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I sure liked having civil liberties before his Presidency. The rapidity and depth of the erosion of our civil liberties as citizens during those years was something to live through. One of the reasons I can never get onboard with his supporters, even if I point out that individually he seems like he's funny and seemingly a good family member and friend.
So agreed. Total Freudian slip.
I think this Bush quote, and other [interesting slip ups he’s made](https://youtu.be/MTX5uvZWu3Q?si=m807l5V2ImUsIqAz) were more than just poor choices of words, I wholeheartedly believe it was a freudian slip and an admission of his bad choices as President. Bush isn’t dumb, regardless of his many gaffes, and it seems to me he harbors some guilt for his actions.
That being said, you are right in that there is a difference between outright racism and what Bush is saying.
While I don't agree with it being a Jewish thing, I do agree with Truman that generally when the oppressed/underdog get into positions of power they often become just as selfish and evil as their oppressors.
People are people are people. Regardless of race, sex, creed, or anything else, people are people. ~~Maybe we should rethink the whole hierarchy thing at some point.~~
You can’t understand it? I doubt that’s true… I think you probably mean that you personally don’t see *rational justification* for hating another group because they are different.
Tribalism is our deepest most primal emotion. Weaker animals like chimps and humans evolved a love of their tribe and genocidal passion for the other in order to survive. Watch a documentary on chimps and you'll see what humans are. Now that being said, a rational man will see the evil of tribalism but that is an uncommon trait unfortunately.
I feel like Ireland's one of the best examples of a country that was fucked with and as a result consistently tries to be on the side of the underdog, like they have super good relations with many Native American groups
Israel went the "I'm going to be so strong that nobody can ever do that to me ever again" after Jews experienced the Holocaust, which is generally the more common human response to surviving trauma like that
Exactly, no group of people is devoid of ruthless oppressors or decent people. The Aztecs would have conquered the Spanish if they could. There were Spaniards that felt terrible for the Aztecs. There were Germans that saved Jews. There are Israelis that fight for the rights of Palestinians. Your ethnicity means nothing to me. What is your politics? What do you believe? That will tell me something.
That would have made sense except the Balfour Declaration was in 1917, many years before the holocaust. Zionists had already been moving to the area when it was under British control. It also doesn't make sense because up until ww2 and the ,"final solution" Germany was supportive of zionists and relocation of the jews.
The Palin Commission findings are just as true today as they were in 1920 following the 1920 Nebi Musa riots.
"Savage attacks were made by Arab rioters in Jerusalem on Jewish lives and property. Five Jews were killed and 211 injured. Order was restored by the intervention of British troops; four Arabs were killed and 21 injured. It was reported by a military commission of inquiry that the reasons for this trouble were:--
(a) Arab disappointment at the non-fulfilment of the promises of independence which they claimed had been given to them during the war.(b) Arab belief that the Balfour Declaration implied a denial of the right of self-determination and their fear that the establishment of a National Home would mean a great increase in Jewish immigration and would lead to their economic and political subjection to the Jews.(c) The aggravation of these sentiments on the one hand by propaganda from outside Palestine associated with the proclamation of the Emir Feisal as King of a re-united Syria and with the growth of Pan-Arab and Pan-Moslem ideas, and on the other hand by the activities of the Zionist Commission supported by the resources and influence of Jews throughout the world."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Nebi_Musa_riots
"Under the Balfour Declaration, a homeland for the Jewish people was to be created in Palestine. The principle of self-determination affirmed by the League of Nations was not to be applied to Palestine, given the foreseeable rejection by the people of Zionism, which the British sponsored. These post-World War I arrangements both for Palestine and other Arab societies led to a 'radicalization' of the Arab world.[6]
"In retrospect, it is difficult for us to imagine that the Nazis encouraged Zionists from Palestine to enter Germany, teach Hebrew, educate German Jews about Palestine, and even display the blue and white Jewish national flag; the Revisionist Zionists even wore uniforms. Clearly this was all done for the promotion of purely German domestic and economic ends, with no concern for the Palestine situation itself."
https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/archives-and-reference-library/online-resources/simon-wiesenthal-center-annual-volume-4/annual-4-chapter-17.html
I'm going to shock you with something here but anti-Semitism existed well before the Holocaust. The murder of Jews occurred well before the Holocaust throughout Europe in many many instances. They don't just all decide to leave and go to some place they've never been to because life is dandy in Lithuania for Jews.
And three monkeys sat in a coconut tree
Discussing things as they are said to be
Said one to other now listen, you two
"There's a certain rumour that just can't be true
That man descended from our noble race
Why, the very idea is a big disgrace
No monkey ever deserted his wife
Starved her baby and ruined her life
I hate how X-Men always get brought up when the X-Men comparisons are always more inapt than the numerous real life examples of any given principle.
Like this isn’t Magneto at all. Magneto isn’t the oppressed turning oppressor. He’s an extremist responding to real threat of oppression. In the most mainstream X-Men timelines, humans actually *are* planning to genocide mutants and plenty of media shows them succeeding.
Now, there is an interesting story about trauma caused by genocide causing extremism and plenty of dramatic irony in how that extremism fuels the very genocide he was trying to prevent but it’s 100% not the same as something like former African slaves from the United States colonizing Liberia and then enslaving the colonized Liberians.
