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I only just learned that Grover Cleveland was a rapist. I knew about the sex scandal and the child, but I didn't know it was flat-out rape.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:07
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Grapplejack posted:If the US never entered the way we're looking at an insane alt-history where it's extremely likely that Lenin and Hitler died in the trenches rather than being sent back to Russia / living to found the Nazi party. I can't imagine what Europe would even look like if we just left them out to rot. Lenin wasn't in the trenches and he wasn't "sent" to Russia, he was running around Finland and A-H trying to start a revolution because german socialist support for the war went entirely against the second international. He's already back speaking to crowds in Petersburg by the time America votes to go to war and he's leader of the October revolution 3 months before the US arrives on the continent. Germany failed to break the blockade before the US even arrived, the spring offensive was never going to be sustainable and was just throwing the kitchen sink at France without any real hope of holding on. So your choice is either France utterly destroys Germany in revenge in around 1919 (and becomes an aggressive superpower in a short time) or the red guards hijack the anti-war movement and general unrest in Germany, which has a communist revolution and surrenders sometime in late 1918, provoking major political unrest in Britain and possibly open warfare (as well as an immediate begging of US aid for what would likely be a very bad deal). By 1928 you have a consolidated military superpower and you can pick whether it's France or a bolsh superstate based on how exactly you think Europe reacts to a succesful communist revolution that suddenly doesn't have to honour it's surrender. Wilson's move is almost certainly the right choice at the time even if you can be mean and say it directly caused hitler (by not wiping germany off the earth) You also have to deal with no international diplomacy on the level of the LoN which means no UN today and it's a really fun clusterfuck to think about, as well as concerns over whether a less insane german dictatorship is capable of finishing it's nuke in the 40s before the US snatches it. In the scenario communism dominates Europe, this goes poorly for the US. Wilson is your best president, is what I'm saying.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:26
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Also, gently caress Teddy Roosevelt, the original racist white weeaboo.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:28
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Spangly A posted:Lenin wasn't in the trenches and he wasn't "sent" to Russia, he was running around Finland and A-H trying to start a revolution because german socialist support for the war went entirely against the second international. He's already back speaking to crowds in Petersburg by the time America votes to go to war and he's leader of the October revolution 3 months before the US arrives on the continent. Germany failed to break the blockade before the US even arrived, the spring offensive was never going to be sustainable and was just throwing the kitchen sink at France without any real hope of holding on. Was it a given that the Spring Offensive wouldn't have worked? Had their breakthrough gotten them to Paris they probably would've been able to get something approaching a good peace deal, although I guess that would've required them to have far more in the way of supplies and soldiers at that point. I'm not an expert on the end of WW1 though.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:35
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Howsabout everyone's favorite white supremacist President? No, it's not Andrew Jackson or Mango Mussolini. It's Andrew Johnson, the Tailor From Tennessee. Alternate Title: How We hosed Up Our Chance To Give The South What It Really Deserved Look at this sourpuss motherfucker. Even if you know nothing about him this picture alone should make you hate him:  Ugh. He looks like he sat on a loving cactus. Or, in Johnson's case, he probably saw a black person learning, given that he was an insanely racist motherfucker. Johnson was in a very difficult political position when the Civil War began--he was an oddity in the United States Senate as the only Senator from a southern state to remain loyal and not walk out. Honestly, I'm not sure how that poo poo even works. If your state is no longer in the Union, who the gently caress do you represent? If you don't know your Presidential history, you might not know that in 1864, Abraham Lincoln's reelection was by no means a sure thing. People were sick of the fighting and sick of their family members dying. The Civil War was the first war