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
  • TheDrink [he/him]
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    2 days ago

    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.

    • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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      11 hours ago

      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.

    • @AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      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?

      • TheDrink [he/him]
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        21 day ago

        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.

  • @Today@lemmy.world
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    242 days ago

    I would hire nucular George every day for the next 4 years to get rid of the orange dipshit.

    • @undercrust@lemmy.ca
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      121 day ago

      It is absolutely fuckin bonkers that Trump is so bad that a person can say they yearn for the good old days with Dubya without a hint of sarcasm

      • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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        412 hours ago

        Dubya at least had a face of ‘compassionate’ conservatism, and believed in the rule of law. Yeah, he bent the law a lot, but he never outright broke it. He was incompetent–or, he was at least not up to the task of being a president–but not apparently malicious.

        Pity that SCOTUS stepped in with the Florida recount, since it was eventually found that Gore should have won. I wonder where we’d be on climate change now if Gore had won? Oh well Florida, enjoy your flooding and hurricanes.

    • @OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org
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      2 days ago

      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.

        • @OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org
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          220 hours ago

          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.

          • @AntiOutsideAktion@lemmy.ml
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            218 hours ago

            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.

            • @OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org
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              156 minutes ago

              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?

    • @AndrasKrigare@beehaw.org
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      261 day ago

      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.

      • @Sauerkraut@discuss.tchncs.de
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        513 hours ago

        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.

        • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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          512 hours ago

          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.

          • The Cuuuuube
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            311 hours ago

            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!

      • DigitalDilemma
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        1 day ago

        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.

      • 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.

    • ...m...
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      2 days ago

      …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)

    • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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      27 hours ago

      The idiot son of an asshole

      Now there’s a song I haven’t heard in a long time. Thanks!

  • JokeDeity
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    133 minutes ago

    I don’t care about others opinions on this one bit, for my money. When looking at how much long term damage they have done to the country, our global relations and to the world in general; it’s Donald and it’s not even a close contest.

  • NeoToasty
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    231 day ago

    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.

    • @HelixDab2@lemm.ee
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      912 hours ago

      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.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod
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        47 hours ago

        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.

    • Random Dent
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      7 hours ago

      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.

  • ℕ𝕖𝕞𝕠
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    452 days ago

    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.

      • The Cuuuuube
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        411 hours ago

        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

      • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        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.

    • P_P
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      2 days ago

      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.

      • @OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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        72 days ago

        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.

        • @Ledivin@lemmy.world
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          31 day ago

          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.

  • Dessalines
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    8 hours ago

    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.