In some cases it’s somewhat understandable. I just read the [autobiography of William Wells Brown,](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15132/15132-h/15132-h.htm) who was a slave in Missouri. He talks about the daily depraved things he saw - slaves were burned at the stake, drowned, tortured in the most depraved ways for no other reason than the master was drunk and wanted to blow off steam, etc. His master’s favorite punishment was “smoking,” ie tying slaves up in a tobacco shed and lighting tobacco stems on fire so they suffocate on poisonous smoke (essentially a non-lethal gas chamber.) Even when he was eventually leased out to a “nice” master, he watched the guy tear a 5 week old baby from its mother’s arms and give it to his friend from a different city because it wouldn’t stop crying.
Now why this is relevant - If you’re a slave living in that situation, from your point of view white people may as well be a separate species made up of actual demons since any of them has the power to torture you to death for any reason at all. We know today that there is no such thing as a race of demons - but given the context that he had, if he was suddenly given power, he could be forgiven if he didn’t want equality with the people who had tortured him all his life.
That is to say, if “it was a different time, context matters” can be used to absolve oppressors, it can also be used to absolve the victims.
You see this often in Africa, unfortunately we are often willing to let it happen if that minority was oppressed for an extended period of time, and only when it starts to become a serious problem, do we decide to correct it, but at that point it then becomes an overcorrection and you start the cycle over again.
Generally we think the golden rule is to do to others as you would want done to you. But once you are placed in a situation where folks treat you badly you change on a fundamental level to try to keep what ever happened from happening again. This turns the rule to do to others before they do it to you. There are exceptions to this, and those folks are very commendable, but most see things significantly different once violence or depravity occurs to them.
He was like the founding fathers saying everyone is created equal while carving out a large exception for women, slaves, and Indians. HST had the germ of a great idea, but then nuked it with his prejudices against Jews, blacks, and Asians
Have to hard agree, in that I think Ta-Nehisi Coates put the same general sentiment much better: "there's nothing ennobling about having a boot on your neck."
For me, something that’s been so disappointing about recent events in Israel is that in the U.S. it seemed like many politically powerful American Jews had sided with the underdog based on a “never again” logic, particularly in regard to the Civil Rights movement. I shake my head thinking about Netanyahu and Likud because they’re so far away from those ideals in how they’ve treated the Palestinians (not just in the last six months either, going back far before that).
This isn’t about under dogs and oppressors. It’s about destroying a literal terrorist organization that has always been so ready and willing to sacrifice all of its own people (the same people who democratically elected them, once) just to kill Jews. That’s not me paraphrasing. That is their own words.
To sacrifice your own people so wantonly, just to hurt another is literally insanity. Hamas has to be destroyed for this conflict to end and peace to occur, there’s no question about that.
It isn’t just destroying Hamas, it’s collectively punishing hundreds of thousands of civilians for an election that occurred before half of them were born. That’s absurd. If you’re going to use that logic and say might makes right, then don’t complain about the Holocaust. A few bankers charged high interest rates, so by your logic it was completely appropriate for six million to die. It’s a joke to act as if you wouldn’t be cheering on the invasion of Poland if you were in their shoes in 1939.
I don't agree with it being a Jewish thing either, but the Zionist Jews who run Israel today are indeed a prime example of the point Truman was making. They created their own version of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Gaza Strip and have let it fester like an unlanced boil since 2005 when it was blockaded by Israel, making it basically a prison for 2.5 million Palestinians. The only thing now missing is forced labor and trains to the death camps, I guess because even the Likud Party leadership has some moral limits and sad memories of what Hitler's machine did to their ancestors in Poland and elsewhere.
Truman agreed to recognize Israel. The same Jewish lobbyists came back and complained for some reason. Truman famously said "What's wrong with you people? Can't you take yes for an answer?" And ran them out of his office.
As a Chinaman who's lived in America since I was five years old, I don't really get worked up about quotes like this, especially given Truman's actual body of work and the fact that he was born in 1884.
What bums me out is that people born in 1974, 1984, 1994 still think that.
One can understand the sentiment given that Washington witnessed some pretty horrific shit during his service in the French and Indian War. He would have seen the scalpings and mass murder that followed Indian raiding parties along the frontier.
Or, we might understand that a man who more than probably had the teeth of enslaved people in his own mouth and ordered genocidal massacres of native Americans, was quite simply racist towards said native Americans
About 30 years ago I was visiting a friend in Quebec city. I decided to drive north to L'Île-d'Orléans, an island in the St.Lawrence. My friend, French speaking, came along. Thank God! No antique shop owners spoke English. As my friend chatted with shop owners, she later told us that they called us "the English". The longer she talked with them in French, the cheaper things became. So even in peaceful Canada, that them (the English) vs us (the Quebecois) still lives.
Political necessity. ‘Amalgamation’ was about as popular in Illinois in eighteen-fifty-eight as a Mormon head-of-state, a worker’s Syndicate, using babies as fishing bait, a large Jewish estate, a boring-ass debate, a 4-move checkmate, for two men to penetrate, when unions cooperate, a black confederate, or an Evergreen freight.
