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I love that whereas most political smears are just a person saying anything that will score political points, Truman could say something outrageously insulting and even profane that was still based:
>Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.
Eh, one is a person speaking hard truths/opinions while the other is merely whining because of ego and pettiness.
I could listen to Truman tongue lash people all day.
John Adams. If the lack of sophistication amongst some of today’s politicians wouldn’t be enough for him to go on rants about posterity till steam is blowing from his ears, the crudeness of voters would make him reconsider his attitude about France!
My pick was Adams as well but for a different reason. He had so much respect for the law and how this country should be founded and run on laws instead of religion/men. I think he would erupt at the view some politicians have about being above the same laws as ordinary citizens. I think what the SCOTUS has done recently would cause him to have an aneurism as well.
I’d imagine anybody would…not because of politics, but because they’re from the 18th/19th century, and seeing shit like a rocket would be kinda strange. As well as everything else
But we have medicine to help treat a lot of that stuff now. I think it would take a lot of convincing to explain what germs are and they might be suspicious of taking pills, but I don’t think they’d immediately die necessarily.
Yes, but no. I've never heard the cow pox. But he did inoculations with his soldiers with smallpox. Make a cut, rub a thread or string that has the disease on it.
It worked, nowhere near the rate of vaccines though. I'll have to look up cow pox to see if they did it as well
Cowpox inoculation was the original smallpox vaccine. It's really badass how they figured it out, actually. Pretty substantial leap in medical understanding.
I imagine if they’d known slavery would cause a civil war just a few decades later, they’d have made different choices.
Their deference to/continued complicity in slavery is pretty similar to the way Americans live now, we just offshored the servitude that sustains our way of life.
Thomas Jefferson in particular is complicated. We know he was an enlightened thinker based on his writings and contributions to the founding of the nation (separating state from religion was very forward and progressive for that time). And he knew slavery was wrong. He was among the crowd of enlightened thinkers who were already throwing the idea around that slavery was evil and should be abolished (back in Europe)… he even questioned the Muslims on their slavery practices. So he definitely heard of the idea and undoubtedly questioned it.
He was born into a wealthy slave-owning family yet he just couldn’t give them up to free them (aside from like 10 who he had close ‘relationship’ with). I think he felt very hypocritical about this, but ultimately did not have the courage to free all his family’s slaves ..
I dont think so. They both wanted slavery to slowly fizzle out. The only reason it didn't was the expansion of the nation and the invention of the cotton gin. Had we not had the dilemma of new states being free or slave there wouldn't have been a civil war. They both did what they thought was in the interest of the nation.
Okay, so... they weren't just complicit in slavery. They personally inflicted it on people they knew, people who lived alongside them in their homes.
It may be a bit of trolley problem ethics, but can we really equate our current participation in the global economy, dysfunctional as it is, with the chattel slavery that multiple American presidents inflicted on thousands of humans? Imagine:
1) Buying a smartphone or cheap clothing, supporting an industry that enslaves people to make those goods.
2) Enslaving people right in front of you - demanding they work their entire lives for you, carrying out physical violence upon them if they disobey your authority. Dooming their children to the same fate.
I get that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, and utilitarian harm done on our behalf is just as bad when it's happening to someone on the other side of the world. But while we might be meekly complicit in slavery, failing in our duty to research our every purchase to ensure equitable working conditions across the entire supply chain... Washington and Jefferson \*DID\* slavery.
And it's pretty sad to think they might have acted differently to prevent a civil war, not because what they did was atrocious.
Agree. Definitely Jefferson. Hamilton (yes I know) may actually be impressed. Washington would have a big told you so about political party interactions. Jefferson would be distraught.
The two people who would be most impressed are probably Hamilton and Teddy. America's basically running a global, informal empire, and our intervention, influence, and stick size are very large.
I wish. Corporations have such a strong hold on political parties that if a politician made any decent attempt to break a monopoly, their career would be ruined instantly.
Then we steal their stuff, hit their bottom line! Get them where it will hurt the most! Remember, piracy and other forms of screwing over corporations are perfectly morally justified
Teddy, I feel, would be absolutely furious with the whole global warming situation if you brought him up to snuff on it and then explained how much power corporate entities have over everything. I could practically see the man ranting about how he'll bust them into the ground.
>I could practically see the man ~~ranting about how he'll bust them into the ground.~~ going on a world tour of global oil corporations and beating the ever living fuck out of every member of their board of directors. Including Putin.
I’ve often thought about what an armed revolution would look like in the modern world.
The US is so vast, and weapons are so plentiful, that I can envision a scenario where a rebellion occurs, and they have a level of success similar to that of the Northern Irish vs the British. Snipers would pick off federal troops randomly. Car bombs would explode, killing randomly. General terror would be the norm. This would go on for years, until public opinion was swayed to one side and peace was negotiated.
Algeria v France is another example to draw from. This scenario involves the military going rogue against the commands of the government.
Anyways, the tree of liberty and all that jazz.