where people could actually see battlefield images of death and destruction, due to the work of people like Mathew Brady bringing the war into their homes. As a result, there was a growing number of people in the Union that were pushing to sue for peace, regardless of what it meant for the Union or the thousands of suddenly-freed slaves in the Union-occupied parts of the South. General George McClellan (yes, that George McClellan) stepped into this void. McClellan, as any Civil War buff knows, was one of the former commanders of the Army of the Potomac and the former General-in-Chief of all the Union armies. While he had an excellent military mind, he was vain, selfish, and slow to act on orders. When he failed to pursue Robert E. Lee's battered Confederate army after Antietam, Lincoln had had enough and fired him. He was also one dapper motherfucker. Look at that mustache:  McClellan's argument was simple: Sue for peace. End the war. Stop the killing. Implicit in this was "gently caress the freed blacks", but that wasn't said. It was an effective argument, and Republicans began to panic, as the idea of a) splitting the Union permanently in two and b) losing out on their chance to smack the South around didn't exactly appeal to them. So a bunch of guys got together in a room and decided that in order to make Lincoln look less like the symbol of division he was becoming to many people, they'd find the closest thing they could find to an actual Confederate politician and make him the Vice President. It sounds completely moronic and illogical, but none of these guys ever entertained the idea that Senator Andrew Johnson (D-TN) would become President. There had never been a Presidential assassination in history, and since Lincoln had not shown any signs of fragility like Harrison or Taylor, the Republicans didn't even countenance the idea. Well, if you know your history, you know what happened. The Election of 1864 was not close:  Lincoln and Johnson stomped McClellan and the war continued until April of the following year when the South surrendered. Then Ford's Theater happened. All of a sudden Andrew Johnson, Democrat, Tennessean, and racist, is President--and this is after he gives a famously drunken-and-expletive-laden speech at Inauguration in March. Apparently, he had tried to treat a bout of typhoid fever with generous helpings of whiskey. He was so drunk that he couldn't even swear in the new Senators that had been elected. It led to Lincoln having to publicly defend his new Vice President: "Andy ain't a drunkard". As we've learned, Johnson never gave another drunk speech, but he was plenty horrible while sober. This was reflected almost immediately when Lincoln's plan for Reconstruction was compared to his:
It doesn't look bad. The problem lay in Johnson's unwillingness to use federal authority to enforce anything beyond these very narrow statutes. As a result, the South replaced slavery with the Black Codes and Jim Crow, and Johnson not only refused to enforce the 13th and 14th Amendment rights granted to the newly-freed blacks, he vetoed the Civil Rights bill of 1866. He was a racist dick and a petty shithead, much like our current President. End of Part 1.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:40
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Andrew Johnson Part 2, or How The Radical Republicans (Tried To) Get Their Groove Back 1866 was a bad year for Andrew Johnson. He hamfistedly attempted to win support for himself and his handpicked midterm candidates by going on a speaking tour of several Northern states, but he had some run-ins with hecklers and his speeches were basically early Donald Trump--angry, confrontational, and vitriolic. As a result, Republicans swept to veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate, and the Radicals passed civil rights legislation over Johnson's head AND took control over Reconstruction. Now, if you know anything about Johnson, you know that he was the first President to face impeachment. How did it happen, you ask? It has a lot to do with a guy named Edwin M. Stanton.  Look at that fuckin beard. Stanton was a Radical Republican and a holdover from Lincoln's cabinet--as Secretary of War, he held sole responsibility for compliance with Congressional Reconstruction policies, and Congress knew he'd play ball as long as he held the office. To ensure that Johnson couldn't just fire him, they passed something called the Tenure of Office Act in 1867, overriding Johnson's veto to do so. It was, of course, a nakedly political act, as it required the President to seek the consent of the Senate before firing anyone in his Cabinet. In their zeal to protect Stanton, however, Congress didn't count on the fact that while Johnson couldn't fire Stanton, he could suspend him--and he did so in August 1867 when Stanton refused to resign his office. Johnson appointed General Ulysses S. Grant as interim