Alexandra at All Things Beautiful is asking bloggers to list who they think are the ten worst Americans of all time. Too many of the lists so far, both left and right, are both too partisan and too recent.
(Protein Wisdom’s list is hilarious, by the way.)
I can’t think of ten offhand, but I’m sure you folks can suggest some more.
Let’s see….
1) General Jeffrey Amherst (after whom town and college are named), for giving smallpox-infested blankets to Indians. From a letter he wrote to Colonel Henry Bouquet in 1763: “”Could it not be contrived to send the ‘smallpox’ among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them…. You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets as well as to try every other method that can move to extirpate this execrable race. I should be very glad to hear your scheme for hunting them down by dogs could take effect.”
2) President Andrew Jackson. The Trail of Tears alone is enough to get this racist madman on the list. Although arguably General Winfield Scott, who was more directly responsible for the Trail of Tears, deserves the spot more. Call this one a toss-up.
3) How about a simple serial killer? H. H. Holmes may have killed as many as 150 people, torturing some of them first. He seemed to kill men as part of elaborate scams, children for convenience, and women because he just liked killing women. His elaborate deathtrap-filled Chicago mansion burned down not long after he was arrested; the site is a post office now.
4) Texas cop Tom Coleman, who railroaded dozens of people (mostly black men) into prison on trumped-up drug charges so he could be a big man at the station house. Seems a little petty to include him on a list with mass-murderers, I admit, and maybe I’ll replace him with someone Ever So Much More Evil later. But I just hate this dude.
5) J. Edgar Hoover. “McCarthyism” should have been called “Hooverism”; Hoover, like McCarthy, was a strong believer in using the power of the government to crush dissent and ruin lives. But unlike McCarthy, he was smart enough to keep himself in the saddle for decades. Although hateful towards civil rights, he did have soft spots for blackmail and for the mafia. (It’s also rumoured that he was a cross-dresser; if so, that’s the only thing I like about Hoover.)
6) Senator John C. Calhoun, America’s most prominent supporter of slavery and arguably the single person most responsible for the “no compromise on slavery! never!” position of the South which (again, arguably) led to the civil war. Fun fact: A Senate resolution in the year 2000 declared Calhoun one of the “seven greatest” Senators ever!
7) In comments, Robert suggests another current-day dude: Fred Phelps, possibly the most hate-filled man in America. According to Wikipedia, some of Phelps’ relatives and associates “claim that Phelps suffers from a mental illness that leaves him unsatisfied with life unless he can be responsible for the suffering of other human beings.”
Post your suggestions in the comments!
Hat tip: The Argument Clinic.
UPDATE: This list by Joseph Marshall, in the comments at All Things Beautiful, features some very well-chosen names. (And I’m not only saying that because some of the names appear on my list as well!)
Pingback: 11D
Pingback: feminist blogs
Pingback: The Uncooperative Blogger
Can’t believe I missed him on my list; how about Fred Phelps, who has got to be up for some kind of asshole of the year award.
Jesus informs me that I’m not allowed to hate anyone. (Stupid forgiving Jesus.) But if he ever starts giving out day passes, I’ve got a list, and Phelps is on it.
Someone else would probably have thought of it anyway, but I don’t think I can ever forgive Henry Ford for inventing the assembly line, a concept that, applied on various levels and in various industries over the years (from factories to fast food), has sucked the pleasure out of working for millions of people.
Also, that Amish woman who invented the circular saw. If I never hear another one of those things at 9:00 am on a lovely summer morning, it will be too soon.
One of the robber barons from the turn of the 19th c. should be on the list, but not sure which one. Who was it who figured out how to skirt US corporate law by inventing the “trust?” Was that Carnegie? Ooh…also whoever managed to get corporations legally designated as “persons.”
Whoever masterminded that scheme in the 50s when auto and steel makers bought up municipal rail systems and scrapped them so people would be forced to buy cars.