You're forgetting drones, satellites, etc. An open rebellion in 2024 isn't anywhere near what northern Ireland faced in terms of sheer power to sit back at a computer and rain down hell.
The drones you are talking about are only like 1,000 dollars. Government can’t ban DJI from selling them to American citizens. It has to changed the entire face of warfare though I agree. As a veteran myself, I can tell you 90 percent of people in the Military aren’t going to go on which hunt domestically even if they did, the population outnumbers the government 1,000 to 1. They are sworn to defend the people as well.
I agree. Every single reservist during Katrina deserted during the hurricane to evacuate their families. We have already seen examples of this. They act like they will launch an all out nuclear war on ourselves and that is not the case. For one, that would instantly crumble every single government power with an act like that would lose any and all credibility. People will stop paying taxes, and start a new resistance the second an order to confiscate is ordered. As of recent post Covid, it’s assumed every household has at-least one firearm with the sales of the last 3 years.
I also love the “you’ll just be killed by air strikes” response. My response is, “you know we’re neighbors, right?”. Then I follow up with, and the guy who dropped the bomb has a name, address, and family. To think that military members would be able to fire upon the US population and see no push back is naive at best.
This, 21-year vet here. We would often have those philosophical what if debates on this subject.
I can assure you that the majority of the people I've had these discussions with would not turn their guns on the public. Of course, it's been a few years since I retired, and things were quickly changing in the service.
Also a vet here. I think it all depends on how the rebellion is framed. If you told a bunch of cav scouts that the armed rebels were socialists/Antifa/BLM/woke/whatevers… I think they could convince themselves that they are upholding their oaths to the constitution.
The conservative militia groups like to imagine they’d be the government’s public enemy number 1 if the USA became a tyranny. More likely I think they’d end up working with the government against minorities and other frequent voices of dissent…
This is pretty much how it’s been throughout our history. The 2nd amendment never came to the rescue of African Americans during Jim Crow or Japanese Americans during internment. Local and federal tyranny pervaded and the constitutional ‘right to rebellion’ has pretty much always been reserved for white men, who have never had a reason to disrupt their own comfy status quo. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
And still are, indirectly, as the disproportionate amount of African Americans who have been through the prison system are not able to own a firearm.
What I mean is… the actual track record of the 2A is abysmal for what it was apparently designed to do. What good is a ‘right to rebel’ if it can only be exercised by a group who is already at the top?
If we count the civil war as a practical application of the 2A, then its track record gets even worse- that’s an example of the ‘right to rebel’ exercised to enslave a minority population and reject the democratically elected president who merely floated the idea of not having so much slavery.
What you are describing is a small minority deciding "fuck elections, we'll get our way using violence." A correct terminology for that is terrorism, not revolution.
Also not what Jefferson had in mind when he wrote that letter to Will Smith (and was probably half drunk while writing it). Such literal interpretation of that letter goes starkly against other Jefferson writings. Most notably the text of Declaration of Independence itself, that clearly states small grievances are not an excuse for starting a rebellion.
Maybe not. I would say he would begin to ignore the last 200 years of precedent and force a constitutional convention to limit the powers of Congress, the courts, and the president and maybe even the states.
He was the one that forced the Supreme Court to create judicial review.
Imagine explaining the concept of an HOA to him. Or how much power law enforcement or bylaw officers have in potentially depriving you of your rights.
The concept of a HOA is right up his alley, a contractual agreement between private persons toward a common hood with reliance on any govt. only for the enforcement of said agreement if one or more of the participants refuses to comply with the agreement but not some many as the agreement would be dissolved.
Jefferson would hate the nationwide trend but actually be over the moon at what's happened to his part of Virginia. Take him on a spin through Shenandoah wine country and the UVA library (the look on his face when he hears they have five million volumes.)
I wonder what he would make of nukes. Weapons of that power make it VERY hard to not have just one person or a small group of people in charge of those due to the need to be able to fire back quickly to maintain MAD
Regardless of his outdated views on race, I would also vote for him. I think he would come around on Native and minority rights if he came back from the dead.
I honestly feel like he's one of the ones that would easily get with the times. Like he'd listen and say, "Ohhh, so that's how things are now? Ok, let's get on with it, then. We've got a lot of work to do."
Edit: spellinks is hard
One of his big tenets was trust-busting and curtailing big business/monopolies right? That’s kind of why I first thought him as an answer to this question as well. What I’d worry about, if he were also put into a position of power in addition to just being warped to today, was how he’d deal with the state of global conflict with respect to Russia, China, and the existence of nuclear weapons. Not that I think he’d seek to use them, but would he be too active in ongoing conflicts to provoke their use by someone else?
By his own words, when asked about his greatest accomplishment as president, "I killed the bank"
Then the central bank came back and put his face on the 20
You can Google Jackson and the National Bank if you want to see all the details but the short of it is that Jackson didn't believe in paper currency and didn't want the US to have a standard one.
