History will ultimately judge the decisions that were made . . . and I’m just not going to be around to see the final verdict. In other words, I’ll be dead.
George W. Bush
How do we judge what was a good or bad leader? Is it possible during their tenure, or only in retrospect, after they are dead?
Growing up near Lancaster, PA, every week as we drove to Church, we would pass Wheatland, home of former US President James Buchanan. Buchanan is widely considered to be the worst US President in history. He’s the only one who actually lost territory during his term because, as Lincoln’s direct predecessor, he oversaw the secession of seven southern states: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.[1] As a consummate politician with a nearly perfect political career (two ambassadorships including Russia and England, serving in 3 different administrations, being a member of the PA legislature and both houses of Congress), Buchanan seemed an obvious choice as President. He was incredibly popular and well connected in Washington and to foreign leaders. He hosted dinners that connected key decision makers and even featured chocolate at every meal! So what went wrong?
There are so many possible factors. First, if you’re going to be President, 1857 is probably about the worst possible year to take the oath. By 1858, there were only 31 states, and a whole lot of territories. The country was almost 50/50 in terms of free states (17) vs. “slave” states (15). Pennsylvania had long been a free state, since 1780, with a robust involvement in the Underground Railroad, and yet, Buchanan was ambivalent on the topic.[2] When he ran for the Senate, he was worried about political fallout because his sister Harriet (who lived in Virginia) owned two slaves. This was a politicial bombshell that might cost him support in free states like his own. To solve the problem, he bought the “freedom” of the two slaves from his sister and reclassified them as indentured servants in his own household (which was permitted by PA law). Buchanan, a lifelong bachelor, figured he needed domestic help anyway. Both servants were contracted to serve in his household until they were 28 in order to pay off the indenture (7 years for one, 23 years for her daughter). So much for freedom!
Due to his personal ambivalence on slavery, Buchanan was branded a “doughface,” a derogatory term that refered to a Northerner who sympathized wth Southerners. So why was he so sympathetic to the South, given that he lived in a “free” state? Hard to say. He had developed an extremely close relationship with an Alabama lawmaker (another bachelor) with whom he roomed and shared a bed, which didn’t necessary connote a sexual relationship at the time; Lincoln and others also shared beds with other male lawmakers on trips. But it might have been a sexual relationship. Other members of Congress teased the pair, calling his friend “Mrs. Buchanan.” Whether sexual or not, this relationship was probably influential on his thinking.
One of the first acts when Buchanan took office was the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision which is considered to be the worst decision in the history of the Supreme Court (7-2), denying the legality of black citizenship, a decision that stunned the nation at the time and still does. The decision ignored precedent and distorted history, divorcing the concept of state citizenship from national citizenship, and invalidating the Missouri Compromise (which maintained a balance between free and slave states) in the process. Buchanan agreed with those who said that only the states could decide the issue of slavery, an opinion that has not worn well.[3]
He felt that as President, he didn’t have the authority to tell sovereign states what to do. Bear in mind though, that he is the same President who sent 2500 troops to Utah (the Utah war) because he felt that Brigham Young had usurped the sovereignty of the Territory. He replaced Young as governor with his own choice, Cummings, and forgave Utah for its “rebellion.” So he clearly was willing to exert federal authority over a Territory, just not over rebellious states, which further points to his ambivalence toward slavery.
Was Buchanan just a product of his time? Definitely not. On our way to Church, we also passed a Tech school named for Thaddeus Stevens, another politician who lived less than five miles away from Buchanan’s home. Stevens was also a lifelong bachelor (both men relied heavily on their housekeepers who doubled as business managers, and both these women were beneficiaries in their wills), and a US Senator. Stevens’ views on slavery were so strong that he was critical of Lincoln! He favored harsh punishments for Confederate leaders and a much stronger federal role in Reconstruction, requiring the former Confederate states to ensure equal rights for freed slaves. Given how long the south dragged its feet on civil rights, one wonders if Stevens’ approach would have been better.