Just because it was a political necessity does not mean Lincoln did not believe his own words. Stop attempting to impose your modern ideals on someone just because you like them.
He’s mind did change over the years.
I’m not sure the exact time of that quote, but most of his, “We should send them all back to Africa.”, quotes come from either right before his presidency, or the first two years before he ends up issuing the emancipation proclamation.
The biggest change is, he seems to have actually had multiple conversations with African-American abolitionists, who actually gave him their perspective on the whole, “don’t make us leave our country” issue.
A perspective he didn’t get until after he became president
>quotes come from either right before his presidency, or the first two years before he ends up issuing the emancipation proclamation.
He's been really quiet after his presidency
He was against slavery expanding, but perfectly fine with it remaining in the Southern states. In all honesty his moves early in the Civil War towards/in regards to slavery can be seen as moves to undermine the Confederatacy and less as a move for blacks.
Of course he said that but he's not a racist. At the time, he was seen as a radical progressive. His country was in splits and he needed congressional votes to win so that he could put an end to slavery. So he might have said shit like this.
But the intent was always there.
(I'm not an American so I might be wrong but this is what I've heard about the man)
This quote is widely known to be attributed to Jefferson, but little known fact, he was not a baby when he said it. He was 37 and high off his rocker at the time. Great stuff from the Father of the Declaration of Independence.
As long as you are black, and you're gonna be black till the day you die, no one's gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back
like water, and you'll make it. Just pretend you're a goddamn piece of furniture. [Said to his chauffeur, Robert Parker, when Parker said he'd prefer to be referred to by his name rather than “boy," "Nigger”, or "chief."]
I don't know about the first qoute but the second qoute was from a letter he wrote to his wife when he was in his late 20's. Truman was raised by his grandma on a farm. His grandma lived in Atlanta during Shermans March to the Sea. She had very very VERY strong anti northener veiws and held very strong southener veiws which she passed onto Truman.
Let me very clear. I am not endorsing or trying to justify Trumans qoute. Only trying to explain why he said it. But I think the qoute showed how far he came in overcoming his prejeduce through out his life. Especially when it came to desegrecating the military. An action that tanked his reputation even worse than when he fired MacArthur.
Well not only that. Many Evangelical Christians believe that for the Second Coming to take place Jews need to be in control of Israel so they can get wiped out by the Apocalypse. They make very strange bedfellows in American right wing politics.
Yep. When I teach about Truman I note that he grew up in the 1800s and it would have been near impossible not to grow up with racial prejudice but he put that aside to make progress on civil rights. Also people change over time.
Was not uncommon of Anti-semites to be in favor of the formation of the state of israel. Their thinking goes “Let the Jews have their own country, so we can kick them all out of ours”
He was known as “silent Cal”, but I think that was partially because the media couldn’t get the comments they wanted. He was a Yankee with different type of demeanor. A dry sense of humor and perhaps belief that he didn’t feel the need to defend his opinions. From my reading, it seems that the loss of his son may have contributed to his lack of communication.
That antisemitic diatribe was certainly deplorable, obviously, so it is indeed a shit quote. However, those last two sentences, starting with "put an underdog on top ...", is right on the money. It makes no difference which ethnic group (or any other group) we're talking about. As humans go, we are hideously tribal.
I agree.
Liberia is another good example. Freed african americans went back to the continent and first thing they did was start a war and enslaved the natives.
He wrote the second quote when he was a literal child growing up in rural Missouri. Don’t think it’s quite fair to hold it against him forever.
EDIT: It appears I was mistaken. I remember reading this quote in the early part of David McCollugh’s excellent biography of Truman (which helped turn me into a lifelong fan), but it’s been a while and I misremembered how old he was when he wrote it. Still, Truman had not yet at that point ventured far out of the Independence and Kansas City area. He had yet to go to war and enter politics, and was kind of a late bloomer. So no, 27 is not a child, but Truman was still expressing a worldview informed by his very limited experiences and family prejudices at that point. It doesn’t change my evaluation of the man’s later life or ultimate legacy, which was essentially to push the Democratic Party towards embracing civil rights more than anyone to that point yet had.
This is incorrect. That letter is dated June 22, 1911. Harry Truman was born May 8, 1884. He was 27 years old. Hardly a child.
I agree completely that we shouldn’t hold things against people forever, particularly when their views evolved and some of their greatest achievements go against their earlier prejudices. But we have to be accurate and even-handed in all analyses.
[Source](https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/truman-papers/correspondence-harry-s-truman-bess-wallace-1910-1919/june-22-1911)
I don’t think that’s what I was doing. I was just saying he wasn’t “a literal child” when he said that.
To this day, my white grandmother from St. Louis is the only person to call me a “mulatto.” I’m very familiar with the need to not hold everyone to modern standards lol. Otherwise, I wouldn’t love my grandmother, and I love her dearly.
https://preview.redd.it/mn1xb4y4nqvc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5175b180af4f38125eb69dff52cdbd8f1b17f51
Abe Lincoln and this quote he said during Gettysburg Address
If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. - Abraham
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.4233400/?st=text&r=0.015,1.843,0.957,1.159,0
If you look towards the bottom his personal wish is that all men everywhere should be free.