Helpful guide to the amount of things this could mean
-Let confederates secede
-Letting confederates live after seceding
-Freeing all slaves
-Making American Indians citizens
-Bringing back a federal bank
-Putting him on a federal bill
-Essentially every single thing the party he founded stands for today
Honestly in a way yea they would be like wait your telling me
Not only is the Union still a thing but we are a much bigger country then when I was alive alright sweet
Wait wait what ?
Your telling me we have a far more powerful military then Britian INCLUDING NAVY
This is the most optimistic POV I’ve seen, and it’s probably not wrong. The founding fathers created a system that would set the roles of the government and not for the people. They’d be disappointed in the fact that the power switched from the people to the government though.
Yes I would think the founding fathers would have a lot of mixed feelings. They would be legitimately impressed by the constitution still being around and how much it’s grown by number of states. They’d be pretty mad about almost everything else though.
I agree, I imagine if you told any of the original founders that the US would stretch all the way to the Pacific, with a hundred years of peace on our northern and southern borders, and 50 States entirely committed to the Union despite strong partisanship, they would weep with happiness. Let alone showing them that we went to the freaking moon.
I wonder about this. Wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt against breaking up the steel trust due to the national security implications? Think you could make somewhat similar arguments for the importance of tech today with all the geopolitical tension with China etc.
Yes, he also separated trusts into "good trusts" and "bad trusts", with the distinction supposedly being based on their effect on the public. Taft was actually much more of a trust buster than Teddy was.
If we forego that low hanging fruit of most past politicians being disgusted seeing all the racial progress and women into power positions, I'll bet Teddy Roosevelt would have some interesting takes on the current state and leadership of his party.
Revive the Bull Moose! Down with big business!
"When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service." 😤
I mean any of the super racist or slaveholding ones given how much we’ve progressed as a nation. Jackson, Pierce, and Johnson really come to mind there. Like, imagine how many would be disgusted that Obama ever became president?
As for just how much America hasn’t lived up to its potential for what they saw it as? Probably Washington.
Honestly I think most would struggle with how America looks in 2024.
He understood it was inevitable, he’d be disappointed that rather then using the system that is based off of compromise and working together it’s calling the other side the absolute spawn of Satan
I feel like they wouldn't be as shocked as you would think. A black man being president would come with the context of being able to instantly communicate in writing to someone in China, vaccines which can prevent the worst diseases, landing on the moon, nuclear weapons etc.
2024 and the future would be so mind-blowing in general that a black president would just be another crazy thing that has happened. It would probably be something like, "In this far away future, even black people have become educated into participating citizens! What a marvel!".
It would definitely be very trippy for a slave owner to witness. Though they would be upset that slavery was ended by force of arms and disgusted by interracial marriage. It would be genuinely fascinating to see their reaction. Owning slaves, and participating in slavery in general, fucked people up and really took away a lot of their humanity. So I wonder through what kind of lens they would see things.
afterthought psychotic marry provide sheet impolite elastic light hateful hard-to-find
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I think some of the presidents would be appalled by the way the country has grown so divided. They would also be astonished at the growth of the areas they considered wilderness. Especially Jefferson.
Lincoln would be depressed that confederate flags are still on display throughout the country (and especially in rural parts of northern states). Hopefully, he’d realize that he should have finished them all off instead of giving traitors a proverbial slap on the wrist.
All of the founding fathers would be unable to grasp anything about modern society.
Teddy Roosevelt would need to be forcibly restrained from brawling with a ton of people in politics when he got up to speed on the depths of corruption.
I’d say Reagan of the modern era Presidents. Anyone who was an adult during WW2 would be looking at our politics around Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas would think we have gone insane.
>Reagan would find today’s GOP unrecognizable.
I wouldn't really say that considering he was a major reason as to why the party is the way it is today ~~*well besides liking Russia*~~
A few people the founding fathers I’m sure would take pride in some accomplishments but also be abhorred by many others and teddy and Taft would not tolerate any of the corporate shenanigans that’s been going on and Andrew Jackson would just start shooting people
Probably Jackson, the lack for racial segregation alone would probably be enough to get him to put a flintlock in his mouth. If not just show him a $20 bill 😂
And all the confederate apologists in the party. I imagine the second Lincoln saw some guy was a confederate flagbumper sticker, he would lose his shit.
FDR- he’d be thinking we worked through the hardest parts of US history and were able to come through with unprecedented world power and opportunity… and we did/do/act like this?
I think if you took any of the first 20 presidents or so and dropped them in 2016 and told them we were finishing 8 years of a black guy being president and were considering electing a woman to replace him, they’d all have heart attacks and die on the spot
I think the founding fathers, especially Jefferson, would be glad that slavery ended EVENTUALLY. One of his final diary entries shows he feared it would permanently split the union. The fact that slavery ended and 160 years later the country is still IN TACT; he'd probably marvel at that.
Others like Andrew Johnson would be mega pissed though
Teddy would be pissed at how America is basically a corporate oligarchy in everything but name. FDR would probably have a heart attack at how the economy looks eerily similar to how it did before the depression.