Of course, Lincoln paid the ultimate price and many of his efforts were undone by successor Andrew Johnson’s conciliatory approach.[4] (Johnson opposed the 14th amendment, for crying out loud, which was drafted by Thaddeus Stevens). In terms of “worst” Presidents, Johnson also takes a drubbing, but Buchanan usually tops the list. Apparently diminishing the number of states by a third and leading the country into Civil War, whether it was inevitable or not, wins you that distinction.
Given that Lincoln is nearly universally considered the “best” American president, including widespread recognition in foreign countries, there’s clearly some comparison effect going on. Most of the “worst” lists start with the two Presidents that bookended his term, as well as some who were also in that pre-Civil War era. As Bush said in response to his own low approval ratings, “History will be my judge.”
Weirdly, though, I grew up nearby, and yet I knew nothing about either Buchanan or Thaddeus Stevens. If our school curriculum covered any of these facts, I certainly don’t remember it. And yet, these two figures were pivotal in so many key ways to the United States.
We recently toured Wheatland, which I never did when I lived in PA, and our excellent guide shared a weird theory that might explain Buchanan’s indecision and fecklessness in the face of increasing urgency: arsenic poisoning. Along with 400 other National Hotel guests in early January 1857, right before his inauguration, Buchanan ate food in a hotel where arsenic had been used to kill rats, one of which was found in the hotel’s water tank. Although guests were cautioned not to drink the water, it was still used to wash dishes and prepare food. Nearly three dozen guests died from this incident! Despite a speedy recovery, Buchanan suffered from after-effects, including dysentery, for the rest of his life. I don’t know if you’ve tried to run a country while also running to the privy, but it can’t have been easy. Fortunately, the first flushing toilets had been installed in the White House 4 years earlier by Millard Fillmore.
So what is the point of all this history? I’ve been thinking a lot about this contrast between Stevens and Buchanan, and about our current political environment in which calls for “civil war” are an increasingly common refrain. I’ve heard many Church members participate in these political attacks [5], more and more openly. Is an actual civil war a possibility? I both hope not, and also have a hard time seeing how it could happen in states that are still a mix of both parties. However, the more states have a “trifecta” (all three branches) of one party leadership, the more potential there is for autocratic rule in those states, a one-party rule that will maintain its power at all cost. There are currently 17 Democrat trifecta states and 22 Republican trifecta states, which still sounds a lot like that pre-Civil War split between free and slave states. Our twilight status between federal power and state sovereignty leaves plenty of room for mischief. States can be laboratories for autocracy as much as they can be for democracy.
It also seems to me that a lot of today’s divisions are the same struggles: states’ rights (or taking your ball and going home when there are disagreements), racism and civil rights issues (including for LGBTQ people and women), and ambivalence in the face of political crisis. I tend to agree with Bush that you never know until much later just how bad or good a President was. The mainstreaming of anti-educational materials like Praeger U. will only lead to less understanding of these complex matters and less grappling with the difficult decisions leaders have made in the context of their time in history. When we take a simplistic approach or give answers rather than questions, we are doing the next generation a grave disservice. Why didn’t I know more about these two historical figures? Why wasn’t this discussed at school?
Within the Church, we aren’t encouraged to critique Church Presidents, but we do have the ability to see what happened under their tenure, the sermons they gave, the policy changes they oversaw, growth or shrinkage trends, their mental fitness, their statements on race, culture, theology, politics, etc., and to evaluate whether their impacts were positive for the Church or negative. For example, when we think of Kimball, we credit him with lifting the Priesthood Ban, but he was no pioneer on Civil Rights if we look more closely at his statements and the process to get there. President Benson was feared as a politically extreme conservative, and his impacts were mixed, embracing the Book of Mormon while shaming a generation of women back into the kitchen, but then suffering mental impairment into a state of irrelevance by the end of his tenure. No individual is all good or all bad, and every action or inaction can only be understood within the context of history and the person’s unique life experiences.
- Do you agree it’s hard to accurately judge leaders’ impacts until much later?