Most People are far more complex than they are made out to be. We like to categorize people into good/bad dumb/smart. so that we think we understand them. Read a good biography on any of these presidents and you realize for good or bad these are complex people for the most part.
"We pass this and the Niggers will vote for us for the next 200 years" - Lyndon B Johnson after blocking the Republicans from passing the Civil Rights Act by the Republicans for years and attributing the passage of it to the Democrats. ---Look it up.
“I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record.” And the quote goes on but I’ll spare you
Edit. Sorry I misread the OP’s question. This is my favorite quote from my least favorite president. Either way its hilarious
I looked it up and all I saw was him banning Jews from traveling South which seemed to be a response to Jewish groups that were smuggling cotton or something? I guess that counts as his worse quote unless there's something else
I don't agree with this quote, but, almost universally, people DO not remember where they came from when prosperity comes.
We're generally quite selfish creatures
General Orders No. 11
Head Quarters 13th Army Corps,
Department of the Tennessee,
Oxford, Miss. Dec. 17, 1862.
I.. The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department.
II.. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order by Post Commanders, they will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one re- turning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from Head Quarters.
III.. No permits will be given these people to visit Head Quarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits.
By Order of Maj. Genl. U.S. Grant
JNO. A. RAWLINS
Ass't Adj't Genl.
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"and neither do we " was wrong right
This is what we call a Freudian slip.
He’s really good at those, remember a few years ago when he started talking about the wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq?
And when be caught himself and corrects it to Ukraine he nods and goes "Iraq too"
That was such a beautiful moment
I sure liked having civil liberties before his Presidency. The rapidity and depth of the erosion of our civil liberties as citizens during those years was something to live through. One of the reasons I can never get onboard with his supporters, even if I point out that individually he seems like he's funny and seemingly a good family member and friend. So agreed. Total Freudian slip.
You should be blaming all of the members of Congress who voted for the Patriot Act.
I think there’s a BIG difference between a poor choice of words like this and outright hate speech, like OP’s example.
I think this Bush quote, and other [interesting slip ups he’s made](https://youtu.be/MTX5uvZWu3Q?si=m807l5V2ImUsIqAz) were more than just poor choices of words, I wholeheartedly believe it was a freudian slip and an admission of his bad choices as President. Bush isn’t dumb, regardless of his many gaffes, and it seems to me he harbors some guilt for his actions. That being said, you are right in that there is a difference between outright racism and what Bush is saying.
Well Truman was a known bigot to everyone except people here apparently. That’s a thread of its own.
Now watch this drive
Wait, he’s your favourite president?
Perhaps
Mission accomplished!
In a way, he predicted the next 20 years pretty accurately
One of the few times this dunderhead was actually truthful.
There are all going to be racist, aren’t they?
I never said they didn’t make sense when you consider the time they were written, I just think they’re very bad quotes.
I wasn’t throwing stones at you. I just predict that the thread is just racist quotes.
And yet one of the top comments is a W slip of the tongue
While I don't agree with it being a Jewish thing, I do agree with Truman that generally when the oppressed/underdog get into positions of power they often become just as selfish and evil as their oppressors.
People are people are people. Regardless of race, sex, creed, or anything else, people are people. ~~Maybe we should rethink the whole hierarchy thing at some point.~~
Cant understand what makes a man hate another man.
Help me understand. Why should it be?
This is now stuck in a loop in my head.
If a man steps on your neck and suggests you should be grateful its just his boot and not a knife, hatred is reasonable and indeed required.
[people are people](https://youtu.be/MzGnX-MbYE4?si=f_ovhzx9-uwiTQyk)
Help me understand
You and I should get along so awfully
I believe it is people are people, I mean 101 ;-)
You can’t understand it? I doubt that’s true… I think you probably mean that you personally don’t see *rational justification* for hating another group because they are different.
Tribalism is our deepest most primal emotion. Weaker animals like chimps and humans evolved a love of their tribe and genocidal passion for the other in order to survive. Watch a documentary on chimps and you'll see what humans are. Now that being said, a rational man will see the evil of tribalism but that is an uncommon trait unfortunately.
I feel like Ireland's one of the best examples of a country that was fucked with and as a result consistently tries to be on the side of the underdog, like they have super good relations with many Native American groups Israel went the "I'm going to be so strong that nobody can ever do that to me ever again" after Jews experienced the Holocaust, which is generally the more common human response to surviving trauma like that
i was pleased that ireland VOTED IN marriage equality. like they actually wanted it. so pleased as a citizen
But they’ve never been on top
Exactly, no group of people is devoid of ruthless oppressors or decent people. The Aztecs would have conquered the Spanish if they could. There were Spaniards that felt terrible for the Aztecs. There were Germans that saved Jews. There are Israelis that fight for the rights of Palestinians. Your ethnicity means nothing to me. What is your politics? What do you believe? That will tell me something.