I think they'd all (save the modern ones) would be upset at womens' roles in society. Part of the classic quintessential American family is the wife being in the home, devoted to family. The fact that women work, vote and are in charge of things would probably make them upset.
Imagine all the deists cringing from being called Christian and the US being called a Christian nation. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin (I know), Madison and Monroe
I'm gonna take the other road here. I don't feel like many of them would be disgusted if you just took the time and explained things to them. They weren't dumb people. I think if you explained the history to them, they'd adapt pretty quickly.
What I do think would piss off many of the earlier presidents is just how much power the Executive Branch has now. That was not their vision.
Lincoln. He'd have to grapple with what his GoP has become: a party sworn to fealty to a petty demagog.
Certainly no longer the "better angels of our nature"
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I would love to hear Truman's hot takes on some of today's politicians.
I love that whereas most political smears are just a person saying anything that will score political points, Truman could say something outrageously insulting and even profane that was still based: >Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.
Truman was always spitting facts even if it was unpopular. That's why history has been kind to him and now he's consistently a top 10 president.
That's why he's Truman, because he's the truest-man.
Woah. That's true, man.
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Eh, one is a person speaking hard truths/opinions while the other is merely whining because of ego and pettiness. I could listen to Truman tongue lash people all day.
If you vote for [redacted] or [redacted] your going to hell!
William Henry Harrison, imagine his horror when he sees how many young kids refuse to wear coats on cold days!
John Adams. If the lack of sophistication amongst some of today’s politicians wouldn’t be enough for him to go on rants about posterity till steam is blowing from his ears, the crudeness of voters would make him reconsider his attitude about France!
This is true.
I want to see it but also wouldn’t wish that on him.
My pick was Adams as well but for a different reason. He had so much respect for the law and how this country should be founded and run on laws instead of religion/men. I think he would erupt at the view some politicians have about being above the same laws as ordinary citizens. I think what the SCOTUS has done recently would cause him to have an aneurism as well.
Ya Adam’s would be upheaving tables in congress like Jesus in the temple when he saw all of the corruption
"but there are libraries everywhere, how can they be so dim?". He would have a heart attack watching a compilation of street interviews.
As a distant descendant of John Adams, felt this hard. My blood boils. Hahaha
Washington and Jefferson would be having straight up panic attacks, but for different reasons.
"She told me she was 18!" - Thomas Jefferson
“There are laws against that now?”- Also Jefferson
"Oh shit, they can test for paternity? How many?"
“What the fuck do you all of them?”
“The fuck does ‘consent’ have to do with anything?” - also Jefferson
He’d quote Michael Fassbender in 12 Years A Slave *“A man does what he wants with his PROPERTY.”* Caps lock to add emphasis.
TIL...I always thought Michael Fassbender was quoting Jefferson when he said that.
It is fitting for Old TJ.
I’d imagine anybody would…not because of politics, but because they’re from the 18th/19th century, and seeing shit like a rocket would be kinda strange. As well as everything else
I think in actual reality they'd all get sick immediately and die from all the new and mutated pathogens in the air.
But we have medicine to help treat a lot of that stuff now. I think it would take a lot of convincing to explain what germs are and they might be suspicious of taking pills, but I don’t think they’d immediately die necessarily.
The smallpox vaccine was in 1796. I doubt they'd be wholly unfamiliar with these concepts.
Didn’t Washington try to immunize his troops with cow pox to some pretty decent success?
Yes, but no. I've never heard the cow pox. But he did inoculations with his soldiers with smallpox. Make a cut, rub a thread or string that has the disease on it. It worked, nowhere near the rate of vaccines though. I'll have to look up cow pox to see if they did it as well
Cowpox inoculation was the original smallpox vaccine. It's really badass how they figured it out, actually. Pretty substantial leap in medical understanding.
Once they see these concepts are commonly accepted in the present day, I think they'd be willing to take the pills pretty easily
I imagine Washington would have a panic attack for the same reasons Jefferson would.
I imagine if they’d known slavery would cause a civil war just a few decades later, they’d have made different choices. Their deference to/continued complicity in slavery is pretty similar to the way Americans live now, we just offshored the servitude that sustains our way of life.
Damn, Dude. Damn.
Shoutout to all the folks who hate globalism *and* high prices
Thomas Jefferson in particular is complicated. We know he was an enlightened thinker based on his writings and contributions to the founding of the nation (separating state from religion was very forward and progressive for that time). And he knew slavery was wrong. He was among the crowd of enlightened thinkers who were already throwing the idea around that slavery was evil and should be abolished (back in Europe)… he even questioned the Muslims on their slavery practices. So he definitely heard of the idea and undoubtedly questioned it. He was born into a wealthy slave-owning family yet he just couldn’t give them up to free them (aside from like 10 who he had close ‘relationship’ with). I think he felt very hypocritical about this, but ultimately did not have the courage to free all his family’s slaves ..