Secretary in the meantime. However, he bungled it when he tried to get Grant to agree that in the event the Senate refused to let Johnson formally remove Stanton that Grant either a) stay in office or b) pre-notify Johnson so Stanton's replacement could be queued up. Grant claimed there was no such agreement. In January 1868 the Senate made it official--by a vote of 35-6, they told Johnson he couldn't fire Stanton. Grant vacated the office the same day and did not notify Johnson, and Stanton resumed his post. Things snowballed from there. Johnson offered the post to General Lorenzo Thomas, but Thomas turned it down. However, he was eventually convinced to help Johnson manufacture a court case to test the validity of the Tenure of Office Act, and on February 21, Johnson formally announced Thomas as Stanton's successor and ordered Thomas to personally deliver Stanton's removal notice to him. Stanton's response was to barricade himself in his office and order Thomas' arrest. That's when things REALLY got weird. Three days later on February 24, the House of Representatives voted 126-47 in favor of an impeachment resolution against Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. One week after that, the House adopted 11 specific articles of impeachment:
And thus Johnson's trial began. In the Senate, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presided, and the impeachment committee consisted of seven members:  Seated, left to right: Rep. Benjamin F. Butler (R-MA), Rep. Thaddeus Stevens (R-PA), Rep. Thomas Williams (R-PA), and Rep. John Bingham (R-OH) Standing, left to right: Rep. James Wilson (R-IA), Rep. George Boutwell (R-MA), and Rep. John Logan (R-IL) There were 54 Senators. Republicans needed 36 to get a conviction. On the first vote, it was very close--35-19, one vote short. 10 Republican Senators voted against conviction, among them Sen. Edmund Ross (R-Kansas). Ross was told before the vote that if he voted to acquit Johnson he would face corruption charges for bribery. Ross was hardly alone in this--the trial was rife with charges of influence peddling and bribery. Arguments were made, especially by Congressman Butler, that many Republican Senators had sold their votes to acquit for promises of jobs or other patronage from the White House. None of these charges got traction, though, and there is evidence that the pro-conviction Republicans tried to buy votes for their side. Senator William Fessenden from Maine, for example, was offered the Great Britain ambassadorship if he played ball. Butler himself got into hot water when it was discovered that he was willing to offer Senator Ross money in exchange for his vote. Looking back, it's obvious that both sides played extremely dirty. In the end, the vote count held fast. Three times the Senate came up one vote short: 35-19. Johnson was acquitted, and this apparently made some people in Massachusetts so caremad that they actually submitted a petition to Congress that proposed abolishing the Presidency. What you should learn from all of this is that Andrew Johnson was a horrible loving abortion of a person who basically let the South come back into the Union without punishment, and Congressional Republicans hosed up their only chance to remove him from office. Fritz Coldcockin fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 00:43
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axeil posted:Was it a given that the Spring Offensive wouldn't have worked? Had their breakthrough gotten them to Paris they probably would've been able to get something approaching a good peace deal, although I guess that would've required them to have far more in the way of supplies and soldiers at that point. Pretty much yes. They made some breakthroughs but were hampered by the fact they'd eaten their horses and when they made it into the allied rear cohesion collapsed as soldiers started looting for food. Germany didn't run out of men, (although their casualties were in excess of what they could get back) they ran out of food, and the problem was worse at home.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:54
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Spangly A posted:So your choice is either France utterly destroys Germany in revenge in around 1919 (and becomes an aggressive superpower in a short time) or the red guards hijack the anti-war movement and general unrest in Germany, which has a communist revolution and surrenders sometime in late 1918, provoking major political unrest in Britain and possibly open warfare (as well as an immediate begging of US aid for what would likely be a very bad deal). It's been a long time since I did any WW1 reading but I thought before the US entered it was looking like both sides were more or less exhausted and unable to achieve any breakouts, thus without US entry Britain and France wouldn't have been able to put Germany's nuts in a vice for reparations.
