The flu originated at Camp Funston at Fort Riley in Kansas in March 1918, where troops were mobilizing for deployment to Europe.
Rather than quarantine in the face of mass infection, the base continued to circulate new units through while covering up the spike in deaths from the diseases. They kicked off a global super spreader event as a result.
Once infected soldiers reached the cesspit of the European front lines, the disease rampaged all through the continent. But, for national security reasons, nobody would report on the sudden devastating rise in the mortality rate of soldiers. That is, except the Spanish media, which operated from a neutral country.
Because the Spanish press was the only media network reporting the disease, it earned the moniker “Spanish Flu”.
But there’s no way Wilson was unaware of the huge spike in mortality figures. His War Cabinet coordinated attempts at medical intervention at that same Kansas military base a year later, long after the cat was out of the bag.
But there’s no way Wilson was unaware of the huge spike in mortality figures. His War Cabinet coordinated attempts at medical intervention at that same Kansas military base a year later, long after the cat was out of the bag.
He should have known about it a year before they started doing medical intervention? I’m not sure the logic here. The fact that medical interventions at the same place a year later means people should’ve known when the first cases started being reported?
He should have known about it a year before they started doing medical intervention?
His administrative staff should have alerted him to it, at a minimum. And his chief officer corpse should have responded to the skyrocketing mortality rate of soldiers who hadn’t even reached the front lines yet.
But that would have disrupted the March to War, an unforgivable sin.
The fact that medical interventions at the same place a year later means people should’ve known when the first cases started being reported?
The fact that they were actively seeking to inoculate against the spread means they’d already recognized the problem in advance and yet continued to send infected troops to the front line for months.
I just did a quick search to brush up on why Andrew Jackson is a bad president, and I found a lot of similarities about corruption, ruling for personal gain or spite, authoritarianism, distrusting professional merit-based employees and replacing with personal loyalty-based amateurs , etc. Jackson starts with a lead as a war hero, but then again Trump didn’t try to destroy native Americans
Jackson also blatantly committed the high crime of ignoring a lawful court order from the supreme court. But congress knew it was political suicide to censure him for the trail of tears(which was absurdly popular) so he wasn’t impeached for it.
Trump is pretty bad. But he didn’t order a genocide and flout checks and balances to do it. Not that he isntr trying.
I think successful genocide is worse bc we know he went through with it. It’s theoretically possible that trump wouldn’t even though I’m 99 percent sure he would.
He did try to get a native casino in Connecticut closed in 1993. Part of his testimony to Congress was “You’re saying only Indians can have the reservations, only Indians can have the gaming. So why aren’t you approving it for everybody? Why are you being discriminatory? Why is it that the Indians don’t pay tax, but everybody else does? I do.”
but then again Trump didn’t try to destroy native Americans
He was quite happy for millions of Americans (regardless of ethnicity) to die rather than do the minimum amount of work to get Covid recognised as an actual problem, not to mention actively peddling bullshit theories that probably made things even worse.
I’m not an historian, but from what I know about Jackson, you could make the argument “he was an asshole, but he was of his time”, whereas Trump is an asshole regardless of what decade it is.
I conditionally disagree. It’s fine to judge the past by today’s standards, that’s how we know we’ve changed and are doing better.
However you must also judge them framed in their own time. Was the dude impaling his conquered opponents on spikes normal for the time or did neighboring kingdoms go “WTF, dude?!” If normal, he was NTA then, but definitely the asshole by today’s standards.
Understanding correctly framed history is not whitewashing. Changing, minimizing for gain, or cherry-picking history to meet today’s standards is.
This country was built on human slavery and genocide. Do not minimize or turn away from those evils
Can you stop with this shit? Nobody here is denying anything. We are discussing how we frame history from a modern perspective and whether or not the general population (not some minority) in Jackson’s time viewed his actions as unacceptable. If you don’t want to have that discussion, go wear your sandwich boards and earplugs elsewhere.
“We” are actually discussing how this country was built on slavery and genocide. Turning away from that fact because it makes you uncomfy won’t bring back those who were murdered by the United States
There are so many more Presidents worse than Trump that we simply never had to live through. Imagine your capital being burned to the fucking ground because your President decided to launch an ill-conceived invasion of Canada. Imagine being so unpopular a President that you come in third place as the incumbent. Imagine kicking off the “Spanish” Flu because you simply couldn’t resist playing the Great Game of European Powers at the tail end of the First World War.