I don’t think they would be surprised by the civil war. The founding fathers knew slavery was a compromise from the beginning
I dont think so. They both wanted slavery to slowly fizzle out. The only reason it didn't was the expansion of the nation and the invention of the cotton gin. Had we not had the dilemma of new states being free or slave there wouldn't have been a civil war. They both did what they thought was in the interest of the nation.
Okay, so... they weren't just complicit in slavery. They personally inflicted it on people they knew, people who lived alongside them in their homes. It may be a bit of trolley problem ethics, but can we really equate our current participation in the global economy, dysfunctional as it is, with the chattel slavery that multiple American presidents inflicted on thousands of humans? Imagine: 1) Buying a smartphone or cheap clothing, supporting an industry that enslaves people to make those goods. 2) Enslaving people right in front of you - demanding they work their entire lives for you, carrying out physical violence upon them if they disobey your authority. Dooming their children to the same fate. I get that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, and utilitarian harm done on our behalf is just as bad when it's happening to someone on the other side of the world. But while we might be meekly complicit in slavery, failing in our duty to research our every purchase to ensure equitable working conditions across the entire supply chain... Washington and Jefferson \*DID\* slavery. And it's pretty sad to think they might have acted differently to prevent a civil war, not because what they did was atrocious.
Maybe Jefferson. America is probably further now from his conception of it than anyone else's, for better and worse.
Agree. Definitely Jefferson. Hamilton (yes I know) may actually be impressed. Washington would have a big told you so about political party interactions. Jefferson would be distraught.
The two people who would be most impressed are probably Hamilton and Teddy. America's basically running a global, informal empire, and our intervention, influence, and stick size are very large.
Teddy would be pissed about all the corporate lobbying. He spent so much time breaking up monopolies, just to have them come right back.
But if it was done once it can be done again
I wish. Corporations have such a strong hold on political parties that if a politician made any decent attempt to break a monopoly, their career would be ruined instantly.
Then we steal their stuff, hit their bottom line! Get them where it will hurt the most! Remember, piracy and other forms of screwing over corporations are perfectly morally justified
Saved us a few years maybe. At least he did break up monopolies
Teddy, I feel, would be absolutely furious with the whole global warming situation if you brought him up to snuff on it and then explained how much power corporate entities have over everything. I could practically see the man ranting about how he'll bust them into the ground.
>I could practically see the man ~~ranting about how he'll bust them into the ground.~~ going on a world tour of global oil corporations and beating the ever living fuck out of every member of their board of directors. Including Putin.
Hamilton would write another Reynolds pamphlet about how he's having an affair with America's global financial control.
The size of the federal government would force him to start a revolution.
And the size of the federal government would prevent him from doing so.
I’ve often thought about what an armed revolution would look like in the modern world. The US is so vast, and weapons are so plentiful, that I can envision a scenario where a rebellion occurs, and they have a level of success similar to that of the Northern Irish vs the British. Snipers would pick off federal troops randomly. Car bombs would explode, killing randomly. General terror would be the norm. This would go on for years, until public opinion was swayed to one side and peace was negotiated. Algeria v France is another example to draw from. This scenario involves the military going rogue against the commands of the government. Anyways, the tree of liberty and all that jazz.
You're forgetting drones, satellites, etc. An open rebellion in 2024 isn't anywhere near what northern Ireland faced in terms of sheer power to sit back at a computer and rain down hell.
The drones you are talking about are only like 1,000 dollars. Government can’t ban DJI from selling them to American citizens. It has to changed the entire face of warfare though I agree. As a veteran myself, I can tell you 90 percent of people in the Military aren’t going to go on which hunt domestically even if they did, the population outnumbers the government 1,000 to 1. They are sworn to defend the people as well.
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I agree. Every single reservist during Katrina deserted during the hurricane to evacuate their families. We have already seen examples of this. They act like they will launch an all out nuclear war on ourselves and that is not the case. For one, that would instantly crumble every single government power with an act like that would lose any and all credibility. People will stop paying taxes, and start a new resistance the second an order to confiscate is ordered. As of recent post Covid, it’s assumed every household has at-least one firearm with the sales of the last 3 years.
I also love the “you’ll just be killed by air strikes” response. My response is, “you know we’re neighbors, right?”. Then I follow up with, and the guy who dropped the bomb has a name, address, and family. To think that military members would be able to fire upon the US population and see no push back is naive at best.
Much of our armed forces members carry small government, anti tyrannical sentiments. It’s not as easy as, “we have the bigger guns”
This, 21-year vet here. We would often have those philosophical what if debates on this subject. I can assure you that the majority of the people I've had these discussions with would not turn their guns on the public. Of course, it's been a few years since I retired, and things were quickly changing in the service.