Also Arlene Dahl for her book, “Always Ask a Man.” Wait…no, that was actually pretty entertaining. :)
MG
Pingback: All Things Beautiful
John M. Chivington for The Sand Creek Massacre
“During the early morning hours of November 29, 1864, he [Chivington] led a regiment of Colorado Volunteers to the Cheyenne’s Sand Creek reservation, where a band led by Black Kettle, a well-known “peace” chief, was encamped. Federal army officers had promised Black Kettle safety if he would return to the reservation, and he was in fact flying the American flag and a white flag of truce over his lodge, but Chivington ordered an attack on the unsuspecting village nonetheless. After hours of fighting, the Colorado volunteers had lost only 9 men in the process of murdering between 200 and 400 Cheyenne, most of them women and children. After the slaughter, they scalped and sexually mutilated many of the bodies, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.
Governor John Evans runs a close second:”On July 27, 1864 Governor Evans of Colorado had offered an amnesty to the tribes. A proclamation was sent forth declaring that all Indians who did not wish to be killed could put themselves under army protection. But, unknown to the Indians, he sent out a second proclamation to the settlers of Colorado. This time he virtually invited the citizenry to kill Indians, claiming that ‘most of the Indian tribes are hostile and at war.’ Black Kettle, the peace seeking Cheyenne chief, took up Evans on his original offer and proceeded towards Fort Lyons for protection. They reported, as they were instructed, to a camp 40 miles from the Fort. They settled along the bank of Sand Creek.”
in my opinion, Fred Phelps should just not be taken seriously. he’s a nutcase. i put him in a class with people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein (though as far as we know his actual activities aren’t on the same scale), freaks and psychos for whom the mere utterance of their names by others is gratification and justification for their actions.
he came to a local school near me to “protest” because a student had won an essay contest by writing about Ellen Degeneres. really, he came all the way from kansas to dracut, mass. because some sixth grader won an essay contest. and yet there were people who gathered up a huge counterprotest to stand in front of the school and flip out and yell and…i understand the feelings of outrage, but in my opinion Phelps should be greeted with crickets wherever he goes. getting the massive counterprotests gives him free publicity and the sense he’s having an impact on people.
unless, of course, we’re talking about the stunt he pulled at matthew shepard’s funeral. that time if i had my druthers, he would’ve been shot.
the guy who killed martin luther king jr. — and his government co-conspirators — has got to be on this list somewhere.
also the men indicted in the “mississippi burning” trials–and the men who got them off.
Thanks for the complement, Ampersand. One of the nice things about challenges such as Alexandra’s is it introduces me to find new blogs. I’m looking forward to stopping in occasionally. Best Wishes.
sure, Hoover, but why not McCarthy too?
I suspect that most of us will be hard pressed to adequately assess any possibilities from the 19th century…
Anthony Comstock: assmunch for the ages!
I know that Hoover is more deserving, but shouldn’t McCarthy also be on the list?
Henry Ford should also be on the list – not because of his assembly lines as Mary suggests, but because of his anti-semitism, and his publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Another possibility could be William Rhodes Davis, who among other things helped Hitler to get the oil he needed to start WWII.
Dubya….Dubya….Dubya….
…OR…
1. George W. Bush
2. George Armstrong Custer
3. Warren G. Harding
4. Chief Justice Tanney
5. Father Coglin
6. Rush Limbaugh
7. Newt Gingrich
8. General MacAurther
9. George Lincoln Rockwell
10. Jefferson Davis
2 Not-So-Honorable mentions:
1) The anonymous U.S Serviceman to whom the words “We had to destroy the village to save it” are attributed (if they are true).
No clearer example of the human tendency to rationalize injustice comes to mind.
2) Brannon Braga: I could write a huge essay. Shorter version: Wrote a dull, anticlimactic death scene for… Captain James T. Kirk. He killed Kirk. Nuff said.
Richard Nixon didn’t make anybody’s list? Nor Kissinger?
Jesus informs me that I’m not allowed to hate anyone.