- Do you think the talk of civil war we hear today is anything like the actual Civil War?
- What would you have done if you were POTUS when Buchanan was? Are you biased by your knowledge of how things turned out?
- Did you know about these important historical figures? How do you feel about the way history is taught in our schools?
- How do you think history will judge President Nelson’s tenure?
Discuss.
[1] For those paying attention to current politics, you’ll notice that they are still the bottom feeders of the American experiment.
[2] “Fine people” on both sides, anyone?
[3] Which is still a popular way for conservatives to promote other terrible items of their agenda, like women’s reproductive rights, etc.
[4] Although Johnson had supported an end to slavery in the 1860s, he was a white supremacist. “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men,” he wrote in 1866. What an a-hole.
[5] Twitter Mormons are literally lauding LGBTQ hate and calling for Democrats to be excommunicated.
Wheat & Tares 
I really cannot comment on whether we may have to endure another Civil War. My gut says no, but who can say?
As to your last question, I think history will judge President Nelson very harshly. When the dust settles, and the stats are assembled from outside sources due to the lack of transparency from the organization, I think Nelson’s tenure will be viewed as the one when the church stagnated/declined in a not insignificant way. Not that it’s necessarily President Nelson’s fault; the information age, skepticism of large organizations and organized religion, and a worldwide pandemic all played a role in moving people away from their parent’s faith traditions. The Ensign Peak fiasco really pre-dated him as well.
I actually appreciate some of the changes during Nelson’s tenure, including shorter formal church meetings (which many local leaders simply replaced with informal meetings; barf), overall better conditions for missionaries, and I’m sure many just gush over his temple building. But for me he will also be remembered as the prophet behind the policy of exclusion and for his remarks othering those with questions as lazy learners.
I think it is informative that in the middle of the 19th century a good place for a minority group of people to be was in American territory but not controlled by the American government. Bad, ineffective government is all too common and this was especially so in that time period.
The American Civil war was a tragedy. It is only hypothesis that it was unnecessary, but there are indications the Union / Federal authorities preferred a violent resolution. There were alternatives to resolving slavery without military conflict. Lincoln and the Northerners were quick to settle on war. And what an awful war and awful aftermath for the South it was – with Reconstruction and Jim Crow laws the South took more than a century to “heal” after slavery was “ended”.
The essence of the “American Experiment” is the freedom of Americans to practice self-government. The ongoing debate concerns to what degree people are allowed self-government. States Rights is just an aspect. Now it is clear that the question involves Parental Rights, and Personal Rights .
What is a Right anyway? What is Freedom? Are these scary words? They shouldn’t be. Everyone wants and needs Freedom in order to prosper as an individual and as a population.
What people and governments are actually fighting over is to what degree can Freedoms be curtailed? This war concerns coercion and the question of who and what can be coerced. Can people be forced to have certain medical interventions? Can people be denied medical interventions? Can people be forced to cover their faces? Can people be forced to believe or give support to certain ideas? Can people be prevented from teaching certain ideas?
The American Constitution and Bill of Rights established boundaries or limits on government coercion. Since the Civil War these boundaries have been redefined, by Amendment and moreso by judicial interpretation. The trend has been to weaken self-government and increase the interference and coercion of government into people’s lives .
Where will this lead? If you believe the Book of Mormon it will lead to the dissolution of government with disputes settled via tribal negotiation. And actually, I think that is where America is at. The Constitution is occasionally referenced, but American politics are purely tribal with law and policy driven by tribal economic and ideological priorities. The principle of self-government is all but ignored mainly because self-government does not serve tribal interests! The last thing dictators and wannabe dictators want is people deciding they don’t need dictators!
This is the deceit of the Red vs Blue political conflict. The premise of the language being there are two sides and one is with one or the other. There is a third position and that is of Liberty. It is to embrace and defend the rights of self-government. Self- government does not mean anarchy. Nor does it mean self-justification for whatever one wants to do. It means supporting a system of government that allows disputes to be peacefully resolved, all while according the individual ample Freedom to act for themselves and to stand accountable for themselves.