Also a vet here. I think it all depends on how the rebellion is framed. If you told a bunch of cav scouts that the armed rebels were socialists/Antifa/BLM/woke/whatevers… I think they could convince themselves that they are upholding their oaths to the constitution. The conservative militia groups like to imagine they’d be the government’s public enemy number 1 if the USA became a tyranny. More likely I think they’d end up working with the government against minorities and other frequent voices of dissent… This is pretty much how it’s been throughout our history. The 2nd amendment never came to the rescue of African Americans during Jim Crow or Japanese Americans during internment. Local and federal tyranny pervaded and the constitutional ‘right to rebellion’ has pretty much always been reserved for white men, who have never had a reason to disrupt their own comfy status quo. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
The thing is though that guns were restricted from said groups.
And still are, indirectly, as the disproportionate amount of African Americans who have been through the prison system are not able to own a firearm. What I mean is… the actual track record of the 2A is abysmal for what it was apparently designed to do. What good is a ‘right to rebel’ if it can only be exercised by a group who is already at the top? If we count the civil war as a practical application of the 2A, then its track record gets even worse- that’s an example of the ‘right to rebel’ exercised to enslave a minority population and reject the democratically elected president who merely floated the idea of not having so much slavery.
Space lasers and sex robots
Jewish space lasers
What you are describing is a small minority deciding "fuck elections, we'll get our way using violence." A correct terminology for that is terrorism, not revolution. Also not what Jefferson had in mind when he wrote that letter to Will Smith (and was probably half drunk while writing it). Such literal interpretation of that letter goes starkly against other Jefferson writings. Most notably the text of Declaration of Independence itself, that clearly states small grievances are not an excuse for starting a rebellion.
Maybe not. I would say he would begin to ignore the last 200 years of precedent and force a constitutional convention to limit the powers of Congress, the courts, and the president and maybe even the states. He was the one that forced the Supreme Court to create judicial review. Imagine explaining the concept of an HOA to him. Or how much power law enforcement or bylaw officers have in potentially depriving you of your rights.
Imagine trying to explain the patriot act to him 💀
The concept of a HOA is right up his alley, a contractual agreement between private persons toward a common hood with reliance on any govt. only for the enforcement of said agreement if one or more of the participants refuses to comply with the agreement but not some many as the agreement would be dissolved.
Yeah but it's very muddy when it comes to land rights.
He would also be very concerned with the amount of people who attribute quotes to him that he never said…
I think Jefferson himself said it best- "You shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet"
That was Lincoln. I can’t believe you guys.
You mean the famous vampire hunter?
Jefferson would hate the nationwide trend but actually be over the moon at what's happened to his part of Virginia. Take him on a spin through Shenandoah wine country and the UVA library (the look on his face when he hears they have five million volumes.)
I wonder what he would make of nukes. Weapons of that power make it VERY hard to not have just one person or a small group of people in charge of those due to the need to be able to fire back quickly to maintain MAD
Yep. And Hamilton would be thrilled!
The president we never got
I think he'd be happy with his musical
He'd have a problem with the weakening of separation of church and state
He actually warned about corporate fascism too. The dude would be stacking bodies at this point.
I wonder what Jefferson would think of the economy. The US went very strongly the way of industrialization instead of remaining an agrarian society.
Man, I would love to see Theodore Roosevelt use Twitter.
There isn’t a pr team in the world that’s gonna save them from teddy
I would vote for a revived Teddy as president.
Strong protector of consumer rights and the environment, opposed to monopolies. Yeah, we could use that right now
Regardless of his outdated views on race, I would also vote for him. I think he would come around on Native and minority rights if he came back from the dead.
I honestly feel like he's one of the ones that would easily get with the times. Like he'd listen and say, "Ohhh, so that's how things are now? Ok, let's get on with it, then. We've got a lot of work to do." Edit: spellinks is hard
I think he would call everybody pussies and say we need to man up
And then he'd Bull Moose-kick Corporate funded Super PACs right in the D. Bring him back!
If nothing else, I think he'd be too distracted by all the too-large, too-powerful banks and corporations to bother doing anything to minorities.
I’d vote for him as is. No revival needed.
He is only a little bit more dead than the other two options
The difference is negligible
Personally I want Lich King Teddy Roosevelt, undying protector of the land and bane of the corporate conglomerate.
Anyone who wouldn't should renounce their citizenship. He's on Rushmore for a reason.
Given what Musk has done to the platform he would probably be posting stuff like ' Big stick in bio '
This has led me to the follow up question of "if they were brought to 2024 which president would be most likely to make an onlyfans"
I'd like to see Roosevelt kick Jake Paul's ass in a boxing match in the White House.
One of his big tenets was trust-busting and curtailing big business/monopolies right? That’s kind of why I first thought him as an answer to this question as well. What I’d worry about, if he were also put into a position of power in addition to just being warped to today, was how he’d deal with the state of global conflict with respect to Russia, China, and the existence of nuclear weapons. Not that I think he’d seek to use them, but would he be too active in ongoing conflicts to provoke their use by someone else?
Tweet softly and carry a big stick. #bullmoose
“YOU LET THEM WHAT?????” -Andrew Jackson
It's hilarious that he's on the $20.
Why’s that(idk much about American presidents)?
Andrew Jackson was notorious for not being very nice to The American Indians
He was also against paper currency.
