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@Confidant6198 That’s why I like to call them the Genocidal Regimes of America.
Just a little reminder that governments have killed more people than any other entity and it isn’t even close. You could try to point at religion - and that history is also fucked - but even if you exclude “holy wars” waged by religious government leaders, religious killing still doesn’t add up to what has been done by governments where religion wasn’t really a factor. The proletariat must not be disarmed. You might trust your current government, but give it a generation (or even an election) and things could be very different.
I wouldn’t call that a particularly insightful observation. Ever since humanity settled down in agricultural societies there have been governments, and with governments come a monopoly on force, so obviously governments have killed more people than anything else. Any organisation of humans is gonna have at least some threat of lethal force backing it.
I wouldn’t call that a particularly insightful observation.
I would even say it’s incredibly trivial. But even making such observations points to the fact that such person is somehow treating that as apparently undesirable, wanting what, going back to hunting-gathering?
What a weird, self defeating line of thought. Yes, wielding the collective power of a larger group of people will do more damage. Was anyone under the impression that a loose tribe of 30 dudes could physically accomplish the same feats as 30 million?
Seems like a good time to link the list of US atrocities
William Henry Harrison should have ate it at Tippecanoe but at least he corrected his misstep during his first month in office
Yeah, but that resulted in John Tyler who was a pro-slavery democrat in all but name. Can’t really win.
Not pictured: the giant, shitty looking pile of rubble under them.
They just blasted chunks off the mountain and left the mess behind
Also not pictured: that the mountain is a spiritual site for the local tribes.
My wife and I found ourselves near Mt. Rushmore by happenstance durin a road trip several years back. We knew the history, but stopped in to see it for ourselves. We found it to be extremely shitty and underwhelming. The natural area behind the monument was incredible, and I absolutely understand why the indigenous people believed this place to be sacred, but the front was small, tacky, and depressing. I wish I could refund our admission and give it to some chill natives at a gas station instead.
You have to pay to be allowed to look at it?
Internet says there’s no admission, so I must have misremembered that part. We did look around the gift shop a bit.
Sadly I wouldn’t have put it past the US.
But yeah gift shops and stuff around it is the tourist norm.
I understand the point, but as an exercise, try to find four historical figures without glaring character defects. Eventually, I figure we’ll all be either judged or forgotten in time.
Yeah every political leader have little oopsies like being called “town destroyer” by the people which land they invaded and towns they destroyed. They also were proud of it, used it to invade even more land, and their grandpas were also called that because it’s their family and nation thing to do for generations.
Who here hasn’t made dentures from unwillingly donated teeth?
These are a little more than character defects… theres lots of historical figures who didn’t rape and murder.
Obama bombed a wedding of civilians not to mention hid Afghanistan casualty reports, was a part of the death of half a million Iraqi casualties, was part of the Syrian hell that targeted mainly children with fatalities at 191,000 by 2014, then there was Yemen and saber rattling on Iran and full support of Israel. Carter sadly oversaw the East Timor genocide at 25% of the population or 170,000 killed.
You might want to rephrase that as the East Timor genocide started while Carter was in office. Carter played no role in that genocide. The Indonesian government was responsible for it. It is odd that you are blaming Carter at all.
I’m not rephrasing shit because you’re incapable of reading.
Hey internet… the shitty bot account doesn’t know how to look info up on Carter and East Timor. Can you please do it for it?
Jimmy Carter’s administration faced significant criticism for its handling of the East Timor situation during Indonesia’s occupation. Despite Carter’s reputation as a champion of human rights, his presidency saw a continuation and even expansion of military support to Indonesia while it committed atrocities in East Timor[1][2].
In 1977-1978, as Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction of East Timor through massive bombardment and forced relocation of populations, the Carter Administration increased the flow of military equipment to Indonesia[1]. This included supplying OV-10 Broncos, planes designed for counterinsurgency operations, which were used in ferocious attacks that devastated East Timor[1][2].
The administration’s response to the crisis was particularly troubling:
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U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, misled Congress about the situation in East Timor, downplaying the severity of the conflict[2].
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When the CIA reported that Indonesia was running out of weapons due to the intensity of its bombardment, the Carter administration responded by increasing military sales to Indonesia in 1978[2].
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The administration provided ground attack fighters like OV-10 Broncos, A-4s, and F-5s, knowing they would be used against East Timor’s civilian population[2].