“Do you agree it’s hard to accurately judge leaders’ impacts until much later?”
As a former history major, I was constantly reminded by my professors of the “20-year rule”, which is that you can’t properly judge a historical event until 20 years have passed from that event. Anything within the past 20 years was considered ongoing. That’s not to say that you can’t have an opinion on current events, but in order to write a proper historical analysis, you have to wait until the ramifications of those events have played out.
“Do you think the talk of civil war we hear today is anything like the actual Civil War?”
Those advocating for “red” states and “blue” states to separate or cheer for another Civil War forget that a future conflict will be nothing like the Civil War of the 1860s. The boundary between the two sides in the 19th century was neatly separated by sectarian politics (north vs. south with some crossover in the border states). Now? Not so much. That boundary now crosses through cities, streets, and even bedrooms. In 2016, there were 3.8 million Clinton voters in Texas and 4.5 Trump voters in California, so separation is not as cut-and-dry as people are led to believe. Do we really want nonstop guerrilla warfare within every single state while foreign nations take advantage of our strife?
“What would you have done if you were POTUS when Buchanan was?”
Well, I wouldn’t have sent 1/3 of the US Army to Utah in 1857 to put down a rebellion that didn’t exist. That decision was so stupid that newspapers like the New York Times called the move “Buchanan’s Blunder.” I know that finding a scapegoat instead of addressing pressing problems is typical in politics, but deliberately ignoring the growing discord in the South (Buchanan’s voter base) while sending troops to Utah was just a cowardly move. If Buchanan had just focused on sectarian tensions between the North and South, there would have been no Utah conflict, no war hysteria, and certainly no Mountain Meadows massacre.
“How do you think history will judge President Nelson’s tenure?”
Hard to say. Taking COVID seriously, commissioning a new hymnal, 2-hour church, Come Follow Me (“home-centered, church-supported” instruction), reforms to the endowment ceremony, and openly partnering with the NAACP are some notable marks of his presidency. Some will say that his announcing of temples at an exponential pace would be his lasting legacy, but Kimball did that first with almost 20 temples in the early 1980s. Hinckley’s temple announcements were much more aggressive than Kimball’s. However, the BIG difference between Hinckley’s and Nelson’s approach to temples is that Hinckley brought back progression and murals within temples while Nelson removed them. All of the temples that Nelson has announced will use blank stationary rooms instead of muraled-progressive ones, which may backfire since many Latter-day Saints that I’ve talked to largely prefer a progressive endowment over a stationary one.
As someone who is passionate about historic preservation and the significance of art in worship, I think that the decision to remove murals from the Salt Lake and Manti Temples would be the ugliest mark on Nelson’s legacy. The fact that the Manti decision was reversed shows that Nelson came to understand that removal wasn’t the best idea, and I suspect that the murals in the Salt Lake Temple will be repainted as well due to the Manti reversal. Still, the initial decision won’t be looked too fondly in history.
What came to mind when you brought up this topic was the legacy of President Kimball and President Hinkley. Kimball was my beloved prophet during my youth.
My mother’s family had been negatively impacted by Joseph F Smith’s statements that sex was only for procreation and that husbands shouldn’t impose on their wives when the time for children was past. Contraception was considered wrong during those years and your bishop could bring it up in a worthiness interview. I remember when Kimball told bishops to keep their conversation out of the bedroom and said sex is also to strengthen the relationship in a married couple. That part of his legacy is wonderful.
However he also supported the idea that the BOM is the basis of our religion and so you just pray if it’s true and then believe in it the rest follows. I think this promotes black and white thinking and has turned out to be a mistake for the church in the context of easy access to information through the Internet.
President Hinkley led the church during my years as a young mother and just the sound of his voice fills me with good feelings. However, I have been distressed to learn that he was the one who set up Ensign Peak. It probably seemed like a really good idea to save up for a rainy day at the time. However, his decisions set up the presidencies that followed him into a pathway of deceit in reporting assets to the church body and large accumulation of church assets. Putting later presidencies in this path made it very difficult for them to change anything about the situation. I think it’s sad that this is his legacy.