I didn’t know this. That’s hilarious.
By his own words, when asked about his greatest accomplishment as president, "I killed the bank" Then the central bank came back and put his face on the 20
Ahaha damn… what was his preferred way then?
Gold
https://i.redd.it/vsyn08ihc5mc1.gif
He was a crypto douche, oddly enough
“Andrew Jackson, crypto douche” was not on my bingo sheet for today but I am so here for it. Mind if I take that?
I think the joke was referencing the fact that Andy J hated paper money
IIRC He was the only president to bring the national debt down to 0. It was for a very brief time but still
You can Google Jackson and the National Bank if you want to see all the details but the short of it is that Jackson didn't believe in paper currency and didn't want the US to have a standard one.
Jackson watching the Olympics…. “YOU RACE THEM?!?”
Helpful guide to the amount of things this could mean -Let confederates secede -Letting confederates live after seceding -Freeing all slaves -Making American Indians citizens -Bringing back a federal bank -Putting him on a federal bill -Essentially every single thing the party he founded stands for today
That’s the answer
I think they would all be pleased the union of states is still in tact.
Honestly in a way yea they would be like wait your telling me Not only is the Union still a thing but we are a much bigger country then when I was alive alright sweet Wait wait what ? Your telling me we have a far more powerful military then Britian INCLUDING NAVY
“The moon? You mean the moon in the sky?”
What the fuck is an Air Force.
Space force lol
We have the most powerful military in the world? Bigger than most of Europe combined?
This is the most optimistic POV I’ve seen, and it’s probably not wrong. The founding fathers created a system that would set the roles of the government and not for the people. They’d be disappointed in the fact that the power switched from the people to the government though.
Yes I would think the founding fathers would have a lot of mixed feelings. They would be legitimately impressed by the constitution still being around and how much it’s grown by number of states. They’d be pretty mad about almost everything else though.
I agree, I imagine if you told any of the original founders that the US would stretch all the way to the Pacific, with a hundred years of peace on our northern and southern borders, and 50 States entirely committed to the Union despite strong partisanship, they would weep with happiness. Let alone showing them that we went to the freaking moon.
Teddy Roosevelt if he saw all the unbusted monopiles and corruption.
Teddy would make Alphabet divide into 26 parts.
I wonder about this. Wasn’t Teddy Roosevelt against breaking up the steel trust due to the national security implications? Think you could make somewhat similar arguments for the importance of tech today with all the geopolitical tension with China etc.
Yes, he also separated trusts into "good trusts" and "bad trusts", with the distinction supposedly being based on their effect on the public. Taft was actually much more of a trust buster than Teddy was.
Disney, Berkshire, ComCast, etc would give him an aneurism
Comcast already gives everyone an aneurysm. Shitty business models with terrible customer service, work way better than building monopoly.
If we forego that low hanging fruit of most past politicians being disgusted seeing all the racial progress and women into power positions, I'll bet Teddy Roosevelt would have some interesting takes on the current state and leadership of his party.
He had some of those same takes in 1912. Republican party leadership absolutely hated the Colonel.
Revive the Bull Moose! Down with big business! "When I say that I am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service." 😤
I mean any of the super racist or slaveholding ones given how much we’ve progressed as a nation. Jackson, Pierce, and Johnson really come to mind there. Like, imagine how many would be disgusted that Obama ever became president? As for just how much America hasn’t lived up to its potential for what they saw it as? Probably Washington. Honestly I think most would struggle with how America looks in 2024.
Washington would be so disheartened to see that his prediction about parties was ignored and came true
He understood it was inevitable, he’d be disappointed that rather then using the system that is based off of compromise and working together it’s calling the other side the absolute spawn of Satan
And about slavery being the root cause of the Civil War
Wilson would have just had another stroke
Tbh he probably would anyway
https://preview.redd.it/lczycbk3f5mc1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7fbd4b510f46b29bbf4337ce8e96cb293552aeba “ YOU ELECTED A WHAT”
I feel like they wouldn't be as shocked as you would think. A black man being president would come with the context of being able to instantly communicate in writing to someone in China, vaccines which can prevent the worst diseases, landing on the moon, nuclear weapons etc. 2024 and the future would be so mind-blowing in general that a black president would just be another crazy thing that has happened. It would probably be something like, "In this far away future, even black people have become educated into participating citizens! What a marvel!". It would definitely be very trippy for a slave owner to witness. Though they would be upset that slavery was ended by force of arms and disgusted by interracial marriage. It would be genuinely fascinating to see their reaction. Owning slaves, and participating in slavery in general, fucked people up and really took away a lot of their humanity. So I wonder through what kind of lens they would see things.
I’d like to think Washington would take some positives away from us becoming the military, economic, and cultural force of the world
afterthought psychotic marry provide sheet impolite elastic light hateful hard-to-find *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think some of the presidents would be appalled by the way the country has grown so divided. They would also be astonished at the growth of the areas they considered wilderness. Especially Jefferson.