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Feb 20, 2018 00:54
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Furnaceface posted:Dumb foreigner question: Is there a reason why Truman and Reagan always place so high on these? Is it just time fading all the horrible things they said and did or have recent presidents been so bad that they look favourable in comparison? the deepest, most fundamental commitment of the American intellectual establishment is to empire, and Truman and Reagan played critical roles in expanding and strengthening American empire Spangly A posted:Lenin wasn't in the trenches and he wasn't "sent" to Russia, he was running around Finland and A-H trying to start a revolution because german socialist support for the war went entirely against the second international. He's already back speaking to crowds in Petersburg by the time America votes to go to war and he's leader of the October revolution 3 months before the US arrives on the continent. Germany failed to break the blockade before the US even arrived, the spring offensive was never going to be sustainable and was just throwing the kitchen sink at France without any real hope of holding on. I like the sound of Bolshevik Superstate. Maybe you get a Petain-led fascist France in opposition to it allied with Mussolini? icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 00:58
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axeil posted:Was it a given that the Spring Offensive wouldn't have worked? Had their breakthrough gotten them to Paris they probably would've been able to get something approaching a good peace deal, although I guess that would've required them to have far more in the way of supplies and soldiers at that point. No, it's not an absolute given. It's not a move they took lightly and it's hard to imagine it moves so quickly without the immediate threat of the US pushing their poo poo in. It's an enormous risk that totally broke their supply lines as well as wasting whatever advantage they gain from shutting the eastern front. From the moment it's clear the US are going to enter Germany can't stall for time and see if they can swing the attrition of the uboats back in their favour, which is also not a given that leans towards "they can't" depending on how much material support the US fancy lending the allies. The convoys weren't great and Britain is still bleeding 2-300,000 tonnes of supplies, but Germany isn't a functional state at this point. Wilson also tips the scales of the peace agreement well against them; as you say, the point of the spring offensive was a good peace deal, holding France with the US on the way simply isn't going to work. They're exhausted, totally restricted to land warfare, and the anti-war movement is gaining momentum. The third outcome, I suppose, is that the threat of communist revolt is enough that everyone agrees the pope mediates a neutral peace deal by 1919. If it ends this way we aren't going to see much change; you're still going to have all kinds of really hosed off german nationalists joining socialist movements, the jews are getting blamed for everything, and the two modern european powers have a grudge to settle. The Empire still collapses because it simply wasn't governable. I just think it's really harsh to blame Wilson for strong-arming congress when all signs point towards communism and war if he doesn't, and the European consensus is very much that the US acted too late to prevent the bitterness and damage that get codified in Versaille as such powerful propaganda. There's also the minor quibble that if the US had remained truly isolationist in ww1 it wouldn't have been rich from war profiteering to relentlessly war profiteer in ww2 and remains a cotton-producing backwater. Again, best president  Farmer Crack-rear end posted:It's been a long time since I did any WW1 reading but I thought before the US entered it was looking like both sides were more or less exhausted and unable to achieve any breakouts, thus without US entry Britain and France wouldn't have been able to put Germany's nuts in a vice for reparations. The anti-war and pro-communist movements probably do scare everyone enough to agree a papal-mediated peace treaty tbh, it's really important not to underestimate both British and German relations to communism in the face of an actual communist revolution suddenly appearing. There's a big difference between calculating metric tonnage of various supplies lost vs time until total starvation and whether or not the enlisted are actually willing to keep going, given the French were already facing serious problems with mutiny and everyone else was getting real close. France's interest wasn't reparations, France wanted blood. Britain wanted to build a German democracy. The US didn't want a new French empire, but it did very much want money. If the US isn't present in those negotiations when they happen, there is no way Britain can hold France off. It's the US that brokered the deal that history remembers as a compromise, and the US did extremely well out of it. If Wilson invades earlier it's probably a lot less messy, Germany dragging them into the war with the uboats happened because they were really quite screwed. If the US doesn't invade at all it doesn't end up becoming a superpower, it's a pretty key moment in their ascent. Is this controversial? UK schools teaching of American history places huge emphasis not only on the role of war bonds (and war tech) in the US ascent, but paints Wilson as the guy that saw the opportunity and grabbed it.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:15
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Any chance for a writeup on why Millard Filmore is a motherfucker?