Carter later expressed regret for his lack of intervention, admitting in a 2007 interview that he was not as thoroughly briefed about the situation in East Timor as he should have been[2]. However, this does not negate the fact that his administration’s policies contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of East Timorese during his years in office[1][3].
Citations: [1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/jimmy-carter-the-false-savoir/ [2] https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide [3] https://inthesetimes.com/article/jimmy-carter-foreign-policy-palestine-legacy [4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/1/10/historians-say-jimmy-carters-human-rights-legacy-includes-grim-failures [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Jimmy_Carter_administration [6] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/indonesia/2019-08-28/us-sought-preserve-close-ties-indonesian-military-it-terrorized-east-timor-runup-1999-independence [7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/08/12/carter-assails-indonesia-over-east-timor-security/b128a1a8-b856-404c-a84a-2202332e6fb5/ [8] https://sporastudios.org/mark/epluribusunum/carter.htm
Im not incapable of reading. Your writing clearly states that Carter was responsible. You claim he oversaw it which is just flatly incorrect.
You think Im a bot because my username contains the word “bot”?
“In 1977-1978, as Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction of East Timor through massive bombardment and forced relocation of populations”
That REALLY sounds like Indonesia was responsible for the genocide they were committing. Why are you blaming an American president for a war waged by Indonesians due to choices made by the Indonesian government? Do you think Indonesia had no agency in the genocide they perpetrated?
Again it is really weird you are blaming Carter for this.
due to choices made by the Indonesian government
If you knew anything at all about the thing you’re talking about, the democratically elected Indonesian government were some of the ones being targeted in the genocide, by far-right groups who were able to overthrow it due to US backing. Absolutely disgusting to try to blame this on the Indonesians and trying to absolve the US of guilt.
If I go through your post history, what’s the over-under I’ll find you blaming Russia for the rise of the far-right in the US?
The US role in the East Timor genocide is common knowledge. Henry Kissinger is usually blamed for greenlighting and facilitating it, but Carter did not have clean hands.
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We only learn about the ones with defects, because they are the most interesting. Most people in history were fine.
One historic figure who had no known defects: Alan Turing
Its telling that your example is someone explicitly kept out of the public eye during his life. Basically any account of Turing is from personal friends or his professional work. He was a generally good person and great scientist that helped defeat the nazis, but he’s only celebrated by progressives for his persecution as a gay man.
I struggle to find any major social cause he publicly championed or records of his views on controversial topics. I’d like to be wrong, but it’s easy to not have a mixed record as a private citizen. Nobody was grilling him to free slaves or asking his opinion on systemic injustice.
Einstein is a contemporary comparable. He was a great scientist, opposed the nazis, and by most accounts a decent guy. He was even had to flee his homeland to escape persecution as a jew. Clearly lots of parallels. The main difference being he was an idol in his own day so we have way more first hand accounts.
Turns out he was a socialist with varying views on communism, had shifting support for zionism and wrote rascist shit in his travel diaries. You could probably find a quote like Roosevelt’s and slap it on a picture of him, that doesn’t sum up his life.
I can tell you that Turing is not only celebrated because he was gay. That man is one of the fathers of computer science as we know it today. His Turin machines are the basis for a lot of theoretical computer science
Again, that is an incredible technical achievement but it’s not inherently good or bad. A ton of problems today come from the proliferation of tech, maybe we’d be better off if he studied something else. Coming from someone who studied and can professionally appreciate his work: it’s not exactly discovering lifesaving vaccines.
He’s a relatable role model, especially for people who can are unfairly persecuted today. But that’s not the same as being a notable figure playing a role on the historical stage.
Edit: I’m not mad about down votes, but disappointed nobody has provided any argument all.
Is there any evidence that he tried to use his discovery to advance the wellbeing of the human race? Does his estate do any public outreach against the atrocities of the information age? I genuinely cannot find that. Even Alfred Nobel is still doing penance for inventing a new way to blow up rocks, and he’s been dead for nearly 130 years.
Taken alone, creating the theoretical model for modern computer science is as laudable as inventing the internal combustion engine. Both are the innocuous roots that directly sprout to massive problems in our modern world. Not sure why that in particular needs celebration?
I’m not certain many people even know he was gay. I’ve never heard of this. Interesting info tho- thanks.
Despite his contributions, he was forced to undergo chemical castration because of his sexuality, so it’s a pretty big deal.