Worse, Jesus tells you that you’re supposed to love everyone. It’s not too late to become a Jew, Robert; we’re a little more lax on these things.
That jackass whose full name I can’t remember, for whom the Comstock Act was named. (That was the act that made possessing/transporting birth control information, among other “obscene materials,” a federal offense. The guy put in a lot of effort towards dismantling Margaret Sanger’s crusade to make contraception readily available.
Also Pat Robertson. For being a sexist, homophobic, religious-hatred-filled, diamond-stealing, lying, cheating, fraud-committing, hate-mongering piece of shit who doesn’t ever stop being an asshole.
Oh, almost forgot (and I’ll take the time here and say I agree with almost all of the other suggestions here, my number 2 was [mostly] a joke):
L. Ron Hubbard. For creating a massive mental health scam that operates under the umbrella of religion (and for Battlefield Earth). Worse, the very word “Scientology” is a slap in the face of all honest scientists practicing their trade, as it has next to nothing to do with real science.
I suppose some scientologist will now step up and tell me that I’m insulting his/her religion. Oh well.
How about Alger Hiss?
I second the nomination of Henry Ford. Apart from popularizing the assembly line, he was one of the people responsible for the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. He had the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” translated into German (among other languages) and funded the Nazis when they were a small, fringe party. Without his help they probably would have remained a fringe party until they self-destructed under the weight of their leaders’ egos, some other party would have gotten into power, the Holocaust would never have happened and WWII…would have happened differently.
Larry Flynt
Hugh Heffner
Paul F. Little (aka Max Hardcore)
…and others of their ilk who have systematically promoted the sexual dehumanization and abuse of women and girls worldwide.
I like your list a lot, and would definitely add Sen. Joseph McCarthy and President Ronald Reagan (whow was recently voted “Greatest American”).
There’s more than enough to keep Jackson on the list. He was a slave trader and he violated a USSC decision in favor of the Cherokee Nation(which led to the Trail of Tears) in what is now Georgia. He should have been impeached for that.
It’s hard to list individuals. What about the US government and its practice of supporting dictatorships in Latin America that oppressed, raped, tortured and killed tens of thousands of men, women and children, in Guatamala, El Salvador, Nicaragua(The Contras, a bunch of drug traffickers), Peru, Argentina, Chile and many other countries? Or did the same in Asia and Africa? They may have been different people, who came and went, but the policies they practiced endured.
Wow…Henry Ford really was a grade A asshole! I had no idea. Now I hate him even more. Thanks for the history lesson, Dianne and Kristjan.
MG
Hey, I made that list partisan in a tongue in cheek way (Barbara Bush can clearly only be number one on a list that is meant to be humorous — and did you spot the inclusion of my evil ex-boyfriend Iggy?).
You can see in our comments that we took the project a little more seriously there. That’s where you’ll see arguments for Oppenheimer, Wilson, and Calhoun.
And by the way, our list has 1/3 of the same people as yours, before I read yours: J. Edgar Hoover and Andrew Calhoun. We just chose to also make room for Paris Hilton, since she is in the process of turning a whole generation into vain, shallow, ontologically empty bobbleheads.
What about Representative Dyes? (I think his first name was Jeremy) Staunch anti-communist of the 1930’s who first founded HUAC, (the House Unamerican Activities Committee) that the Hollywood 10 made famous, who was also a paid Soviet spy. (how’s that for hypocrisy) He’s also a character in The Cradle Will Rock.
I thought Protocols was anonymously written before Ford’s time. Henry Ford’s famous anti-semitic literature was The International Jew, which was also a brilliant precursor to our wonderful “war on Christmas” warriors. Not to mention Ford’s contributions to the Nazi war machine. (Great man that Ford)
I’d want to list Reagan, but I’m really too bored with the fucking debate.
Who was the governor of Mississippi who’s famous for saying “Segregation forever!” He deserves at least an honorable mention. Calhoun was a great choice. Also who was the general who made the order for all good Americans to kill as many buffalo as possible, since dead buffalo meant dead Indians. And let’s not forget Custer, and his campaign of genocide.