Both of these presidents took actions they hoped would increase faith but instead have become problematic in the context of our times.
“Do you agree it’s hard to accurately judge leaders’ impacts until much later?”
I absolutely do agree on this one. A great example for this is Ulyssesses S. Grant. For the remainder of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, Grant was considered that drunk in the White House who rode his “undeserved” reputation (i.e., critics argued he was a lucky general rather than a good general) to eight years of the supposed “disaster” that Southern sympathizers called Reconstruction as well as taking it on the chin for significant corruption within his administration. It really wasn’t until the 1980s that Grant’s reputation started to recover. Nowadays, historians largely place him in the top third of American presidents (with some placing him even higher) based largely on his efforts to promote civil rights.
“How do you think history will judge President Nelson’s tenure?”
I highly doubt that Nelson will be a figure of any great note outside Mormon circles 50 or 100 years from now so “history” seems too grand a term for a handful of people potentially willing to write a Nelson biography in 2093. Will there be some secular biographer (or LDS biographer who can avoid straying into hagiography) willing to tackle Nelson as a subject? Maybe so, but when they write that book, they will have the assistance of seeing how the Church has evolved in that time. Will he be seen as having presided over the initial waves of contraction that resulted in it becoming a fairly irrelevant if wealthy church with waning centers of strength in the intermountain western U.S. and West Africa and being most well-known for the historical practice of polygamy and the still-current and now very unaccepted practice of excluding LGBTQ people from full fellowship? Or will Nelson be seen as the man whose change of heart on the policy preventing children of LGBTQ people from being baptized (one that he himself pushed initially) is now hailed as the clear first step on the road to the 2055 proclamation on marriage that saw same sex couples able to be sealed in the temple? Or maybe there’s a third option where we do go through a great national divorce (hopefully something short of a civil war) where the Nelson Church’s current conservatism plays well with a future populace disillusioned with the failed promises of liberal and leftist politics and leads to growth rates not seen since the early 1990s. I think the third option is the least likely, but, then again, my crystal ball is notoriously inaccurate.
Southern Saint,
You mentioned blank stationary rooms being favored by President Nelson and a thought triggered in my head. President Nelson seems to have a strong dislike for the Arts. He seems to promote the antiseptic, colorless, operating room as the preferred learning and social environment. Not only did he push to remove murals from the Manti Temple but the latest temple movie presents Adam & Eve in a sterile, blank room! I still haven’t made sense of this representation as it is literally blank and absent any creativity, mood or spiritual elevation. What is presented in the latest temple movie is an empty existence, a life without color and void of feeling. There is NOTHING attractive about the imagery presented of two bland people in a blank room making symbolic gestures.
President Nelson also pushed to cancel church pageants. Why? What happens to a church if you remove the color, song and pageantry? Can you have a religion if it lacks a deep artistic culture? What type of religion do you have?
It will take a number of year to appreciate the impact of President Nelson on the LDS Church. I can say now he has been the most radical church leader of my memory. He ripped up and discarded the playbook of Monson & Hinckley. He has a new game plan and it seems to be about stripping the LDS church of any artistic / cultural / creative element and making it optimally efficient for global distribution.
That’s great. But what if people don’t like the product? And what product is being sold? If the product has no flavor and is a bland, cookie cutter experience, why would people be drawn to it? I know McDonalds sells a lot of bad hamburgers. Is volume at the sacrifice of quality what the LDS church is shooting for? Do leaders really think that will work?
Poor Buchanan. But he can’t hold a candle to Donald Trump. What other president has led an insurrection against the U.S. government? What other president had not one shred of morality in his character? What other president was incapable of telling the truth and so narcissistic that he couldn’t make any public statement without bragging (dishonestly, or course)?