Absent a second term to really crank things up a notch, Trump will go down in history as an embarrassment. But he’ll be lucky to break the Top 5 in terms of serious bad shit.
Who exactly ousted who? Trump lost, he wasn’t ousted by anybody.
Anyways, pretty much every republican president since nixon has tried to end democracy, that’s kind of the goal of the republican party you know, the one that isn’t called the democratic party? At least Trump didn’t invade native lands and kill innocent women and children on more than one occasion, or literally duel to the death with children. Trump is a terrible president but he doesn’t come close to the worst.
When are people going to understand that the president is not in charge of anything, and the president does not make any decisions? And this has been true since probably Kennedy was assassinated.
But yes I agree trump has been the worst all-around human being with lowest moral & personal character & lowest verbal abilities, (equal with Biden’s lowest cognitive abilities) to ever pretend to be figurehead of the United States.
It’s not like we’re short of objective evidence of Trump being awful, why hold up a glorified buzzfeed listicle as evidence as if it’s not incredibly cringe? Nevermind the trivializing of actual genocides
Man look, I don’t like Trump either, but it is legitimately offensive to so many minorities to call him the “worst president” when you have contenders like Andrew Jackson
He genocided the Native Americans. He ignored the constitutional structure of the executive and developed his own “kitchen cabinet” effectively siphoning power to give to his friends.
It’s not offensive it’s just recency bias. How are people honestly supposed to rank a leader that is 100+ years away from their own lives? It’s just a poll, it’s not a course on all the presidents and then an invitation to rank them in order.
Trump is the worst president in most living people’s lifetime, extrapolating more than that from this is a mistake.
Joe biden has the lowest approval rating of any US president that has ever sat in the oval office. By literally every single polling metric and every poll that has been conducted. He has lower approval than jimmy carter. Donald trump even though hes an evil moron. Still retains more popular support. I dont see how this post is anything more than 1 persons personal opinion of Joe biden.
That comment is an accurate summary of recent polls. Polls are representative samples of the public’s view. So no, the comment is clearly more than just “1 person’s personal opinion” because it provides a summary of the public’s opinion.
Trump is bad and I hope Biden wins. That doesn’t mean we need to bury our heads in the sand about Biden’s current polling. Especially when a lot of that poor polling amongst young people is caused by Biden’s enabling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Young people are considered unlikely voters in polling, so aren’t a factor in it. Polling numbers for Biden are basically identical now to where they were in the beginning of October. Sorry kids, if you don’t vote, you don’t impact the polling.
While Trump is willing to abandon allies because of popular social media narratives, Biden isn’t going to abandon an ally for that reason. And the social media narrative you’re consuming isn’t as popular as you might think.
Genocide isn’t a “popular narrative” it’s a reality and it is being committed by the United States and Israel.
Which shouldn’t be surprising given that both are settler colonialist states. We genocided the Native Americans, now Israel is doing the same to Gaza.
Biden’s actions here are repugnant and the worst foreign policy action this country has taken since GWB lied to invade Iraq and tortured innocent people in secret prisons. Turning your head away from this won’t make it go away
Aha! But that’s only using liberal brainwashing techniques… like maths and statistics. Algebra is ARABIC! The number 0 is the true number of the beast! PREVENT MATHS FROM CORRUPTING OUR CHILDREN!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏✝️=♥️, ✡️☪️=✖️UH OH IVE SULLIED MYSELF WITH SEMETIC DEVIL SYMBOLS!!!
I tried my best to be as obnoxious as possible to ensure authenticity. Distilled gravy seal, Karen energy. Bam: Parlor… I mean Truth Social. Both, really.
Wilson and Jackson are both worse than Trump. He was bad, but not refounding the KKK, segregation of The US Government, or Trail of Tears, bad. Heck Polk and Monroe could be considered worse than Trump and most people can’t remember who the first one was.
And yet on the other hand, none of them ever attempted a coup after losing an election. All I’m saying is, he’s in the running for worst of all time, but I don’t feel we ought to stroke that part of his ego by giving it to him.
Even with that. He’s a mediocre president at best. The absolute worst POTUSs were, in this order, #1 Wilson, #2 Jackson, #3 Reagan, #4 Nixon, #5 Polk, #6 Monroe.
