A few weeks ago, the conservative Right Wing News released their poll of right-wing blogs to determine the worst Americans of all time. Topping their list, ahead of “all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history” ahead of Timothy McVeigh, Benedict Arnold, Alger Hiss, The Rosenbergs (and even ahead of Obama) sat Jimmy Carter.
So what does Carter do to retaliate? Why, he flies to North Korea, frees an American (and a devout Christian to boot) being held there who had been sentenced to eight years hard labour for crossing the North Korean border on a one man peace mission. Carter also got a commitment from their government to restart the stalled six-nation nuclear disarmament talks, and even helped defuse rising tensions over the recent sinking of a South Korean ship.
As Blue Girl put it “Another monstrous act by the Worst. American. Ever.”
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Wasn’t this list released a few months back, and, if I recall, Aaron Burr and John Wilkes Booth were ranked lower than Obama and Carter and the second Roosevelt?
Or maybe blogs do more worst american polls than I know.
Click on the first link in the post to see the list.
The most ingenious tactic ever developed by the Right Wing is the best way to get away with telling lies:
1. Spend 10% of your time telling lies.
2. Spend the other 90% of your time pointing at the other guy, waving your arms in the air, and shouting very, very loudly “HE’S LYING! HE’S LYING! HE’S LYING!”
Yes, but he did unleash Michele Bachmann on an unsuspecting public….. beast!
Interesting side note: I tried to go to the original website (Right Wing News) to see the list myself. The page would not pull up because I rejected its cookies.
Not sure what to make of that.
I can see why the Right hates Carter so much. He went into one of their favorite “Axis of Evil” countries and made them sound, well….kinda nice. Shame on you, Carter! You’re making the conservatives look bad!
Keep in mind: these are the same people who voted FDR in at #3 – the same FDR who has consistently been ranked as the best president in American history, according to the Siena College Research Institute (http://www.siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/parents_and_community/community_page/sri/independent_research/Presidents%20Release_2010_final.pdf). They probably see the FDR administration as the start of that proverbial evil, big government…or something. But let’s face it, when you polemically disagree with over 200 hundred presidential scholars, your opinion loses a fair amount of legitimacy.
I’m going to give a little back-handed “support” to our friends who participated in the Right Wing News piece. It is easy to castigate our right wing brothers and sisters as being ill-informed as to our presidents, yet there are, I’m guessing, just as many folks on the left and, yeah, across the political spectrum that are just as ignorant of our history.
It’s not just in the political arena we see such strong opinions expressed by our countrywomen and men with so little true knowledge to back up said opinions. Take climate change, for instance. I wager there are few of us who can truly back up our opinions based on climatology; who have an understanding of massive system modeling. Gees, even a majority of weather forecasters (meteorologists) disagree with man-caused climate change so what is the average layperson supposed to think.
To me, this may be one of the reasons why the lies the right is so good at pawning off on a susceptible populace take root and shift opinions so effectively. Those hearing the lies can’t distinguish them from the truth because they don’t have enough knowledge and experience to counter the lie and, as a result, all too often alter, even if only so slightly, their own opinions. The propaganda technique termed Große Lüge by Hitler in Mein Kampf works all too well. Tell a big enough lie and people will believe at least a piece of it. Create an iota of doubt and people will start to doubt what they do know. Do both often enough and people will start to change even their beliefs and the societies mores and morals will follow.
I find the Sienna Research Institute analysis interesting, but it’s still based on individuals’ value judgments as to what makes a president better or worse than their brethren (I disagree on Jefferson, for instance, as being in the top 5 if only because he introduced truly dirty politics onto the American landscape in his run against John Adams – many of the same techniques used to this day to slip the big lie into the political debate although I do take some solace that over the past 28 years he’s slid from second to fifth).
So, to conclude, we who frequent this site appear to be fairly exceptional (meaning we are an exception to the rule) in that we are more informed than the general population of the US. I truly enjoy the discussions that occur here, yet we need to temper our condemnation of those whose actions we find so hard to understand in a logical and realistic world-view because, to steal part of a famous quote, they know not.
Well put, Don.
I also think it is important for us to realize that we too are susceptible to propaganda. Always question.
Don – UdaMan!
IK -rock on!