Very impressed that a lengthy post titled “The Worst President” didn’t even mention Donald Trump once.
And in twenty years, I think President Nelson will be remembered as the first church president to preside over a shrinking church.
Donald Trump was the worst president. By a mile!
A Disciple, I downvoted your 8:54 comment. I just want to be clear that my downvote was entirely based on waffling about the evils of slavery.
Slavery is wrong.
The rest of your comments may have made good points, but it’s really hard to evaluate anything fairly when you start with a quasi defense of slavery.
Bert,
How did Trump lead this insurrection? I am interested in facts. What did Trump actually do that enabled people to penetrate the Capital building? Did he unlock the doors? Did he tell the Capital security to stay home for the day? Did he ask for federal officers to join with protesters and incite a riot? Was Ray Epps working for Donald Trump? If you care to respond, please consider that I am not a Trump supporter and wish he would leave public life and go back to running beauty pageants- I think Trump joins all other American presidents of the 21st century as terribly flawed men who have pursued policies greatly detrimental to the welfare of the country.
The problem with pinning blame solely on Trump for J6 is what consideration do we give that Trump’s enemies WANTED J6 to happen and they WANTED to be able to blame Trump and they WANTED to throw the book at Trump supporters? We ought to be skeptical of events when political agendas are involved as political interests are known to lie and practice deceit in order to accomplish their objective. If Americans care about the unbiased quest for Truth they would want the complete story of what transpired in the days ahead of J6, during J6 and the days after. One can disagree 100% with Trump’s quest to challenge to 2020 election. At the same time one can observe that the government / Democratic party narrative of J6 is incomplete. What is missing is the explanation of why security officials were unprepared and why “surrender” and access into the Capital was so quickly afforded. What is missing is the role of government officials in enabling the disruption to happen – and yes, there was enabling and it was not Trump doing the enabling.
By the way, under the American system of government, Trump was President on J6 and would legally remain President until J20. There was no insurrection! There was a delay of a vote that everyone now argues is purely ceremonial! And there is the hypocrisy of J6 insurrection claim. Either the J6 legislative session was meaningful for deciding the legitimacy of the 2020 election or it was superficial. Which was it? If it was meaningful then shouldn’t Trump and his allies been allowed to make their argument that the election was stolen? If the J6 vote was superficial then why the claim that delaying the vote was “insurrection”?
Pres. Nelson will not have to live with the consequences of his reckless temple spree. After the dust has settled from his passing, perhaps Church members will begin to see it for the Potemkin project it always was. I wonder if any of Nelson’s successors will formally cancel some of the announced-but-yet-unbuilt temples, citing realistic expectations but careful not to throw Nelson under the bus.
But in 20 years, the LDS Church will likely be deep into the reign of Bednar, who’s own temerity and hubris will have the older members longing for the relative gentleness of Nelson.
How do you think history will judge President Nelson’s tenure?
It seems that when you look back over the last 50 years (i.e. starting with President Kimball), there are two presidents of the church that most members have fond feelings for (based solely on their time as President of the Church): President Kimball and President Hinckley. I think this is because they got out among the people and were approachable, were upbeat and positive, and were perceived as caring leaders (I will note that “The Miracle of Forgiveness” was written well before Kimball was President, so I not holding that awfulness against him). I think President Nelson is perceived as colder, more doctrinaire, less humorous, less approachable than those two, and thus will not be remembered with the fondness of Kimball and Hinckley (but I sure loved his talk last conference about peacemakers!).
Do you agree it’s hard to accurately judge leaders’ impacts until much later?
Very much so! Views change. I remember really not being a fan of George W. Bush when he left office, the never-ending wars going on, etc. But when he stood up to Trump, and maintained good relationships with all former presidents, and his graciousness to Obama– I started to view him differently. Judging legacies takes decades.
PWS,
Slavery is one of the worst violations of human morality. The pressing question of 19th century America – both political and religious – was how best to end the practice of slavery in the country. Secession of the Southern states was the likely course of action which is a reason Buchanan and prior presidents punted on the issue. Compromise to preserve the Union allowed Slavery to persist. Compromise on the question of Slavery resulted in the Dredd-Scott decision where the “law” decreed humans were property and the property claims of the South would be recognized.