He should be the 25th or 26th president. That puts him in the 45th percentile, which is exactly where he belongs. Ineffective, unintelligent, unremarkable, but trending towards greed, selfishness, and stupidity. He should always be the lowest on the scale, that always coincides with the 45th percentile.
For some reason we rarely remember the truly effective evil presidents.
By whom/in what poll? Of what respondents? When? What was the actual question asked?
I hate it when accounts like this just post a “fact” with no supporting documentation, source, link, or even image. Devoid of context, this is either important news or completely meaningless.
If this poll is by a reputable polling outfit, it’s probably significant (and the other answers should be available). If it’s a JavaScript poll posted on some random site, there’s no information here.
If the poll was asked of likely Dem voters, it’s not very significant (maybe significant that Biden is ranked so low). If it’s a representative sample of likely voters, it’s incredibly significant. Historians? Might be significant. “PeopleWhoRankPresidents.net” users? Definitely weird.
If it’s a poll from day 1 of the Biden admin, it’s not very notable. Though the framing of this tweet suggests the timing is “recently,” which may be significant.
If the question was, “rank every president in order of how pretty you think their dogs are,” then who cares? If it was “where do you think Biden and Trump rank in terms of policy,” then it’s almost as meaningless because nobody has taken the time to consider which thirteen go in front of Biden, that number is just a stab in the dark. If it’s “rank every president in your lifetime in terms of policy,” this is actually a terrible poll for Biden because it essentially puts him second-to-last.
Leaving these details out vastly weakens your point, because it sounds like you’re intentionally omitting those data points that don’t support your conclusion.
Or it’s just your own personal opinion. Which is fine! You’re on the internet, you’re allowed to have an opinion, just frame it as such. And it would be more interesting than an unsourced poll, honestly; particularly for somebody running a Twitter account about how good Biden is, why did you put him so low on the list?
Or you’re (not you, OP, the Twitter user) a Russian troll farm trying to drum up infighting in American politics. Which is, at this point, like trying to rinse off the deck of the Titanic.
Thanks, I appreciate the details. But my bigger point was that “@BidensWins” is not doing themselves, the internet, or Democrats any favors by posting a completely unsourced factoid.
Wilson, Jackson, Reagan, Nixon, Polk. Trump didn’t do even half the damage to the natives and the country that those 5 did. Wilson is why the US claims to act as “world police,” as well as a fuckton of other shit that is still affecting the citizenry to this day.
Were you there for Reagan? He was very personable, very persuasive, and able to build overwhelming popular support. You may not agree with many of his policies but he was successful. He also had a very capable cabinet. Again, you may not agree with some of what they did, but they were successful at it.
Lastly, most importantly, while conservatives may worship Reagan like an ancient god, he would be un-nominatably moderate when compared to current leading Conservatives.
Compared to Reagan, Trump is more authoritarian, less capable, less persuasive, more Conservative, more corrupt, more self-serving, and surrounded by incompetent yes-men.
I genuinely worry that Trump will get back in and that the consequences will be dire.
Sincerely hope that all the right wing nutjobs are a vocal minority and that we don’t actually have close to half the US electorate agreeing with Jan 6th.
Trump proves a few things, impeachment and federal charges don’t matter when your political system resembles the fandom of two rival sports teams.
Dismissing Trump as ‘just stupid’ is dangerous as fuck. He is incredibly successful at damaging the US, strengthening our enemies, and commiting evil - and then playing the village idiot card to skirt accountability.
Dude’s the closest thing irl to the fucking Darth Jar Jar theory.
I must say, I disagree. I’ve never gotten the vibe from him, that he actually knows what he’s doing or is aware of the consequences. I 100% think he is the village idiot, but is being manipulated by smarter people to do their bidding. I am not American, tough.
He definitely acts like an idiot - while I’m inclined to agree that it’s most likely sincere, I refuse to treat him like one. He needs to be held accountable as though everything he did was lucid and calculated, even if he is just Putin’s sock puppet.
I don’t want to give him too much credit for more competence than he shows, but how has he gotten this far? It’s not like he’s even had strong people manipulating g him - his family is more corrupt and incompetent than he is. And almost as narcissistic. Something got him into the presidency, somehow. Something’s got him a cult-like following despite acting against his own followers, somehow.
When it comes to world leaders, I take the opposite approach as Hanlon’s Razor: Never assume stupidity when malice is a plausible explanation.
Notice how the party of ‘the cruelty is the point’ is also full of blundering idiots. That may be in part because actual blundering idiots are attracted to that bullshit; but it’s also likely because it’s a successful strategy in that political environment.