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Feb 20, 2018 01:15
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Compromise of 1850, namely the Fugitive Slave act.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:22
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Instant Sunrise posted:Any chance for a writeup on why Millard Filmore is a motherfucker? His name was "Millard Fillmore". What more do you need?
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Feb 20, 2018 01:22
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10) John Tyler, 1841-1845 (37) 11) James Knox Polk, 1845-1849 (20) 12) Zachary Taylor, 1849-1850 (35) 13) Millard Fillmore, 1850-1853 (39) 14) Franklin Pierce, 1853-1857 (41) 15) James Buchanan, 1857-1861 (43) Absent Polk, who is bouyed by his successful expansionism, every president in the twenty years before the civil war is treated increasingly harshly by historians as their one term presidencies fail to find any solution for the increasing political tensions.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:31
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Alter Ego posted:
hey, ben butler! since it's in the spirit of this thread (effortposts about old politicians) and butler was a presidential candidate i wanted to recycle this post i made in response to seeing butler on a list of "union war criminals" quote:haha that benjamin butler is on there (bottom right) quote:another fun fact about butler, people hated him so loving much he got a bunch of nicknames. one of them was "beast" butler. that's the kind of insulting nickname that has resonance in the modern era
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Feb 20, 2018 01:34
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Woodrow Wilson is a motherfucker and was the worst president we had in the 20th century. Wilson single-handedly rewrote the playbook on US diplomacy and his style of diplomacy remains in use to this day. Wilson had the US occupy the Mexican city of Veracruz as well as the entire island of Hispaniola, via separate occupations of Haiti and Dominical Republic, prior to entering WW1. He was also super loving racist and endorsed the movie that single-handedly revived the KKK. And in his second term, he was so goddamn focused on the Treaty of Versailles that he basically gave zero fucks about what was happening back home. But his cabinet full of absolute motherfuckers were doing everything they could to make it worse. Bu the summer of 1919 had Wilson giving absolutely zero shits while things went to hell. Notable cabinet members included Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who organized the predecessor organization to the FBI known as the BOI. Highlights include:
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Feb 20, 2018 01:43
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Instant Sunrise posted:Woodrow Wilson is a motherfucker and was the worst president we had in the 20th century. The 20th century included Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:45
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Alter Ego posted:The 20th century included Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. That's fair, but Wilson was still responsible for the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1917 (which wasn't repealed until well after the war). So the modern Surveillance State was all on him. Plus the Boston Police Strike was literally the 1919 version of The Purge. And, you know, exiling political dissidents to Russia.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:55
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boner confessor posted:hey, ben butler! Butler is notable for his service even before New Orleans, too. When he was at Fort Monroe the Confederates contacted him. See, U.S. forces in the area weren't giving back escaped slaves, and Southerners were mad about that. Now, other U.S. Army commanders (like Fremont) had made attempts at abolition already but had been shut down by the Federal government, which wasn't ready to take that step. Butler had a solution, though. The Confederates were relying on the argument that the Fugitive Slave Act was still federal law, and that therefore Butler was obligated to return any escaped slaves to their masters. Butler acknowledged that it was still law, but that according to the Confederates, Virginia was no longer part of the Union. Therefore he couldn't be compelled to return them to Virginians, as federal law no longer applied there, according to the Virginians themselves. They couldn't have it both ways. I like to imagine Butler had a super smug grin when he said all that. This basically became formal U.S. Army policy later on. While he didn't directly free any of the slaves that went to Union lines at that time, his decision (and his argument for it) basically paved the way for large numbers of slaves being freed even before the war was over. So Ben Butler was a pretty okay dude and a better person than a good chunk of the people in this thread who actually won the presidency.