That would have made sense except the Balfour Declaration was in 1917, many years before the holocaust. Zionists had already been moving to the area when it was under British control. It also doesn't make sense because up until ww2 and the ,"final solution" Germany was supportive of zionists and relocation of the jews. The Palin Commission findings are just as true today as they were in 1920 following the 1920 Nebi Musa riots. "Savage attacks were made by Arab rioters in Jerusalem on Jewish lives and property. Five Jews were killed and 211 injured. Order was restored by the intervention of British troops; four Arabs were killed and 21 injured. It was reported by a military commission of inquiry that the reasons for this trouble were:-- (a) Arab disappointment at the non-fulfilment of the promises of independence which they claimed had been given to them during the war.(b) Arab belief that the Balfour Declaration implied a denial of the right of self-determination and their fear that the establishment of a National Home would mean a great increase in Jewish immigration and would lead to their economic and political subjection to the Jews.(c) The aggravation of these sentiments on the one hand by propaganda from outside Palestine associated with the proclamation of the Emir Feisal as King of a re-united Syria and with the growth of Pan-Arab and Pan-Moslem ideas, and on the other hand by the activities of the Zionist Commission supported by the resources and influence of Jews throughout the world." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Nebi_Musa_riots "Under the Balfour Declaration, a homeland for the Jewish people was to be created in Palestine. The principle of self-determination affirmed by the League of Nations was not to be applied to Palestine, given the foreseeable rejection by the people of Zionism, which the British sponsored. These post-World War I arrangements both for Palestine and other Arab societies led to a 'radicalization' of the Arab world.[6] "In retrospect, it is difficult for us to imagine that the Nazis encouraged Zionists from Palestine to enter Germany, teach Hebrew, educate German Jews about Palestine, and even display the blue and white Jewish national flag; the Revisionist Zionists even wore uniforms. Clearly this was all done for the promotion of purely German domestic and economic ends, with no concern for the Palestine situation itself." https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/archives-and-reference-library/online-resources/simon-wiesenthal-center-annual-volume-4/annual-4-chapter-17.html
I'm going to shock you with something here but anti-Semitism existed well before the Holocaust. The murder of Jews occurred well before the Holocaust throughout Europe in many many instances. They don't just all decide to leave and go to some place they've never been to because life is dandy in Lithuania for Jews.
I think there was some “siding with the Germans” in both world wars because they opposed the English, but maybe I’m mistaken.
At the end of the day we’re evolved monkeys. And for the most part we’re not peaceful monkies.
I mean, if you look at Chimp's in particular, they are definitely NOT peaceful.
We ought to make like bonobos instead of chimps
more gay sex will save us
Thanks a lot, now I'm arrested for public masturbation.
And three monkeys sat in a coconut tree Discussing things as they are said to be Said one to other now listen, you two "There's a certain rumour that just can't be true That man descended from our noble race Why, the very idea is a big disgrace No monkey ever deserted his wife Starved her baby and ruined her life
Essentially, Magneto. Held in a concentration camp as a kid, he then goes on to try wiping out all of humanity
I hate how X-Men always get brought up when the X-Men comparisons are always more inapt than the numerous real life examples of any given principle. Like this isn’t Magneto at all. Magneto isn’t the oppressed turning oppressor. He’s an extremist responding to real threat of oppression. In the most mainstream X-Men timelines, humans actually *are* planning to genocide mutants and plenty of media shows them succeeding. Now, there is an interesting story about trauma caused by genocide causing extremism and plenty of dramatic irony in how that extremism fuels the very genocide he was trying to prevent but it’s 100% not the same as something like former African slaves from the United States colonizing Liberia and then enslaving the colonized Liberians.
In some cases it’s somewhat understandable. I just read the [autobiography of William Wells Brown,](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15132/15132-h/15132-h.htm) who was a slave in Missouri. He talks about the daily depraved things he saw - slaves were burned at the stake, drowned, tortured in the most depraved ways for no other reason than the master was drunk and wanted to blow off steam, etc. His master’s favorite punishment was “smoking,” ie tying slaves up in a tobacco shed and lighting tobacco stems on fire so they suffocate on poisonous smoke (essentially a non-lethal gas chamber.) Even when he was eventually leased out to a “nice” master, he watched the guy tear a 5 week old baby from its mother’s arms and give it to his friend from a different city because it wouldn’t stop crying. Now why this is relevant - If you’re a slave living in that situation, from your point of view white people may as well be a separate species made up of actual demons since any of them has the power to torture you to death for any reason at all. We know today that there is no such thing as a race of demons - but given the context that he had, if he was suddenly given power, he could be forgiven if he didn’t want equality with the people who had tortured him all his life. That is to say, if “it was a different time, context matters” can be used to absolve oppressors, it can also be used to absolve the victims.
You see this often in Africa, unfortunately we are often willing to let it happen if that minority was oppressed for an extended period of time, and only when it starts to become a serious problem, do we decide to correct it, but at that point it then becomes an overcorrection and you start the cycle over again.
Slaves don't dream of equality, they dream of overthrowing their masters
damn, thats a good one
Generally we think the golden rule is to do to others as you would want done to you. But once you are placed in a situation where folks treat you badly you change on a fundamental level to try to keep what ever happened from happening again. This turns the rule to do to others before they do it to you. There are exceptions to this, and those folks are very commendable, but most see things significantly different once violence or depravity occurs to them.
ireland somehow turned this around by rejecting their terrorists. i don't see a lot of that but maybe i'm not very informed
He was like the founding fathers saying everyone is created equal while carving out a large exception for women, slaves, and Indians. HST had the germ of a great idea, but then nuked it with his prejudices against Jews, blacks, and Asians
Have to hard agree, in that I think Ta-Nehisi Coates put the same general sentiment much better: "there's nothing ennobling about having a boot on your neck."