I dunno Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, seem to have been personally good people. That’s two recent US presidents. Then I guess I would add some super low hanging fruit like Nelson Mandela, Frederick the Great, John II Komnenos, any of the Five Good Emperors, Cyrus the Great, Ashoka, and one could keep going.
EDIT: To all those pestering me about how US presidents presided over criminal imperialist policies, here is my answer from down below:
OP talked about “glaring character defects”.
These are policy failures and state crimes, arguably attributed to the American state as a whole, and the long term US imperialist policies, rather to the singular person of the president.
You might have noticed that I added Frederick the Great in the list, which tells you exactly what my understanding of the challenge was.
I’m not here to defend US imperialism, don’t @ me.
Without the US, the world would be much more peaceful today, most of the current wars and terrorisms are caused by US interventions, directly and indirectly.
That’s a claim I would LOVE for you to attempt to back up.
Just off the top of my head I would suspect UK, French, and Soviet imperialism to have been as big if not a bigger factor than the USA.
Just count military bases burgerbrain
That is an incredible list. Did a find for a few things I personally knew about and have always been disappointed in Obama for… and sure enough found them. First one I searched, was extending the Bush tax cuts on the rich. I remember Bill O’Reilly saying “Oh, if I have to pay taxes, I’m going to have to fire people, and that’s on Obama, so tax cuts means less jobs!” (so glad Bill got canned) and Obama just fucking caved like a spineless coward.
Carter supported Pol Pot and Obama was a monster to people in the Middle East, neither can be considered to be “good people.”
I mean we absolutely could call out their flaws too, someone with that much power/responsibility is going to do abhorrent things (drone strikes with Obama being an easy one to bring up). Just like the four on Mount Rushmore these things aren’t what we typically call out because they either were “of the times” or not on the same scale as their accomplishments.
The drone strikes thing is a bad example. If he didn’t touch it, individual combat units could use drones with impunity. He required drone strikes to be approved by his office.
Tell me if you had the choice between sending in boots to kill a guy, or drone strike, would you really ever risk your guys getting shot?
He added red tape, the minimum thing he could do. I’ll agree with criticism that he did the bare minimum, but all these comments about this frame it like he was horny for drones. That’s reductive and misleading.
Your comment is exactly the point I was trying to make. The world is complex and imperfect, so anyone with the power/responsibility of a president is going to do controversial things.
Oh I get it.
Yeah running countries is a series of shitty compromises, unless you are small enough to gain consensus.
They called Obama the Deporter in Chief. Trump wishes he could get a nickname like that. Carter himself was a nice guy but his below average presidency led to Reagan.
Obama?? Obama??? The Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya Obama? You must be joking, right?
OP talked about “glaring character defects”.
These are policy failures and state crimes, arguably attributed to the American state as a whole, and the long term US imperialist policies, rather to the singular person of the president.
You might have noticed that I added Frederick the Great in the list, which tells you exactly what my understanding of the challenge was.
Obama lied to the left to gain power, that’s enough to disqualify him right there.
Also Washington was the greatest president in our history because he willingly let go of his power. He could have been a king but he chose to step down instead to set future precedent.
Yes! Buying dentures made from slave teeth is overshadowed by the fact this man did what very few would have done by setting power aside.
Would we get labeled by history as evil because we might have bought a product from China made in a work camp?
Fr, like look into the companies that get you your fruits and vegetables. You can’t escape unethical consumption.
There were many other types of dentures not made from human teeth
Washington was the richest man in the US at the time, and had the most to gain from indigenous eviction. The Iroquios named him “the town destroyer”, for burning down dozens of their cities. He also owned slaves and supported the institution just like most presidents after him (I think 10 presidents in a row were southern slave-holders like himself).
And also, its the US, not China, that has slave labor camps. Just because an anti-semitic evangelical christian (adrian zenz) who works for the US government claims that China has forced labor, doesn’t make it so. These claims have been debunked over and over.
No, China has forced labor camps.
The US has prison work camps, but most prisoners don’t have to work if they dont want to, it isn’t forced.
Anything to back that up other than white-supremacist vibes?
Because the majority of Muslim countries disagree with you. The only ones who believe that China has forced labor, are the US and UK, countries that have been bombing Muslim countries for decades.
And also, its the US, not China, that has slave labor camps. Just because an anti-semitic evangelical christian (adrian zenz) who works for the US government claims that China has forced labor, doesn’t make it so. These claims have been debunked over and over.
China has forced labour, according the the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/51/26
I looked that doc, and they source debunked Zenz reports, and WUC. So nothing new.