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Feb 20, 2018 01:56
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Instant Sunrise posted:Plus the Boston Police Strike was literally the 1919 version of The Purge. See: Why Calvin Coolidge Got Famous
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Feb 20, 2018 02:41
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Alter Ego posted:Howsabout everyone's favorite white supremacist President? These were fantastic and I added links to them to the OP. Spangly A posted:
Wasn't a large issue that Wilson had a stroke by the time the Treaty of Versailles negotiation began in earnest and thus was unable to adequately advocate for his "peace with honor" belief? I know a lot of the German anger afterwords was because they surrendered believing they would be getting peace with honor and instead got reparations and a giant bag of poo poo. I'm enough of an idealist to think if that had been the real peace deal things might have turned out okay. It's interesting that you mention how the UK teaches US intervention in WW1. My recollection from my AP US History course was that the Americans came in and broke the lines and won the war for the Entente...when in reality we mostly did dumb poo poo like attack the Ardennes despite the British and French telling us it was stupid and getting a few tens of thousands green soldiers killed for no reason. The US history books don't focus much on the whole "US forces were arrogant and thought they knew everything and as a result incurred way more casualties than they should've" aspect. Instant Sunrise posted:Any chance for a writeup on why Millard Filmore is a motherfucker? farraday posted:Compromise of 1850, namely the Fugitive Slave act. Yeah, I don't have time unfortunately or I'd try and do it justice but the Fugitive Slave Act is one of the most immoral and lovely laws the US has ever passed. It took abolitionism from that thing the weird Christian idealists talked about to something the average day Northerner wanted. axeil fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 03:58
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I had a surprising amount of fun writing that and I'm willing to take requests since I can't decide which one I wanna do next. Who wants to learn about Presidents? 
Fritz Coldcockin fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 04:12
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Alter Ego posted:I had a surprising amount of fun writing that and I'm willing to take requests since I can't decide which one I wanna do next. People seem to want Millard Filmore
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Feb 20, 2018 04:13
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axeil posted:People seem to want Millard Filmore OK. Not my first choice, but here goes. Why Millard Fillmore Is A Shitlord You might know Millard Fillmore as the answer to the occasional Jeopardy question and the President whose name makes people giggle, but did you know that he is also a shitlord? That's right! Here's just some of the things that make Millard Fillmore a shitlord: He started his political life as an Anti-Mason. That's right, folks. Fillmore decided that he'd hitch his political wagon to the Alex Jones movement of the day, the Anti-Masonic Party. Fillmore claimed that the order "tramples upon our rights, defeats the administration of justice, and bids defiance to every government which it cannot control". Now, it's true that many of our Founders were Masons, as was Andrew Jackson (aka the reason for the Whig Party's existence), but seriously? He once referred to slavery as "an existing evil for which we are not responsible". Sure, he qualified it with "God knows that I detest slavery", but that's the 1830s equivalent of "I'm not racist, but...". Fillmore was just one in a long line of Presidents who were unwilling or unable to do anything to disrupt the social order. He supported the Compromise of 1850 as President. Not only did he support the bill, he was an enthusiastic supporter of what is perhaps its worst component: the Fugitive Slave Act. This odious piece of legislation mandated that Northerners who caught slaves fleeing North return them to their Southern owners under penalty of law. It literally criminalized giving them a glass of water. When he found out that the dying remnants of the Whigs weren't going to renominate him, he bolted the party. The best part is where he bolted to: the newly-birthed Know-Nothing Party. These motherfuckers formed out of protest for what big-city political machines were doing with the ever-increasing Irish voting blocs in big cities--using them to keep chosen candidates in power. Instead of combating the actual fraud, however, some groups of Americans chose to attack Catholics instead. One such group of shitlords, the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, taught all its members a secret phrase to use whenever questioned about the Order's activities: "I know nothing." Thus their new name was born, and I'm not sure anyone in their newly-formed political party realized the irony. When Fillmore joined up, he blamed "foreign Catholics" for the fact that the Whigs had kicked him to the curb in 1852. This is basically the 19th century equivalent of "drat ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT MEXICANS MADE ME LOSE THE POPULAR VOTE!!!!!". Scapegoating the Irish and Catholics allowed Fillmore to breathe new life into his corpse of a political career, and in 1856 they nominated him for President. He claimed that the Irish were "corrupting the ballot box--that great palladium of our liberty--into an unmeaning mockery". Needless to say, he lost--badly. The Know-Nothings, however, didn't fade with him--they became the precursors of a little organization we know today as the Ku Klux Klan. Millard Fillmore was a shitlord and although I wish more people were aware of why he was a shitlord, him being forgotten is the next best thing.
