Worst people in American History
From dKosopedia
Who are the worst people in American history?
The way different political tribes answer this question is a way to discover who are the serious, educated, long-term big picture thinkers, and who are the shallow, petty, self-centered, superficial, uneducated couch-potatoes who can't set priorities.
"Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history -- have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was? Well, we here at RWN wondered about that, too, and that's why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions..."
Landover Baptist Church was not invited to participate, though they are commenting:
American History is a larger-than-life epic, complete with genocide, slavery, civil war, lynch mobs and terrorists, literal witch-hunts, and massive crimes. We have been the headquarters for organized crime empires, the birthplace of Liberian dictators, a place of refuge for nazis and other immigrants with shady pasts (and if the foreign-born Obama can be on the list, so can Nazi concentration camp guards who gained American citizenship).
Lots of bad guys to choose from. So you can imagine that conservatives would use the full depth and breadth of their knowledge and moral compasses to...
Oh, who am I kidding? Here's the list:
23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Alger Hiss (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
11) John Wilkes Booth (10)
11) Margaret Sanger (10)
9) Aldrich Ames (11)
9) Timothy McVeigh (11)
7) Ted Kennedy (14)
7) Lyndon Johnson (14)
5) Benedict Arnold (17)
5) Woodrow Wilson (17)
4) The Rosenbergs (19)
3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)
That's right: they basically listed people they heard Fox News ranting about. To them "History" barely goes beyond their own generation, and "worst" means Rush Limbaugh mentions them a lot.
Now, to be fair, "the Rosenbergs" (technically two people, but in republicanland women are absorbed by their husbands at the moment of marriage) were baddies. I imagine Aldrich Ames wouldn't be on the list if he'd betrayed Julia Plame, but he didn't. Woodrow Wilson was a racist confederate sympathizer got us into WW1, though knowing Republicans I bet that's not why he's on the list. Benedict Arnold, well, congratulations on remembering your elementary school history. Props to them for not brushing Timothy McVeigh and J.W. Booth under the rug, though I didn't think Buns Of Steel was THAT bad...
But seriously, easy as it is to laugh at the shallow, petty, self-centered, and utterly ignorant mess that is what remains of conservatism....It is meaningless without contrast. So I asked reader of DailyKos: who are the worst people in American history?
First, some thoughts: I'd like to point out the difference between evil and wickedness. Evil is done by people who, though bad information, bad logic, or sheer emotion, believe their actions are good or at least harmless. Wickedness is evil inflicted just for the fun of it. Most villains in fiction are wicked, but other than a few psycho killers, they aren't so common in reality. So instead of "worst people" this list might be better called "the people who did the worst things".
However, if you really want bad things to happen, you have to organize people into groups. Not only is it more efficient, it's also anonymous - making the evildoer immune to "worst people" lists. This is a major problem with this exercise, and a telling difference between the left and right. Liberals protest organizations and policies, while the right-wing protests people. Thus we see left-wing radicals breaking McDonald's windows, and right-wing radicals shooting people. The left may form mobs, but only the right forms lynch mobs.
Okay, now for how DailyKos readers voted:
People who introduced slavery, owned slaves, and defended slavery 25%
People who broke treaties with the natives and committed genocide 19%
People who wanted to start World War 3 12%
Successionists and Klansmen 11%
Economic hitmen and other financial industry criminals 10%
People who did business/collaborated with the Nazis, "ex"-nazi immigrants 3%
Filibusters, coup-plotters, American-born dictators 0%
The joke options:
Community organizers 10%
International community organizers 0%
Birth control activists 3%
People with Buns of Steel 6%
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