Oh, and William Randolph Hearst, and his campaign that nearly destroyed what may be the greatest film of all time.
Frederick Taylor:
Analyzed every job in the steel mill and worked out a system of finely detailed division of labor and a piecework wage system increasing profit and productivity. Each worker was interchangeable and every detail of the workers time and energy was controlled. Published the book in 1911 on scientific management. Today we call ourselves human resources thanks to this mans ideas and Fords implementation of them.
Hey, Amp, how is it that entry number one on your list of Ten Worst Americans is a British subject who was born and died (as a Baron) in Great Britain and who commited his acts 13 years prior to the existence of America? He was in no fashion whatsoever an American.
Henry Ford was personally an asshole. But the assembly line is wrong? Inceasing productivity and profits is wrong? By increasing productivity and profit, Henry Ford made it possible for his workers to buy the products they were making! Instead of cars (and all other products made by this method) being boutique products for the rich, it enabled all Americans to be able to afford such things.
Productivity and profits enable us to enjoy the lifestyles we do, folks. Take a look at the countries where productivity and profits are low; they’re called third-world countries. You want to live like that? I don’t.
Representative Andrew Volstead. Creator of prohibition.
It’s arguable that organized crime wouldn’t have taken off without prohibition, nor would we have had the framework for the war on (some recreational) drugs.
RonF –
Henry Ford and his ilk did not increase their profits and productivity in a void, and the assembly line was not developed to benefit workers and make it possible for them to buy the crap they were making.
This is sort of like the pro-Walmart argument: “Walmart has cheap stuff. That’s good!” But that argument ignores the hidden costs to taxpayers, communities and Walmart’s workers (let alone the slave laborers in Saipan who crank out the stuff they sell and the people worldwide who have lost production jobs as corporations perpetually cast about for a cheaper labor pool).
As Rose said above, the main point was to weaken the position of the labor force by making workers interchangeable and, ultimately, disposable, so that they would no longer be in a position to make inconvenient demands on their employers in the interest of improving their personal ‘profitability.’
Profits don’t just appear by fairy hands. The money always comes out of someone’s pocket – and in the case of the rise of mechanized, assembly-line labor, the pockets picked belonged to many, many skilled laborers and craftspeople and small business owners.
I’m not saying I think the answer is to return to the “dark ages,” but why should that be the only alternative? I’d be glad to lose my freedom to purchase unlimited widgets in exchange for greater independence for workers, more opportunities for small business owners and jobs that require skill and engage people’s faculties – the kind of jobs that provide experience and make the individual worker more and more valuable with age, rather than just a worn-out cog to be pitched in the trash.
Whatever benefits it may have conferred, the assembly line turned workers into manipulable serfs, and that was its purpose. The labor movement fought for controls on the process that made things better for workers for a while, but those are now being steadily dismantled in the US and in foreign “cheap labor” pools, do not exist at all (and, oh yeah…greedy first world capitalists are largely responsible for the conditions prevailing in today’s third world countries. Ford and his ilk, and their European predecessors are responsible for that).
So yeah – – – that’s why I think the assembly line sucks.
MG
Mary, if your theory of profit is true, then we would observe that the per capita wealth of humankind would have declined as capitalism displaced mercantilism. We do not observe that; in fact, we observe the opposite. The analytical observer is forced by the data to the conclusion that capitalism fosters inequality, but increases the net wealth of the system considerably. The grandchildren of the skilled laborers and craftspeople live considerably better than their ancestors did.
If greedy first world capitalists explain the abysmal conditions in third-world countries, then what explains those conditions through history, where they are found in even greater abundance without the grasping hand of the profit-seeker as an causal factor? However emotionally appealing, the data simply don’t support your worldview.