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Feb 20, 2018 04:44
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Alter Ego posted:Alternate Title: How We hosed Up Our Chance To Give The South What It Really Deserved
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Feb 20, 2018 15:22
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axeil posted:People seem to want Millard Filmore 
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Feb 20, 2018 15:22
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farraday posted:10) John Tyler, 1841-1845 (37) Zachary Taylor and Pierce are personally responsible for me not being fairly closely related to a President.  turns out that being a fat pompous rear end in a top hat isn't always a route to popularity my favorite Winfield Scott character moment was when he very nearly ended his military career by very publicly calling his commanding officer a corrupt incompetent coward it probably didn't help that, as usual, Scott was absolutely correct I should do an effortpost on him, he's an honorary US President and his last major professional act was constructing the blueprint for strangling the traitor states
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Feb 20, 2018 20:18
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axeil posted:
It's worth noting that the idea of Versailles as this godawful unfair oppressive deal is nazi propaganda through-and-through. The worst you can say is it's the same sort of reparations that the french got 50 years earlier and somehow France didn't become nazi by 1895.
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Feb 21, 2018 03:34
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axeil posted:The Compromise of 1877 or Why Rutherford B. Hayes Is a Motherfucker He's a motherfucker but goddamn I read that and go, he did the best with what he had to work with it. As in threading a needle of a second civil war... Still want to say hes a racist motherfucker. BlueBlazer fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Feb 21, 2018 |
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Feb 21, 2018 03:50
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:It's worth noting that the idea of Versailles as this godawful unfair oppressive deal is nazi propaganda through-and-through. The worst you can say is it's the same sort of reparations that the french got 50 years earlier and somehow France didn't become nazi by 1895. There's a line of thought I've seen recently that the problem wasn't that Versailles was all that bad compared to similar treaties, but that when it happened, most of Germany didn't realize they were losing. The basic idea is that Germany was in range of Paris as late as the Spring Offensive in 1918, and that Germany was basically untouched by any actual fighting. When the armistice took effect the German army was in full retreat, having abandoned most of their heavy materiel and just generally being in complete disarray. By then there really was no effective way for the German army to recover, and while the government knew that, the people never really saw any evidence of it. There weren't towns with tons of unexploded ordnance over the place; there weren't cities and crossings that had been occupied. For most of the war they had been on the attack in a strategic sense, and the capitulation happened before the civilian populace had much time to realize anything had changed. This made it easy for propagandists after the war, the early Nazis included, to paint Versailles as this horribly unfair imposition on the Germans - it's the kind of treaty that happens when you lose, but they didn't feel like they had lost. Therefore, clearly, the German people had to have been betrayed somehow, and it was relatively easy from there to provide a convenient list of scapegoats. Interestingly, Wilson actually wanted a much less harsh Versailles, as reflected in the Fourteen Points; a combination of factors led to France doing the bulk of the negotiating and Wilson being sidelined. Because of the dissemination of the Fourteen Points before the end of the war as propaganda, this actually pissed the Germans off even more, as they'd assumed peace without outright defeat would have been along those lines, rather than what they got. So on this Wilson showed he knew what had to happen, but his inability to make sure that the treaty reflected that ended up being its own unfortunate problem.
