling so slavery could be expanded is not a defensible position, which is why we always hear nonsense propaganda about how the war wasn't really about slavery. Neo-Confederate Romanticism does nothing but make us look bad.
Correct. There was no one who could have stopped the war in 1860.
James Huston’s book, “Calculating the Value of Union” is exceptionally good (even though he goes off the rails at the end) in that he makes clear that the issue, deep down, was the definition of “property.”
Was a human “property?” Half the states and about 1/3 of the white population said “yes.” The problem arose that with the Missouri Compromise territory opening up, those numbers were about to drop precipitously. Thus the incredible fight over such a relatively meaningless territory as Kansas.
Ultimately as Huston shows, if slaves got into the territories, it would be impossible legally and philosophically to keep them out of the north. After all, a chair in Alabama is a chair in Utah is a chair in Ohio. On the other hand, if slaves could be legally and philosophically prohibited in the territories once and for all, there was no way the slave states could keep abolition out of the south.
The 11 states that made up the Confederacy were the riches region in the country PURELY due to the value of land and slaves. For example, slaves and land values in the South surpassed ALL railroads and textile mills in the North in 1850. By 1860, of the 11 wealthiest states in the union, 10 were in the South.
Changing this definition of property would vastly change the wealth differential between the two sections. While ultimately I do believe the war was about an idea, on a more basic level it was about the South protecting its wealth, pure and simple.
bump
JFK was in white tails and a bow tie that evening, having just emerged from an elegant social gathering.
This was obama when Benghazi happened. Could not be bothered that over 40 men were going to be killed as he had a party to go to the day.
The Democrats are a party of panderers. When it comes to leadership, they have nothing.
Thank you. :-P
Not quite so. The North did have slavery, too, though they abolished it state-by-state. For them, it wasn’t financially feasible, not necessarily because of higher moral standards. I guarantee if you had swapped folks from one region to the other, they could’ve easily switched positions if their financial situation were at stake. The North also benefitted from slavery, too. Northern mills and factories got the “product” from down south.
As for opposing human bondage and not wanting “those people” near you when you beat the drum of equality DOES make for epic level hypocrisy. We’re not talking about crack whores and their kids (that’s a helluva comparison, dude !), but people wanting to flee an area where they’re not welcome and perhaps in danger of their lives and likely wanting to get educated and better themselves and become prosperous. They wanted neither the indigents (understandable) nor the ones who wanted to better themselves (plain racist).
True, some of the antebellum romanticization is a bit hard to swallow (especially considering the tinderbox they were sitting on, ready to go up in flames at the first spark), but so is the farcical claim of nobility and superior morality of the North. Each had their own issues and foibles. If Northerners had been given a free decision as to whether they wished to go South to fight, if Lincoln had said, “To free the slaves”, very few would’ve done so. It had to be done under the aegis of “Union, one and inseparable.” That they could agree to.
Remember, most Southerners did not own slaves, and Lincoln badly miscalculated when he thought he could drive a wedge between the slaveholding class and non-slaveholders in getting their fellow Southerners to rise up against the former. Southerners overwhelming saw it as an invasion by a dictatorial and hypocritical North. Lincoln himself said if he could’ve kept the union together without freeing a slave, he’d have done it. That was still the old Whig in him straddling the fence.
As for trying too hard to be even handed, I consider that a compliment. After all, if I’m attempting to analyze it through a historian’s perspective, shouldn’t I be ?
My Dad opined that getting shot was the best thing that ever happened to Kennedy.
He was a mediocre president, at best; and was looking at being a one-termer when he got plugged.
Suddenly, he became a brave, handsome martyr and Jackie was off and running with the Camelot myth.
Now you know why I prayed for the entire eight years that nobody would even thing of shooting Obama.
thing s/b think
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