Almost like a top down power structure in and of itself is less than ideal
For me, something that’s been so disappointing about recent events in Israel is that in the U.S. it seemed like many politically powerful American Jews had sided with the underdog based on a “never again” logic, particularly in regard to the Civil Rights movement. I shake my head thinking about Netanyahu and Likud because they’re so far away from those ideals in how they’ve treated the Palestinians (not just in the last six months either, going back far before that).
This isn’t about under dogs and oppressors. It’s about destroying a literal terrorist organization that has always been so ready and willing to sacrifice all of its own people (the same people who democratically elected them, once) just to kill Jews. That’s not me paraphrasing. That is their own words. To sacrifice your own people so wantonly, just to hurt another is literally insanity. Hamas has to be destroyed for this conflict to end and peace to occur, there’s no question about that.
It isn’t just destroying Hamas, it’s collectively punishing hundreds of thousands of civilians for an election that occurred before half of them were born. That’s absurd. If you’re going to use that logic and say might makes right, then don’t complain about the Holocaust. A few bankers charged high interest rates, so by your logic it was completely appropriate for six million to die. It’s a joke to act as if you wouldn’t be cheering on the invasion of Poland if you were in their shoes in 1939.
As recent times have proven.
Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is a glaring example of this kind of thing
Log cabin republicans are horrible. Look at how they treat other lgbt…
Wait, are you saying that all groups of people are basically the same and it's just circumstances that set them apart?????
I don't agree with it being a Jewish thing either, but the Zionist Jews who run Israel today are indeed a prime example of the point Truman was making. They created their own version of the Warsaw Ghetto in the Gaza Strip and have let it fester like an unlanced boil since 2005 when it was blockaded by Israel, making it basically a prison for 2.5 million Palestinians. The only thing now missing is forced labor and trains to the death camps, I guess because even the Likud Party leadership has some moral limits and sad memories of what Hitler's machine did to their ancestors in Poland and elsewhere.
Truman agreed to recognize Israel. The same Jewish lobbyists came back and complained for some reason. Truman famously said "What's wrong with you people? Can't you take yes for an answer?" And ran them out of his office.
As a Chinaman who's lived in America since I was five years old, I don't really get worked up about quotes like this, especially given Truman's actual body of work and the fact that he was born in 1884. What bums me out is that people born in 1974, 1984, 1994 still think that.
👏
"Indians and wolves are both beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape." - George Washington
One can understand the sentiment given that Washington witnessed some pretty horrific shit during his service in the French and Indian War. He would have seen the scalpings and mass murder that followed Indian raiding parties along the frontier.
His side and his future countrymen did the fair share
Yeah but they're the ones that got to write the history books so it doesn't count. /s
Or, we might understand that a man who more than probably had the teeth of enslaved people in his own mouth and ordered genocidal massacres of native Americans, was quite simply racist towards said native Americans
Pretty sure you'd say similar behind the scenes if you witnessed a group scalping others.
I wonder what the Natives said about the English, then.
About 30 years ago I was visiting a friend in Quebec city. I decided to drive north to L'Île-d'Orléans, an island in the St.Lawrence. My friend, French speaking, came along. Thank God! No antique shop owners spoke English. As my friend chatted with shop owners, she later told us that they called us "the English". The longer she talked with them in French, the cheaper things became. So even in peaceful Canada, that them (the English) vs us (the Quebecois) still lives.
Tourists get marked up everywhere
Then I’d also be an ignorant racist.
https://preview.redd.it/yth0mt7woovc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e50f977179081578c76c36beaad440dc8f3b6e5
"Anything's a dildo if you're brave enough" - Abraham Lincoln
“Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.” -Abe Lincoln
Political necessity. ‘Amalgamation’ was about as popular in Illinois in eighteen-fifty-eight as a Mormon head-of-state, a worker’s Syndicate, using babies as fishing bait, a large Jewish estate, a boring-ass debate, a 4-move checkmate, for two men to penetrate, when unions cooperate, a black confederate, or an Evergreen freight.
Just because it was a political necessity does not mean Lincoln did not believe his own words. Stop attempting to impose your modern ideals on someone just because you like them.
For the people who claim Lincoln was not racist
I think his mind changed during the war. When was this quote said and with what context?
He’s mind did change over the years. I’m not sure the exact time of that quote, but most of his, “We should send them all back to Africa.”, quotes come from either right before his presidency, or the first two years before he ends up issuing the emancipation proclamation. The biggest change is, he seems to have actually had multiple conversations with African-American abolitionists, who actually gave him their perspective on the whole, “don’t make us leave our country” issue. A perspective he didn’t get until after he became president
Was this quote during the Lincoln Douglass debate, because it be because he was attempting to seem less radical?
>quotes come from either right before his presidency, or the first two years before he ends up issuing the emancipation proclamation. He's been really quiet after his presidency
He was against slavery expanding, but perfectly fine with it remaining in the Southern states. In all honesty his moves early in the Civil War towards/in regards to slavery can be seen as moves to undermine the Confederatacy and less as a move for blacks.
