• LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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    7 days ago

    Maybe the only US president I can think of who seemed like a genuinely good person. But I wasn’t alive during his presidency so I don’t know what things may have happened then.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      I was. Though too young to have any solid memories of it. But I remember growing up all the hate and ridicule thrown at him because he dared to treat Americans like they were intelligent adults.

      • protist@mander.xyz
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        6 days ago

        That “hate and ridicule” was the beginning of the right wing media takeover we’re still dealing with today, coupled to with an emerging corporate media that only reports scandals and problems to draw ratings. It was and still is absolutely awful.

        • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          Well the beginning of the next stage. You have to remember in the 1930s they plotted to overthrow and kill FDR. Fortunately FDR found out about it before they acted. But instead of trying and hanging everyone involved as he should have done. And adequately documenting it. He instead did Back Room negotiations to temporarily pass new deal policies. Which the people he let skate have spent the last 100 years slowly undoing.

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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            6 days ago

            FDR was old money, hanging fellow bourgeoisie for trying to influence the government is infinitely more repellent to someone like that than his buddies from the country club successfully doing a coup.

            • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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              6 days ago

              There’s no difference between then and today.

              They still refuse to punish the monied elite.

              The very same reason trump never got sentenced and why he’s our next president.

      • adarza@lemmy.ca
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        6 days ago

        his election in 1976 was the first one i remember. i was in primary school at the time. i got to stay up to watch the news coverage on tv that night.

        i’ve been a dfl’er ever since.

        in our own mock elections at school, he won by a wide margin (and again in 1980, as did mondale in 1984). in 1980, i was one of the kids in class assigned to stump for carter for a class project.

        he will always be near the top of my list of favorite or ‘best’ presidents.

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        7 days ago

        Everyone I know who was alive at that time has a negative opinion of him as a president but I never really understood it fully.

        • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          The long and the short of it. Oil crisis and Reagan’s hostage sabotage in Iran. It’s really not that much different to anything today. Listen to any conservative complaint about contemporary Democrats and you will hear clear inane echoes.

          He told Americans that we just need to tighten our belts and we will get through it. As he had personally done as a young member of the silent generation during the depression. Reagan told them all they were special little sausages. And should cater to their every greedy Indulgence. I’m sure you can guess which message they liked better. The same message they got this time.

          Americans have not and will never learn their lesson as long as the wealthy own the media. Telling people what they want to hear. And turning them against those that would help them in any way.

          • bitchkat@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            That fucking asshole killed our conversion to metric. Carter had us pretty well on the way.

        • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works
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          6 days ago

          A lot of it had to do with the Iran hostage crisis (1979-81). There was a failed rescue attempt by US military in 1980 that cost the lives of 8 servicement (chopper crash) that really put the nail in the coffin for Carter.

          The final death knell was the October surprise theory (supported by “several individuals—most notably, former Iranian President Abulhassan Banisadr, former Lieutenant Governor of Texas Ben Barnes, former naval intelligence officer and U.S. National Security Council member Gary Sick, and Barbara Honegger, a former campaign staffer and White House analyst for Reagan and his successor, George H. W. Bush—have stood by the allegation.” source). While the theory does have its detractors it has a lot of support by those in the know.

          I was around back then and remember watching Carter almost wither away under the onslaught from Reagan and the Moral Majority.

          • logicbomb@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            You didn’t actually explain what the October Surprise Theory was. According to your link:

            The 1980 October Surprise theory refers to an allegation that representatives of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign made a secret deal with Iranian leaders to delay the release of American hostages until after the election between Reagan and President Jimmy Carter, the incumbent.

            • HellsBelle@sh.itjust.works
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              6 days ago

              Whoops. Sorry about that.

              1980 October Surprise

              The 1980 October Surprise theory refers to an allegation that representatives of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign made a secret deal with Iranian leaders to delay the release of American hostages until after the election between Reagan and President Jimmy Carter, the incumbent. The detention of 66 Americans in Iran, held hostage since November 4, 1979, was one of the leading national issues during 1980, and the alleged goal of the deal was to thwart Carter from pulling off an “October surprise”. Reagan won the election, and on the day of his inauguration—minutes after he concluded his 20-minute inaugural address—the Islamic Republic of Iran announced the release of the hostages.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            There was also both the energy crisis itself and the “Crisis of Confidence” speech during the middle of the energy crisis, which people saw as Carter just ignoring the energy crisis.

            Really, a lot of things went wrong. The biggest, though, was that Carter just refused to kiss Tip O’Neill’s ring and it meant he had both parties working against him.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          6 days ago

          It is exactly like today. What Carter did, just like what Biden has done more recently , was drowned out by hate fueled character assassination. Yes Carter was a genuine nice human being wanting the best for everyone but at the same time Reagan was genuinely likable, believable. He was “the great communicator”. So like today, only a much nicer person getting his character assassinated but by somberly influential rather than todays centrism, racism, hatred and spite.

          Carter also told people things they didn’t want to hear but had to. He was the genuine “telling it like it is”.

          I was alive at the time e and thought Carter was a great president. I may have been biased by even then preferring engineers. However I also got swept up in the wave of Reaganism along with everyone else. Yes, I believed cities were hellish gang ridden dystopias, the countryside filled with “welfare queens” collecting generational wealth by pumping out babies, and college elite using abortion at will as just casual contraception. I still believe Reagan hastened the fall of the Soviet Union by outspending them in an arms race. I was surely naive at the time but also Reagan was that good to make you believe anything

    • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      He was a little too naive as president. I think that was because he was too wholesome a person to really be in the role. But he did okay. He wasn’t a great president, but equally he wasn’t terrible. And he didn’t deserve the hate and ridiculous he’s received since. Especially considering his presidency was seriously undermined by his rivals.

      • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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        6 days ago

        I mean I openly stated that I don’t know too much about his presidency. Maybe you could explain instead of posting snarky one-liners?

        • ceoofanarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          6 days ago

          He was a huge supporter of the shah of Iran and his mass torture and murder programs and Suharto of Indonesia and his mass murder of “labor” and his genocide of East Timor. He also sent a bunch of money to the El Salvadorian dictatorship they used to fund death squads, started the us funding of the mujahedin in Afghanistan we all know where that lead, supported mass killing in Angola by South Africa and the Congo both separately. I could keep going to his equality deplorable crimes with Grenada, Liberia, South Korea i could go on and on. Point is he was a bad dude.