I don’t really care that they’re just stupid - the problem is they’re evil.
Reagan may have done a lot of things people here disagree with, but he was successful at being wildly popular and he did do a lot of things that projected strength and leadership in the US. Compare that to Trump being extremely divisive, self-enriching, self-serving, corrupt, actively damaging the US government both internally and on the world stage. Even if we agree that Reagan perpetrated evil that has lasted decades, that is a kind of success that Trump will never know
and i'll have to go back and check my history books on this one, but i'm pretty sure he's the only one to take office two weeks after his predecessor tried to end the government
Let’s go ahead and reserve the word concentration camp for the industrialized murder factories hitler built in Europe. The Japanese internment was a horrible policy and it shows a real paucity of humanity. We are right to condemn our grandparents who perpetrated and supported the policy.
Concentration camps are, by definition, places where lots of people are crammed (concentrated). These were absolutely concentration camps. Hitler had death camps. They are not the same thing.
It was NOTHING like the final solution.
You’re right. It was more like the years leading up to the final solution, when people were shoved into ghettos or camps because of their race and the perceived threat of being that race
Why don’t you ask George Takei what he calls them? He was in one, though he’s far more forgiving about the experience than I suspect many of us, including myself, would be.
If you squint hard enough and hate him enough, you could argue Wilson as well (not the genocide part, but that depends on how much you think an earlier American entrance into WW1 would change things.
Edit: I should add that Wilson is basically single handedly responsible for the rebirth of the KKK
Not coincidentally, Andrew Jackson is one of Trump’s favorite presidents. He once displayed a portrait of Jackson in a room he was meeting with Native American leaders in.
I’ll ignore what could have happened with Teddy at the wheel entering the war as quickly as he could.
Wilson wrote Southern Revisionism, as you said refounded the KKK, segregated The Federal Government, expanded the presidential powers to tyrannical proportions with the sedition and insurrection act, erected a bunch of statues that we are finally tearing down, of people that said they never wanted statues because they were traitors, started and expanded wars in South and Central America to create banana republics, and fostered endless US wars with Wilsonian Doctrine.
Just what he did doesn’t require squinting at all.
What still gets to me is Gingrich leading with the goddamned trumpet against this… unconscionable marital betrayer from the Democratic Party… then gets his multiple affairs and betrayals exposed. So he quits. The trumpet is proudly picked up by Livingstone… who promptly gets his Washington extramarital affair exposed.
It’s incredible how republicans turned all of our politics into a toilet, arrogantly huffing and puffing as some sort of self-appointed moral and christian “keepers of the flame”, and they cannot handle a lesson as simple and crucial as that story in the Gospels - “He who is without sin, cast the first stone”.
And look at them now. Today republicans are worse in every respect, including mental/emotional health or balance, by an order of magnitude. They don’t care about optics anymore, have gone up their own assholes several times over, like some sort of fleshy klein bottle.
republicans are warped beyond reality and decency, by a hypocrisy from a self-imposed ignorance, that is as corrosive as greed.
EDIT: it was during a late-90s afternoon, driving on the highway from Bakersfield to Los Angeles while listening to the Clinton impeachment charade live on NPR Radio, that something clicked inside my head and I clearly realized that republicans are an enemy of the true common good. That’s when I started hating that group of political cancer cells on society. Then we got cheney and baby bush.
Wilson, Jackson, Polk, Reagan. If you really want scandalous Jackson is easily the most scandalous President in history. The country was shocked when he got in, and he went on to cause the Trail of Tears, and the deepest (by percentage, not actual dollar value) and longest depression in US history, by paying off all the national debt, and rendering the country unable to trade with other countries for a few years.
Wilson wrote Southern Revisionism, refounded the KKK, erected a bunch of statues that we are finally tearing down, segregated The Federal Government, and may have caused WW2, and definitely set the stage for endless wars with Wilsonian Doctrine. He also caused and expanded several conflicts in South and Central America creating banana republics. Oh yeah, he expanded the presidential powers to tyrannical proportions with the sedition and insurrection act.
Polk did Manifest Destiny, and was generally an asshole to the natives, and Monroe created The Monroe Doctrine, continuing the general assholery towards the natives, though those two probably weren’t considered scandalous in their day.
Reagan had Iran Contra. That did give us some fun video games though.
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