Absent coercive economic tyranny, which has proven emotionally unsatisfactory to its subjects and thus unsustainable, the type of job you describe and the economy you posit as being highly desirable are possible in only two conditions: one of absolute material poverty throughout the entire species, where one is a craftsman of skill or one is a corpse, or one of sufficient material wealth to support knowledge workers, who do accrue value in exactly the fashion you describe. I personally choose living in the materially wealthy culture; YMMV, but Henry Ford made life better, not worse. The “crap” he peddled was freedom for individual people to make their own decisions about where to live and work.
Fred Phelps is still an asshole.
President Harry Truman. He ordered or approved the murders of 500,000 – 1,000,000 Japanese civilians over the course of half a year in 1945.
General Curtis LeMay. He carried out the murder of 500,000 – 1,000,000 Japanese civilians over the course of half a year in 1945. A nuclear maniac who explicitly denied that there were any innocent bystanders in war and by all accounts simply reveled in death and destruction.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a pseudo-leftist demagogue who created the military-industrial complex; ordered internment of Japanese-Americans, happily allied with, propagandized for, and consigned 1/2 of Europe to the totalitarian terror of, Joseph Stalin; and one of the three men who came the closest to becoming a dictator in the United States.
President Woodrow Wilson, unreprentant liar and war-monger, KKK fan, arch-segregationist, anti-feminist, and one of the three men who came the closest to becoming a dictator in the United States.
George Fitzhugh, the most militant defender of white supremacy and race slavery in the prewar South, author of Slavery Justified, Sociology in the South, and Cannibals All!
Nathan Bedford Forrest, perpetrator of the Fort Pillow massacre and founder of the Ku Klux Klan.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the inventors of modern scorched-earth warfare, ravager of the South and murderer of Southern civilians; went on to pursue genocidal campaigns against the Plains Indians as a follow-up.
Senator James Eastland, militant white supremacist Senator from Mississippi, mad dog McCarthyist, and founding father of the White Citizens Councils.
In addition to seconding Larry Flynt, I’d also like to add Chuck Traynor, the pimp/pornographer/rapist/batterer/slave-driver who forced Linda Boreman into Deep Throat (among other pornography) and played an instrumental role in founding the mass-market, above-ground film pornography industry in the U.S. through repeated filmed rapes.
Robert,
I freely admit I am not an economist (my degree was in graphic design), but your reply has the same problem as RonF’s. Why does it have to be an either/or proposition? Are you really saying you think the current system can’t be improved? I agree with you that the best systems work by harnessing people’s natural greed, but you have to have something in place to control that monster.
It’s no longer true, anyway, that descending generations live better than their parents and grandparents, and the trend shows no signs of reversing again. Most of us are maintaining the lifestyle you say you prefer by going into debt. How is that sustainable or profitable for most of us?
MG
“I thought Protocols was anonymously written before Ford’s time. Henry Ford’s famous anti-semitic literature was The International Jew, which was also a brilliant precursor to our wonderful “war on Christmas” warriors. Not to mention Ford’s contributions to the Nazi war machine. (Great man that Ford)”
Raznor, the Protocols were a piece of propaganda made during the tzar regime in Russia, but didn’t get used before the Communists took over. There were many different people who helped spread it, but Ford did much in this regard. The International Jew is to a large degree based upon the Protocols.
Thanks, Kristjan, didn’t realize that.
Rad Geek – General Sherman also authored the Navajo treaty – the best held treaty between the United States government and any native tribe, also saving the Navajos from a slow extinction by their previous relocation, which brought them to an area with not enough water in an area they were to share with (I believe) the Apaches, where the tribes had been traditionally hostile toward each other.
Just saying. This is the problem I have with a “worst” list, most people have a good and evil side to them. I still think my idea on Dyes was a good one though.
I was going to add Nathan Bedford Forrest, but Radgeek got there first. He holds up well in both a “pure evil” and “scale of harm” analysis, and the effects of his evil propogated out over several generations.