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Feb 21, 2018 04:10
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BlueBlazer posted:He's a motherfucker but goddamn I read that and go, he did the best with what he had to work with it. He's a motherfucker...but I'm not sure what else he could've done in that situation. The options presented to him were: 1) Concede the election 2) Have Grant do something (martial law, etc.) that would give him the result 3) Allow the House to continually object to the Commission results, deadlocking things in perpetuity 4) A compromise A 21st century cynic would probably go with option 3 and rely on public opinion eventually forcing the House's hand, but this was the 1870s and people weren't as jaded then. Alternatively, it could've effectively abolished the Presidency for the next 4 years and given the immense power the Executive had just gotten via Lincoln would've been an amusing way to transition to a parliamentary system. The real galaxy brain option would've been to agree to the compromise...and then refuse to end reconstruction and let the South get away with Jim Crow but I doubt Hayes was interested in destroying the GOP's legitimacy and power over a bunch of ex-slaves in the South  American history could've been a lot different if the Republicans had just nominated Blaine like they were planning to.
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Feb 21, 2018 05:45
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America was also in the middle of a depression at that time, so it's easy to be mad at Hayes, but the writing was on the wall as the North moved on to other worries.
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Feb 21, 2018 06:36
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If we're allowed to make requests, is there an interesting story about how Grover Cleveland managed to get two non-consecutive terms? (I realize I could wiki this kind of thing but the effortposts are way more interesting/relatable than dry wiki text.)
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Feb 21, 2018 10:06
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axeil posted:American history could've been a lot different if the Republicans had just nominated Blaine like they were planning to. Not in a good way. Blaine was corrupt as all-gently caress, and well-known for being corrupt as all-gently caress, to the point that when he was nominated in 1884, the party split and Cleveland was elected. If he were the nominee, Tilden wins and we get a Democratic administration that still ends Reconstruction and maybe enacts more pro-Jim Crow, pro-white southerner legislation; the best you could hope for would be Blaine keeping Reconstruction chugging for a few more years before the 1880 election where the Democrats win due to Blaine's continued corruption making the Grant administration look like pikers.
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Feb 21, 2018 13:32
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Bumping this because I really don't want it to go away. I love this subject, even if Presidents' Day was a month ago. I've written articles about some real shitlords so far; can someone please give me a request for "Why President X Was Cool and Good"?
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Mar 21, 2018 16:27
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Alter Ego posted:Bumping this because I really don't want it to go away. I love this subject, even if Presidents' Day was a month ago. I think LBJ is probably a good one since he signed the Civil Rights Act knowing it would permanently destroy the Democrat's strength in the South because it was the right thing to do. He'd be top 3 if it wasn't for Vietnam.
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Mar 21, 2018 16:35
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axeil posted:I think LBJ is probably a good one since he signed the Civil Rights Act knowing it would permanently destroy the Democrat's strength in the South because it was the right thing to do. If I try to do an LBJ one I'm basically going to just quote Robert Caro over and over Give me some time to put together a decent-sized effortpost. Wish we got more of the Trump thread traffic... Fritz Coldcockin fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Mar 21, 2018 |
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Mar 21, 2018 16:38
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I probably should write up one on Taft, especially since he's perennially on my list of "least evil" US presidents. Who knew not wanting to be president at all might make you less prone to delusions of grandeur?
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Mar 21, 2018 18:56
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And a lot of Grant bashing is questionable, because a lot of racists hated him because he was willing to use federal force to crack down on southern nationalism and the klan. His reputation only went down a lot around the same time all those Confederate memorials went up.
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Mar 21, 2018 19:20
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| # ? May 7, 2024 09:33 |
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Alter Ego posted:Bumping this because I really don't want it to go away. I love this subject, even if Presidents' Day was a month ago. Seconded. This is a great thread, keep it going!
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Mar 22, 2018 11:10
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