If the UN fucking rapporteur deems it reliable enough, and if the UN HRC hasn’t found reason to retract this report, then I have zero reason to believe some internet rando that it has been debunked. For all I know, your one liner responses are no different from pro-Zionist hasbara casting doubt on UN reports on Palestine.
Worse now, with modern tech they kill a lot more people
Can someone tell me more about Washington? Wiki says he purchased the teeth from slaves. I’m sure that’s not entirely true, or is it?
He had dentures made of human teeth, human teeth dentures were almost always made from slave teeth during this time.
Put it this way. No one in their right mind would have their healthy teeth pulled out without anaesthetic and sell them, if they had any real choice.
We know that he “bought” teeth from slaves, and that he was a slave owner, we also know that he had dentures made of other people’s teeth. No one knows for sure that the teeth he took were for his own use or from the people he enslaved himself, but it seems probable. More info here.
Jimmy Carter too?
Especially him!
“he’s history’s greatest monster!”
The rabbit knew.
Not to mention defacing a mountain by putting a bunch of faces on it
Not just a mountain. A mountain holy for native americans
It’s a lot more holey now
It’s [not] funny actually - Trump would absolutely come up with this idea for himself while alive, had it not been done before.
Since it has been done, now he’s going to want a bigger mountain face.Defaced then refaced
Jimmy Carter
He oversaw East Timor
What does that mean? The name Carter doesn’t show up on the Wikipedia page for timor from what I can find.
JIMMY CARTER: “Well, as you may know, I had a policy when I was president of not selling weapons if it would exacerbate a potential conflict in a region of the world, and some of our allies were very irate about this policy. And I have to say that I was not, you know, as thoroughly briefed about what was going on in East Timor as I should have been. I was more concerned about other parts of the world then.”
https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide
That sounds like a completely believable explanation to me. I can completely believe that that the military advisors didn’t give him the full picture of what was happening there.
Of course, the classic “don’t ask, don’t tell” of the national security state. The careerists don’t want oversight and the president wants plausible deniability so they’re left to just do whatever tf they want with no democratic accountability whatsoever.
I know you want to imagine something darker, but once you get your first job you’ll realize how very very very very easy it is for simple things to slip through the cracks, let alone complex things like a conflict on the other side of the planet from you in a region your country hasn’t traditionally cared about.
And that in itself is a reason why the intelligence community cannot be allowed to exist in its current form.
From the article you linked.
The CIA, in the spring of 1977 and into 1978, told the Carter administration that Indonesia was literally running out of weapons, running out of bullets and bombs, because of the intensity of its bombardment of East Timor, and that the Suharto regime was requesting a doubling of military assistance so it could more effectively prosecute that war. And in 1978, the Carter administration actually increased military sales to Indonesia, including the provision of ground attack fighters, such as OV-10 Broncos, A-4 and F-5 ground attack fighters, which the administration knew would be used to bomb and attack the defenseless civilian population of East Timor.
What’s more, let’s pretend to be the most gullible person in the world, totally unaware of how the US has historically operated, and take Carter at his word. Was anyone prosecuted for lying to the president? Was anyone court martialed, did anyone in the CIA, State Department, or Department of Defense face any sort of legal repercussions? No?
Then I guess the US must have been pretty satisfied with the outcome, to not make any provisions to ensure it wouldn’t happen again or even punish those who led to it. And of course they were, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman must have made a literal killing.
So you’re moving goalposts from the original claim “Carter oversaw east Timor” to “maybe someone in the CIA should have been prosecuted” and “the military industrial complex is bad”?
Big shift if true.
A shift from actually new information to “turns out the bad guys are bad, guys”
Ah, so you’re not actually interested in learning, but in sealioning.
That’s cool, I’ve been around democrats before.
Also it continued until 1999 which makes blaming him for it an odd choice.
(1) don’t think for a second Im treating a geocities site as a real source
(2) Carter’s name is not on that page. I saw “oversaw” as the claim. If he oversaw, his name goes on the page. His name is not on the page. Ex: Kissinger is on the page, and is a war criminal and he should rot in hell.
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You don’t have to treat it as a source, that’s why they link to sources. Being posted by NBC or NYT makes no difference to the validity of the sources. Learn to fucking read.
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Kissinger worked for Carter. Did he get executed? Did he get jailed? Oh, he got even more influence? Then Carter is guilty for approving.
Again with the moving goal posts.