Rad Geek: FDR and Truman are good for another reason too. Apparently, the Japanese were willing to surrender as early as 1943–on one condition. That condition was that the emperor remain emperor. The US had broken Japanese codes and were perfectly aware of this desire and were unwilling to accept it because they knew that they were going to win and wanted an unconditional surrender–and for Japanese society to be as completely destroyed as possible. The atomic bombings were completely unnecessary. Even if one argues that the first one was because a formal offer of surrender had not been made or because there were still elements in the Japanese government arguing for continuing to fight or for some other reason, the second bomb was dropped three days after the first. Right. Three days were all the time given for the government to get its act together. In fact, the second bomb was dropped while representatives of the Japanese government were touring the remains of Hiroshima and deciding that the devistation done was indeed as bad as rumored. The destruction of Nagasaki served only one purpose: to intimidate the USSR–which was, at the time, an ally. Nice people the “greatest generation” had leading it.
Dianne –
Excuse me? Emperor remains emperor is ok? Have you studied what was done to US captives by the Japanese? Have you looked at the statistics on how many Americans were still dying during the latter phase of the war? Do you not remember how the war with Japan began? I’ll bet you are one of the folks bemoaning 2100 casualties in Iraq over 3 years too. Sorry that you don’t like it that people are held accountable for their government … been that way since time began and will be that way until the Second Coming … if you believe in it. Tough. Live with it.
Dianne, do you have any source for that? I’m not saying it’s not true, I would just like to know something more about it.
Kristjan Wager: Most of it I got from Covert Action Quarterly. Normally, I wouldn’t consider this a source to trust implicitly, but the article was well-sourced and the sources seemed reliable (ie declassified govt docs). Unfortunately, the article is not on the web, so I can’t give you a direct reference. Nor do I either have the magazine still or even remember which issue it was. Sorry. I should have kept it–I’m making claims that sound outrageous and should expect reasonable people to ask for documentation. I’ll see if I can find any web based sources.
I think the CAQ issue that the article was in was Number 53, 1995. Not sure about it, though, because CAQ doesn’t have back issues on the web and I’m going by the table of contents.
Apparently so, because the Emperor did remain Emperor.
If it is true (and I’m not saying that it is) that this was the only sticking point preventing a surrender prior to the A-bombs, then their justification evaporates.
In defense of Henry Ford:
Yes, he fine tuned mass-production and he was a racist. However, he retracted his anti-semitic comments later in life. Granted, you can’t unsay what has been said, but at least he acknowledged he was worng. Also, unlike Walmart, he didn’t just produce cheap goods, he PAID his workers well, even before unionization. My grandfather worked on the assembly line from it’s very beginning until the mid-seventies, and his job at Ford was what brought his family out of poverty.
What about someone like O’Reilly or Limbaugh, who get rich by appealing to the very worst in people, alternatively presenting themselves as prophets or entertainers as it suits them?
Mary,
As Rose said above, the main point was to weaken the position of the labor force by making workers interchangeable and, ultimately, disposable, so that they would no longer be in a position to make inconvenient demands on their employers in the interest of improving their personal ‘profitability.’
I hate to say it, as I agree that the abstraction of labor (that is, the simplification of labor tasks until anyone can perform them) was a strategy undertaken explicitly to cheapen labor costs and destroy the bargaining position of the worker, but Henry Ford didn’t invent it.
The factory system predates Henry Ford by almost a hundred years and was first developed in England in the pottery industry, long before the assembly line, explicitly for the nefarious purposes just ascribed to it. I don’t remember off-hand who invented it, though.
As Rose said above, the main point was to weaken the position of the labor force by making workers interchangeable and, ultimately, disposable, so that they would no longer be in a position to make inconvenient demands on their employers in the interest of improving their personal ‘profitability.’
I’d like to see documentation that the intent behind the assembly line was to produce a particular effect on the workers, as opposed to producing a particular effect on the product.
Profits don’t just appear by fairy hands. The money always comes out of someone’s pocket – and in the case of the rise of mechanized, assembly-line labor, the pockets picked belonged to many, many skilled laborers and craftspeople and small business owners.