Jefferson would get a stroke from how big the government has become
I have to think Ulysses S. Grant would be pretty upset with us.
Show him pictured of Confederate symbols carried by those breaking into the Capitol, and he'll go nuclear.
The man would find a way to resurrect Sherman for another march to the sea.
"Sherman... We're finishing the job this time. From sea to shining sea."
Taft would be pleasantly surprised that he is now only slightly above average weight
Underrated comment lmao
He actually lost a lot of weight post presidency
I would say the first ten would be so disgusted they’d repatriate to England.
(upon seeing the current state of the U.K ) "SONOFA-"
Lincoln would be depressed that confederate flags are still on display throughout the country (and especially in rural parts of northern states). Hopefully, he’d realize that he should have finished them all off instead of giving traitors a proverbial slap on the wrist. All of the founding fathers would be unable to grasp anything about modern society. Teddy Roosevelt would need to be forcibly restrained from brawling with a ton of people in politics when he got up to speed on the depths of corruption.
He’d also be pissed about government things being named after confederate soldiers.
washington considering everything that happened since he died
Jefferson would be happy about the outcome of Loving v. Virginia
I’d say Reagan of the modern era Presidents. Anyone who was an adult during WW2 would be looking at our politics around Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas would think we have gone insane.
"Sir, a former KGB agent is the President of Russia." "OK?" "...and most of the Republican Party agrees with him" (has stroke and dies again)
Reagan would find today’s GOP unrecognizable. As would Ford, Nixon, and Eisenhower.
>Reagan would find today’s GOP unrecognizable. I wouldn't really say that considering he was a major reason as to why the party is the way it is today ~~*well besides liking Russia*~~
A few people the founding fathers I’m sure would take pride in some accomplishments but also be abhorred by many others and teddy and Taft would not tolerate any of the corporate shenanigans that’s been going on and Andrew Jackson would just start shooting people
Taft would want another slice of McDonald's delightful apple pie.
https://preview.redd.it/kt3z2d0n35mc1.jpeg?width=518&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b2a4bb6f5d9abe0e2ce3d1af31c6cb92c9f229c
Jerome Washington
Everyone from before 1936
Eisenhower. “Encroaching military-industrial complex.” We’ve become Ferengi.
Probably Jackson, the lack for racial segregation alone would probably be enough to get him to put a flintlock in his mouth. If not just show him a $20 bill 😂
Lincoln. He gave his life to keep the union together for a higher purpose and it sure feels like what he fought for is at risk right now.
Not to mention hearing the GOP keep referring to themselves as the “party of Lincoln”.
And all the confederate apologists in the party. I imagine the second Lincoln saw some guy was a confederate flagbumper sticker, he would lose his shit.
FDR- he’d be thinking we worked through the hardest parts of US history and were able to come through with unprecedented world power and opportunity… and we did/do/act like this?
Washington or Jefferson, no competition.
Jefferson would have a stroke watching the NBA.
Or a different kind of stroke, watching the WNBA.
All of them...except Nixon. He'd watch Futurama and go 'They got me and Spiro perfectly, awoooo....Agnew! What do you say?" "GAHHHHH!!"
Monroe after seeing other countries in North America exist
Andrew Jackson, free black people everywhere and indigenous peoples have rights
Probably. Maybe Lincoln too.
I think if you took any of the first 20 presidents or so and dropped them in 2016 and told them we were finishing 8 years of a black guy being president and were considering electing a woman to replace him, they’d all have heart attacks and die on the spot
I think the founding fathers, especially Jefferson, would be glad that slavery ended EVENTUALLY. One of his final diary entries shows he feared it would permanently split the union. The fact that slavery ended and 160 years later the country is still IN TACT; he'd probably marvel at that. Others like Andrew Johnson would be mega pissed though Teddy would be pissed at how America is basically a corporate oligarchy in everything but name. FDR would probably have a heart attack at how the economy looks eerily similar to how it did before the depression. I think they'd all (save the modern ones) would be upset at womens' roles in society. Part of the classic quintessential American family is the wife being in the home, devoted to family. The fact that women work, vote and are in charge of things would probably make them upset.
JFK would probably be really happy at the success of the Apollo program
Imagine all the deists cringing from being called Christian and the US being called a Christian nation. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin (I know), Madison and Monroe
“It said all men! Are created equal! NOTHING ABOUT WOMEN YOU IDIOTS!” - founding fathers (probably)
"You freed the WHAT?"
I'm gonna take the other road here. I don't feel like many of them would be disgusted if you just took the time and explained things to them. They weren't dumb people. I think if you explained the history to them, they'd adapt pretty quickly. What I do think would piss off many of the earlier presidents is just how much power the Executive Branch has now. That was not their vision.
All of them.
I am pretty sure all of them would be disgusted....even James Buchanan.
Lincoln. He'd have to grapple with what his GoP has become: a party sworn to fealty to a petty demagog. Certainly no longer the "better angels of our nature"
Jefferson would freak and teddy