Also that linked page appears to have zero sources. I see some Facebook links and a dead link to state.gov, maybe it worked back in the 90s when they built the site. I’ll happily be corrected but I see nada.
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Please keep your mouth shut about politics (and frankly everything else) if you are an adult and still this ignorant
No?
Oh its lemmygrad, that’s why you’re unreasonably hostile right out of the gate.
I’m sure you’d have more fun on the Daily Stormer or 4chan as you clearly feel the right to talk about things you are ignorant of. Keep your mouth shut about things you don’t know about.
Methinks you might protest too much about other people being nazis. You seem well, well versed in where nazis hang out and what reading nazis like to do. I hope you’re not secretly a nazi hiding out in lemmygrad.
If it’s not clear cause youre not the sharpest, I’m saying you’re just another nazi.
I get you must feel some embarrassment from not knowing about Carter’s involvement but digging yourself a deeper hole doesn’t seem, to me, to be the best solution because you just make yourself look worse. You could just accept that you should stay quite about things you are ignorant of, because not a sole wishes to hear your voice drone on about them.
No he did not. Indonesia waged that campaign from the mid 70s to 1999. Blaming Carter is a stupid choice.
You know it doesn’t take much to use the internet to be educated, right? It practically does the work for you now…
Jimmy Carter’s administration faced significant criticism for its handling of the East Timor situation during Indonesia’s occupation. Despite Carter’s reputation as a champion of human rights, his presidency saw a continuation and even expansion of military support to Indonesia while it committed atrocities in East Timor[1][2].
In 1977-1978, as Indonesia engaged in wholesale destruction of East Timor through massive bombardment and forced relocation of populations, the Carter Administration increased the flow of military equipment to Indonesia[1]. This included supplying OV-10 Broncos, planes designed for counterinsurgency operations, which were used in ferocious attacks that devastated East Timor[1][2].
The administration’s response to the crisis was particularly troubling:
-
U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, misled Congress about the situation in East Timor, downplaying the severity of the conflict[2].
-
When the CIA reported that Indonesia was running out of weapons due to the intensity of its bombardment, the Carter administration responded by increasing military sales to Indonesia in 1978[2].
-
The administration provided ground attack fighters like OV-10 Broncos, A-4s, and F-5s, knowing they would be used against East Timor’s civilian population[2].
Carter later expressed regret for his lack of intervention, admitting in a 2007 interview that he was not as thoroughly briefed about the situation in East Timor as he should have been[2]. However, this does not negate the fact that his administration’s policies contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of East Timorese during his years in office[1][3].
Citations: [1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/12/30/jimmy-carter-the-false-savoir/ [2] https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/10/jimmy_carter_indonesia_east_timor_genocide [3] https://inthesetimes.com/article/jimmy-carter-foreign-policy-palestine-legacy [4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2025/1/10/historians-say-jimmy-carters-human-rights-legacy-includes-grim-failures [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Jimmy_Carter_administration [6] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/indonesia/2019-08-28/us-sought-preserve-close-ties-indonesian-military-it-terrorized-east-timor-runup-1999-independence [7] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1999/08/12/carter-assails-indonesia-over-east-timor-security/b128a1a8-b856-404c-a84a-2202332e6fb5/ [8] https://sporastudios.org/mark/epluribusunum/carter.htm
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It’s easy to pick on “the levels of bad”, when you’re not the one one enslaved in a priaon, but writing behind a screen.
My biggest complaint about Lincoln was the people he didn’t hang.
Kinda like how the only thing John Brown did wrong on May 24th, 1856 was stop at 5
Wait Abe too? Damn
The Republican Party was predicated on continuous western expansion. It was the successor to the Free Soil Party in the west and what was left of the Whigs in the East.
That necessarily meant seizing more land from American Natives and distributing it to Settlers. Much of the Union Army, before and after the Civil War, was focused on decimating the Native population and securing new tracks of free land for settlers. Lincoln inherited that mandate when he took office and pursued it as zealously as any Republican before or since.
“Fun fact”: Mount Rushmore or Six Grandfathers was a sacred mountain for the Lakota to actively disrespect their beliefs
other “fun” fact: the man who defaced Six Grandfathers, Gutzon Borglum, was a member of the KKK
Gutzon Borglum
I refuse to acknowledge this is a real name.
That’s a gnome NPC in WoW, right?
Much much worse, either villain or very minor supporting character from Harry Potter. Especially that he was member of KKK.