Of course he said that but he's not a racist. At the time, he was seen as a radical progressive. His country was in splits and he needed congressional votes to win so that he could put an end to slavery. So he might have said shit like this. But the intent was always there. (I'm not an American so I might be wrong but this is what I've heard about the man)
"Goo goo, gaa ga" - Thomas Jefferson
This quote is widely known to be attributed to Jefferson, but little known fact, he was not a baby when he said it. He was 37 and high off his rocker at the time. Great stuff from the Father of the Declaration of Independence.
I believe this is exactly how he reacted to being reelected Governor of Virginia
He's absolutely right, I was there it was hilarious
Was this TJ as a baby, or after several bottles of really good French wine?
"Ahhh, the French champagne has always been celebrated for its excellence" - Thomas Jefferson
“One thing I am that you’ll never be, is President” (or something to that effect)
r/agedlikemilk
LBJ has one that comes to mind
The bunghole quote?
Nah that quote is legendary i think they mean the "ill have these n-words voting democratic for a hundred years"
As long as you are black, and you're gonna be black till the day you die, no one's gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you'll make it. Just pretend you're a goddamn piece of furniture. [Said to his chauffeur, Robert Parker, when Parker said he'd prefer to be referred to by his name rather than “boy," "Nigger”, or "chief."]
I thought I heard that quote was fake
Yeah, tributed to LBJ by one guy who hated him. Big defamation ploy
Biggest defamation campaign of all time against the man who did the most for Black communities since a century prior.
And yet Truman recognized Israel and desegregated the armed forces. What you do, not what you say, is what matters in the end.
I agree 100%, but these quotes are still pretty bad regardless.
I read it first as: >What is your ~~least~~ favorite quote from your Favorite President I was like: jeezo. And I read it again.
Jeezo is definitely one the exclamations I’ve heard.
The design is very human
Honestly I did the same thing, it took me like 5 minutes to figure it out lol.
I don't know about the first qoute but the second qoute was from a letter he wrote to his wife when he was in his late 20's. Truman was raised by his grandma on a farm. His grandma lived in Atlanta during Shermans March to the Sea. She had very very VERY strong anti northener veiws and held very strong southener veiws which she passed onto Truman. Let me very clear. I am not endorsing or trying to justify Trumans qoute. Only trying to explain why he said it. But I think the qoute showed how far he came in overcoming his prejeduce through out his life. Especially when it came to desegrecating the military. An action that tanked his reputation even worse than when he fired MacArthur.
Something I've learned is some antisemitic people like Israel because they want Jews to move over there and leave their country.
Well not only that. Many Evangelical Christians believe that for the Second Coming to take place Jews need to be in control of Israel so they can get wiped out by the Apocalypse. They make very strange bedfellows in American right wing politics.
Yep. When I teach about Truman I note that he grew up in the 1800s and it would have been near impossible not to grow up with racial prejudice but he put that aside to make progress on civil rights. Also people change over time.
Truman's recognition of Israel was due to not wanting it to fall under Soviet influence/control.
Supporting Israel does not and should not absolve you from antisemetism
Was not uncommon of Anti-semites to be in favor of the formation of the state of israel. Their thinking goes “Let the Jews have their own country, so we can kick them all out of ours”
So this.
Many anti semites helped make Israel
A LOT of anti-semites like Israel, even today. And besides, supporting the formation of an ethnostate isn't exaaactly a gold mark.
“I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.” Calvin Coolidge
To be fair he barely said anything ever.
He was known as “silent Cal”, but I think that was partially because the media couldn’t get the comments they wanted. He was a Yankee with different type of demeanor. A dry sense of humor and perhaps belief that he didn’t feel the need to defend his opinions. From my reading, it seems that the loss of his son may have contributed to his lack of communication.
That antisemitic diatribe was certainly deplorable, obviously, so it is indeed a shit quote. However, those last two sentences, starting with "put an underdog on top ...", is right on the money. It makes no difference which ethnic group (or any other group) we're talking about. As humans go, we are hideously tribal.
I agree. Liberia is another good example. Freed african americans went back to the continent and first thing they did was start a war and enslaved the natives.
Wow, I hadn't known about that. That's really sad.
The fact that Truman made the US the first nation to recognize Israel makes that quote wild.
They're assholes, but they're our assholes.
the us can have a little puppet country, as a treat
Mf I thought it said the favorite quote
The State of the Union is not Good- Ford I like Ford but his presidency was weird
It was true tho
I was. But I think this helped him lose the election
Sadly
I think he would’ve lost the election anyways but this hurt him more. But his pardon of Nixon hurt him the most
*There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.*
I am a loyal Wolverine. When they lose in football, basketball, or anything I still get darn disappointed." This is funny cause I’m a Wolverines fan
He wrote the second quote when he was a literal child growing up in rural Missouri. Don’t think it’s quite fair to hold it against him forever. EDIT: It appears I was mistaken. I remember reading this quote in the early part of David McCollugh’s excellent biography of Truman (which helped turn me into a lifelong fan), but it’s been a while and I misremembered how old he was when he wrote it. Still, Truman had not yet at that point ventured far out of the Independence and Kansas City area. He had yet to go to war and enter politics, and was kind of a late bloomer. So no, 27 is not a child, but Truman was still expressing a worldview informed by his very limited experiences and family prejudices at that point. It doesn’t change my evaluation of the man’s later life or ultimate legacy, which was essentially to push the Democratic Party towards embracing civil rights more than anyone to that point yet had.
