@beckyromero I‘d submit that Presidents who have signed laws like the Alien and Sedition Acts, forced the native tribes of the Southeast to embark on their trail of tears at gunpoint, appeased the South during the sectional crisis, abandoned the goals of the Reconstruction process, destabilized the world economy in the 1930s, pushed an isolationist policy after WWI and fought an extremely divisive Vietnam war without a victory strategy, were at least as harmful as Trump.

Biden would’ve deserved a higher ranking had his mismanagement not directly led to the re-election of an even more dangerous and destructive version of the very President whose first term damage he was expected to repair in the first place.

Jefferson handled the Louisiana purchase ineptly. Any President could’ve annexed Louisiana at that point in time. Napoleon was preoccupied, his efforts to reconquer Haiti had failed disastrously and American settlers and militiamen were already the dominant force in and around New Orleans and the Mississippi at the time. So the US government had all the cards.

Carter may or may not have healed the nation after Watergate.

And I‘d upgrade JFK, sure. He did a good job with the time that was given to him.

@beckyromero
Sure. I‘m with you. My point is that Jefferson‘s negotiation was not particularly spectacular, Louisiana was a low hanging fruit, ripe for the picking and I‘d venture a guess that John Adams would‘ve done the same had he been re-elected.

Well, I do think there are important distinctions to be made. Context does matter. I do believe Andrew Jackson‘s native policy was more pernicious than Grant‘s.

Like I said. I‘m ambivalent.

@CedricH

And what about the scandals in the Grant administration? Even if Grant, personally, was honest?

@beckyromero The scandals are why he‘s not among the essentials.

@CedricH The decline began with the very guy your meme puts in the first tier lol, it's only accelerated ever since

@Elessar I strongly disagree. In any case, this is not a meme, it’s simply a picture of a personal presidential ranking 🙄. I‘m not even quite sure what a meme is exactly.

@CedricH The "imo" part, is not really excisting in your post. But I guess it's only subjective superiority then, because it's really clear that there is such a thing as an "elite aesthetic". What the word "populism" is doing there, is also a bit weird for me... Also, America has made a lot of "pulp" through the years and people have been complaining about it for just as long:


This is just one quote, that I happened to have read today on my trip to and from the workplace. It's taken by Henry Pickers' account of Hitlers table talks and I've read it in Rainer Zittlemans' reprint "Hitler's National Socialism" (previously called: Hitler: The Policies of Seduction).You can read the contempt for popular culture in so many elitist writings and it crosses over the conservative-progressive cleavage. It goes from those conservatives that have a tradition since the 18th century to complain about the decline of culture to the Frankfurt School and Theodor Adornos' hate for Jazz and other forms of popular music. These types only put the blame on other phenomena, but all formulate their feelings of decline and despair for what is to come. And this is only in modern times.


I really wonder when that "descent political culture and atmosphere in the US" actually excisted? When did this happen? Because I can only imagine it, and that's what I think is the crux, that there is an imagined concept of the US. The same imagination that falls under the toppic of: "The US acting as a benevolent global hegemon", which is part of the Neoconservative fairy tale.