Profits are not necessarily a zero-sum game. They do not have to be the result of picking someone’s pocket. They can be earned by producing an existing product more efficiently. They can be produced by improving a product so that it works better or faster. They can be earned by creating a new product that enables others to do a job they couldn’t do before. There are entire new industries that make our lives better; think of all the medical-related industries that didn’t exist 100 years ago. Shit, think of all the ones that didn’t exist 10 years ago. Productivity can be increased without reducing someone or something else.
I’m not saying I think the answer is to return to the “dark ages,” but why should that be the only alternative? I’d be glad to lose my freedom to purchase unlimited widgets in exchange for greater independence for workers, more opportunities for small business owners and jobs that require skill and engage people’s faculties – the kind of jobs that provide experience and make the individual worker more and more valuable with age, rather than just a worn-out cog to be pitched in the trash.
There’s lots of jobs like that. But they’re not in manufacturing, and aren’t going to be. Assembly line jobs are actually decreasing; robots are taking over more and more of them. Information technology and medicine are two areas. But there’s lots of dismal jobs out there, just like there were before the assembly line was created. The problem is that if you want the kind of job you describe, you need to get a good educational or technical training base and maintain it as you get older.
Whatever benefits it may have conferred, the assembly line turned workers into manipulable serfs,
For the most part, they already were. And they were unable to afford what they made, to boot.
and that was its purpose.
That I’d like to see documented.
The labor movement fought for controls on the process that made things better for workers for a while, but those are now being steadily dismantled in the US and in foreign “cheap labor” pools, do not exist at all (and, oh yeah…greedy first world capitalists are largely responsible for the conditions prevailing in today’s third world countries. Ford and his ilk, and their European predecessors are responsible for that).
Yeah, we’ve pretty much exported our worst shit manufacturing jobs to the third world. I’m not a big fan of having essentially exported our manufacturing base. But if you want to blame greedy first world capitalists for that, put yourself on the list if you personally use any of those products. Do you wear custom-made shoes, or Nikes? Multiply that against all the other products you wear or listen to or watch. The greedy first world capitalists can’t sell what people don’t buy. How much freedom to buy widgets – and clothing, and appliances, and personal electronics, etc – would you care to lose? If we had to pay American middle-class wages to everyone that made all the material goods we use, I think you’ll find that most people would be able to buy far fewer material goods.
And I’m still waiting to hear how the #1 entry in a “Worst Americans” list isn’t an American.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the inventors of modern scorched-earth warfare
I”m curious as to what this guy invented that didn’t exist prior to him. Hell, the Romans slaughtered all the Carthaginians, burned the city down, and sowed salt on the ground to sterilize it. How did he “improve” on that?
Don’t take this as a defense of Sherman’s march to Atlanta. I just want to know what was new about it.
Raznor:
I think that having personally commanded several genocidal wars is enough to get you on the “worst Americans” list even if you also worked out a good treaty along the way.
RonF:
All kinds of atrocities and raids have been practiced in warfare since recorded history, but Sherman’s march inaugurated a couple of new tendencies for the modern age. It was one of the first times in recorded history that scorched-earth warfare was (1) systematically used (2) as a weapon of offense (3) on such a large scale. There are a few examples of scorched-earth tactics being used for defensive purposes (e.g. in Spain and Russia during the Napoleonic wars), plenty of examples of arbitrary pillage, raiding, and destruction in the countryside, and some examples of the destruction of entire cities (such as the Romans’ destruction of Carthage, or the Mongols sack of Baghdad). But Sherman pioneered the systematic use of deliberate devastation as a strategic weapon to break the enemy (through both concrete damage and terror), and he practiced it on a regional scale uncontemplated even in Timurlane’s darkest dreams.
Now, I’m no expert in military history; there may very well be examples of this kind of devastation elsewhere prior to Sherman, and maybe even on a comparable scale. But my understanding is that it’s Sherman whose legacy our contemporary historians and generals study as the origin of modern total warfare. (And if I’m mistaken, of course, he’s still an asshole, for other reasons.)
