/edu/ - Education

Lincoln represented the Northern independent producers who didn't want to compete with Southern planters as well as industrialists who were shipping in cotton and tobacco from the Indian subcontinent
>And of course, in some circles, what the US represented and should represent. A WASP nation. A Christian nation.
Washington was an enlightenment lib who didn't like the influence of church on state even if he was a practicing Anglican

>>17470
>Washington was an enlightenment lib who didn't like the influence of church on state even if he was a practicing Anglican
Thats why I said represented than what he actually is. Again, mythologized view of the man and the era of the time

>>17470
>Washington was an enlightenment lib who didn't like the influence of church on state even if he was a practicing Anglican
This is what the real Founding Fathers were like

>>17472
based chalmers

i mean let's be real. the reason the 1939 american nazis liked washington is because he owned slaves, and the reason the 1938 American communists liked Lincoln is because he is perceived as having freed the slaves

>>17474
Was America truly founded on Hitlerism?

>>17469
How can you argue Washington was a symbol of wasp identity in the 30s when the bund was flying banners of him lol “let’s say, you’re retarded”

Nearly every narrative of American history has been so bastardized that I don't even get into the topic unless someone is over the usual posturing and bullshit that happens in these discussions.

Probably the helpful thing to remember is that the President was de-emphasized before the Civil War, and Lincoln takes a stronger role out of necessity but also bent over backwards to please his fellow Republicans and keep his generals happy even when they were drunk as fuck and wanted to undermine Lincoln for getting them involved in this mess. Washington presented himself as the great neutral force that everyone could agree on, while the government was mostly in the hands of the founding generation and they figured out what they were going to do with it (hint: they really don't agree on what they're going to do with it). Also he was a big Freemason and there were calls to make him a king, but Washington rebuffed this for all of the reasons kings are a terrible idea. In many cases, the President was a titular head who was out and about doing things, but the general public did have that strong an identification with most presidents. Washington was an exception because he was Washington but, as mentioned, he was the neutral center everyone could agree on. The real center of the country was Congress and its prominent Senators and Representatives, and the alliances and clubs the most prominent Congressmen had aligned with them; and really this meant decisions were made in the smoke-filled back room and this was suitable for everyone. No one was convinced laws were made entirely by ponderous procedures as a formality, as if that were the entirely of what the law and the state could be. If you tried to tell people that was how government worked, everyone, of every social class, would laugh at you and ask if you are on the dope. The procedures did have a disciplinary effect on the other Congressmen, prevented any one of them from jumping up and down like a retard too much and making Hitlerian proclamations. The President was a man tasked with very important executive business, and usually represented what the victorious party and government were going to push for, but to become President you had to please Congress and play ball, hence why the surest path to the Presidency was for all of American history through Congress. (Trump is not a President, he's a sniveling retard put up for show because this republic is deader than dead.) When Lincoln, who was the most overtly authoritarian president up to that point, did his thing, he did so because he had to, and always emphasized that he was doing this to uphold the aristocratic republic rather than his personal glory or vanity.

Before I get into the screeching of "they're racist" (no shit, they all were), I think of how they were viewed at the time and in their near-future, because a lot of books are written about these men by those who lived through the events of their reigns, some of them knowing the men themselves. It was a thing that many of these presidents wrote themselves about what they accomplished and what they hoped the future would be, especially if they were prolific writers like Thomas Jeffferson… and of course, Jefferson Davis immediately wrote a scathing account of the Civil War since he had nothing else to do after the war was over, and that's available on the internet if you want to read it. Lincoln never got to write post-presidency because his brains were blown out. It would be endlessly fascinating to guess what he would have written about the outcome of everything.

If you really want to get into the "they're racist" routine, just fucking look at the shit coming out of Bill Clinton's mouth, the policies passed and the ethos promoted during the 1990s. The guy promoted The Bell Curve and believed, like so many of them up there do, that the black race would be eliminated because eugenics is godly and inevitable. That's far more racist than Lincoln's well-attested racism at least, and there is something more thoroughgoing in the eugenics of the 1990s than any of the racist and exterminationist programs of the past. The closest relation would be someone like Woodrow Wilson who was a complete piece of shit eugenist academic that did immeasurable damage to shit up the country, the world, and the post-war situation for the stupidest cause, and promoted the proto-Nazis after he was done that made the country much worse off ever since. But, I judge them not on their sentiments, because these guys are never nice. I judge them on their effect on the world and how much damage they're going to do, and Bill Clinton was competent, wicked, and left a trail of death to make sure no one could take down his enterprise, but after all is done, he was the last independently competent president and the last to suggest anything about the United States could last a little longer or was worth preserving. He could have done far worse than he did to the people, because we already saw the bottom of the barrel with Reagan, and would see just how much a really awful president could destroy a country with Bush the Younger.

If you want the president to be your friend or someone to look up to, you are looking for all of the wrong things. I would prefer if Americans look at their situation, see the country that was given to them is not a particularly good thing and could easily be better, and ask if we need to sink into the abyss because certain assholes insist on making the world into what they made it into. There is a way where we don't do this, where we don't fight eternal eugenics wars. It's not likely to go well now that the global pieces are set, but the worst thing you can do is pretend anything in the past 25 years is something other than an abject disaster for the world.