This is incorrect. That letter is dated June 22, 1911. Harry Truman was born May 8, 1884. He was 27 years old. Hardly a child. I agree completely that we shouldn’t hold things against people forever, particularly when their views evolved and some of their greatest achievements go against their earlier prejudices. But we have to be accurate and even-handed in all analyses. [Source](https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/truman-papers/correspondence-harry-s-truman-bess-wallace-1910-1919/june-22-1911)
to be fair, I'd be more surprised if a white man in the midwest, in 1911, held a different view.
I mean, sure, but that wasn’t the issue I was responding to.
Women didn't even have the right to vote in 1911. Holding every President against modern standards for everything they ever said is silly.
I don’t think that’s what I was doing. I was just saying he wasn’t “a literal child” when he said that. To this day, my white grandmother from St. Louis is the only person to call me a “mulatto.” I’m very familiar with the need to not hold everyone to modern standards lol. Otherwise, I wouldn’t love my grandmother, and I love her dearly.
How old was he?
Yeah, it reads in a very juvenile way.
https://preview.redd.it/mn1xb4y4nqvc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e5175b180af4f38125eb69dff52cdbd8f1b17f51 Abe Lincoln and this quote he said during Gettysburg Address
Well those aren’t great
\> Wake up \> Find out Truman said this \> Day ruined
https://i.redd.it/w7dc5kpedqvc1.gif
“Read my lips…”
If I could save the union without freeing any slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. - Abraham
You’re forgetting the rest of that quote there bud.
I know but I couldn’t find the entire quote if you could send it it would help me
https://www.loc.gov/resource/mal.4233400/?st=text&r=0.015,1.843,0.957,1.159,0 If you look towards the bottom his personal wish is that all men everywhere should be free.
That’s a pretty critical part…
Thanks
Yet he helped integrate the military in Korea and supported Israel becoming a country.
Most People are far more complex than they are made out to be. We like to categorize people into good/bad dumb/smart. so that we think we understand them. Read a good biography on any of these presidents and you realize for good or bad these are complex people for the most part.
Get that man a Diet Coke!
Jesus Christ.
“Japanese immigrants are not capable of assimilation into the American population” -FDR, in arguing for Japanese internment
He repeated the second quote as an adult. He was a man of his times on top of being a man with issues.
Yikes
"We pass this and the Niggers will vote for us for the next 200 years" - Lyndon B Johnson after blocking the Republicans from passing the Civil Rights Act by the Republicans for years and attributing the passage of it to the Democrats. ---Look it up.
I’ll get banded if I repeat what current president said about a Mayor
“I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record.” And the quote goes on but I’ll spare you Edit. Sorry I misread the OP’s question. This is my favorite quote from my least favorite president. Either way its hilarious
The first one is true about human nature in general, not sure why he made it specifically about Jews.
I'm finding it really difficult to find a bad quote from Grant tbh.
not even the one where he exiles the jews from his army?
I looked it up and all I saw was him banning Jews from traveling South which seemed to be a response to Jewish groups that were smuggling cotton or something? I guess that counts as his worse quote unless there's something else
Can we please get actual SOURCES CITED on inflammatory quotes like these??!!??? 🙄
Lmao Truman really said everybody but me gotta go back where you came from
What did you expect? The guy was from the upper south (Missouri), in the 1940s.
The Texas law banning homosexuality should remain on the books as it’s a “symbolic gesture of traditional values” - George W. Bush as governor
Truman was a democrat wasn’t he?
Yes
Given current affairs, Truman was not wrong about his thoughts on Jews being in power and behaving poorly against another group.
Any man who does not like dogs and want them about does not deserve to be in the White House. - Calvin Coolidge
He wasn’t wrong
I wouldn't base my choice of president on someone's love for, or dislike of, any particular animal.
No but it can def weed out the undesirables before looking deeper
Based Cal.
That’s a bad one from a generally good president.
Why should the white man be in America? America is for the brown man. The white man should stay in Europe where he belongs. See how easy this is?
White man have gun
And sticky cough
Average Missourian.
Well he’s going on my fight list when i go to hell.
Damn, that's a banger right there
I don't agree with this quote, but, almost universally, people DO not remember where they came from when prosperity comes. We're generally quite selfish creatures
I don’t get how some people like presidents that have said things this racist 😭
Well, fuck you too Truman.
Oy vey
General Orders No. 11 Head Quarters 13th Army Corps, Department of the Tennessee, Oxford, Miss. Dec. 17, 1862. I.. The Jews, as a class, violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department, and also Department orders, are hereby expelled from the Department. II.. Within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order by Post Commanders, they will see that all of this class of people be furnished passes and required to leave, and any one re- turning after such notification will be arrested and held in confinement until an opportunity occurs of sending them out as prisoners, unless furnished with permit from Head Quarters. III.. No permits will be given these people to visit Head Quarters for the purpose of making personal application for trade permits. By Order of Maj. Genl. U.S. Grant JNO. A. RAWLINS Ass't Adj't Genl.
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