Well Seasoned:
Deliberately killing civilians in retaliation for the crimes of their governments, in order to achieve some political end, is terrorism. In this case, terrorism that resulted in the deaths of over half a million civilians.
Question 1: In what respect is this morally better than the massacre of 2,000 or so innocent civilians in retaliation for the crimes of their government on September 11?
Question 2: Given whatever justification provides your answer to Question 1, is there any moral limit on the number of civilians killed in the terror-bombing of Japan as far as you’re concerned? How many innocent lives would you have considered acceptable losses for an unconditional surrender?
I can´t believe some people (Radgeek?) forgot to include Ronald Reagan, president in of the most corrupt administrations in the history of the US (Iran Contras and the the administration with the largest % of indicted and convicted officials in US recent history, new record on defecits etc…). But the worse crime of Reagan was his support for the genocide in Guatemala of more than 200 thousend indians by the right wing local goverment (and lets not talk about El Salvador….).
Pingback: Geekery Today
I contend that not only Fred Phelps worthy of being one of the top 10 worst Americans, but also one of the great hypocrites. Check out http://www.geocities.com/antiphelps/
He protests homosexuality, but is unable to see his own sin (by his standard to be sure).
Even though it’s trite, George Bush Jr. really does need a spot here.
Oh, and in response to this bit of idiotic assholery:
I’ll bet you are one of the folks bemoaning 2100 casualties in Iraq over 3 years too. Sorry that you don’t like it that people are held accountable for their government.
Only it’s not 2,100. It’s more like 38,000 if not more.
That includes those evil infants and toddlers that need to be held accountable for their government.
Sorry Barry, but he/she deserved it.
And I’m still trying to figure out how a list of the “Top 10 Worst Americans” can be credible when the #1 person on the list isn’t an American.
RonF,
Maybe it is for the same reason that the pilgrims and the Virginia Colony are usually covered in American History classes?
Charles, The Pilgrims and the Virginia Colony are studied to enable us to learn how America came to be. They set up their own local civil authority. But they weren’t Americans.
They were also at least people to came here to settle, to stay and develop a life. The person named in entry #1 was hired help. He never came over here to stay. He was a British subject who was born in Great Britian, died in Great Britian, was a member of the British Aristocracy (as a Baron), and neither he nor his contemporaries would have considered him an American. He acted in the name of the British Crown, not the colonial authorities. He also commited his acts 13 years prior to the existence of America. The fact that someone committed an act in territory that later became America doesn’t make them an American. He was a foreigner.
Pingback: Rad Geek People’s Daily / Evildoers
My vote goes to G. Gordon Liddy as No. 1. Tries to cheat democracy, fails, gets jailed for only five years, spends the rest of his life trying to sell guns to children. A reeking, despicable bastard if I ever saw one.
Rest of the list:
2. Dick Cheney (Lex Luthor without the charm, or the good side),
3. N.B. Forrest (obviously),
4. Joe McCarthy (Ironically did a very decent impression of the Stalin-era Politburos during his inexplicable rise to fame)
5. Lyndon B. Johnson
6. Ann Coulter (I bet she eats live puppies for breakfast every morning, just before beating up her kids)
7. Fred Phelps
8. George W. Bush
9. Benedict Arnold
10. The Rosenbergs
Wow.
I just perused the comment thread. That is quite possibly the creepiest thing I’ve read since the Wikipedia article on The Turner Diaries.
Seriously, every other post in that thread is “All the Democrats!”. Liberals are posting historically-minded questions about injustices in America’s past, and also discussing which would be the worst serial killer. Conservatives are just posting their political adversaries and calling them traitors.
Disgusting.
How can none of these lists include Gen. George McClellan? His arrogance and cowardice lengthened the US Civil War and directly led the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He refused to obey his commander in chief and was a general all around pussy. I hate that guy.
[Thanks for the comment. But just so you know, we don’t use “pussy” as an insult around these here parts. –Amp]
How about Ted Bundy ?
He killed at least 30 women, and made it absolutely clear that he never felt any guilt.