Lincoln’s answer was to go to war to deny the South secession and ultimately force them to accept the end of Slavery. The ending of Slavery was needed and desirable. But understand, the motive for War was to prevent the South from separating from the Union. The underlying cause of the Civil War was Slavery. The reason for the Civil War was to enforce the Union of States.
Only in an alternate universe can we know what would have happened to the United States if the South had been allowed to secede, with Slavery otherwise banned from all new states and territories. My hypothesis is the South in the course of several more decades would have chosen to give up the practice as Slavery and opted to rejoin the Union of States. The industrial revolution was gaining speed and machines were proving to be more efficient “workers” than slaves. Slavery was becoming economically inefficient. The practice was persisting in the South mainly due to the culture. But the culture was going to change.
Lincoln and the pro-Union advocates were impatient and chose War. And because the Union won that War, Lincoln is celebrated as a great president – the victors write the history. I do not dislike Lincoln. I find many of his arguments compelling and his defense for moral truth and righteousness is compelling. But I am not enthusiastic about defending War, especially War that kills hundreds of thousands. I want to believe there are better options than that.
A Disciple: Regarding your comments on slavery, I think it’s important to remember that slavery was violent, so hand-wringing over a violent resolution feels fraught. Additionally, the argument could be made (I’ll make it right now) that slavery really didn’t so much end as convert into a slightly more acceptable form of itself. You wouldn’t want to have been a black person trying to make a living in the deep south after the Civil War, particularly not during the watered-down Reconstruction era. I tend to see “rights” as the 3 basic ones outlined in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Of course, all of those lead to further discussion; they frame more questions than answers. If your pursuit of happiness curttails the rights of others (e.g. I can only be happy if gay people don’t exist or a man can only be happy if he can’t be divorced for his bad behavior or I can only be happy if I have an AR-15 despite the prevalence of school shootings), that’s where problems come in.
Southern Saint: I agree that Nelson’s term will be a very mixed bag. I’m hesitant to say what the lasting impacts will be as some of the changes were good, some neutral, and others were really bad. It seems to me that he was behind both the exclusion policy and its repeal, but it was engineered in such a way to give him cover for instituting it in the first place, a very political move indeed if obvious to progressives. However, if you consider the Church’s current anti-LGBTQ stance in the context of where the rest of the world is, it’s definitely a huge disconnect. When they’ve already lost a culture war, they have a tendency to keep fighting anyway, which doesn’t look good through the lens of twenty year hindsight. And while I applaud his partnership with the NAACP, its been coupled with rising racist attitudes in the Church, as people feel emboldened to be “anti-woke” which is often just a thinly veiled cover for racism, misogyny, and queer-bashing. Statements calling these behaviors “uncivil” are so milquetoast that they are not only ineffective, but convince the worst among us that their opponents are the ones being called out.
US Presidents get too much credit when things go well, and too much blame when they go poorly. LDS Church presidents might be in the same position, though with a smaller organization, and more direct power, they probably have a larger influence on results. I can’t help but wonder that Washington and Lincoln appear so highly on all the best presidents lists partly because they were in situations where they had an opportunity to stand out. (Greatness was thrust upon them?) Most Americans can’t even name presidents through the 1880s and 90s. If Lincoln is 20 years younger and ends up filling Chester Arthur’s slot, would anyone have taken note?
But what I really want now is for W&T to put together a poll where we can all vote on the best LDS presidents from 1 to 17. What does “best” even mean? Who’s taking the top spot? Who’s at the bottom?
For all the lauding of Lincoln, he was complicated on the issue of racial equality. Unlike Thaddeus Stevens, he did not see black people as equal and advocated for freeing them to send them back to Africa. His views evolved as President, and might have continued to evolve if he hadn’t been assassinated. I mentioned that both Buchanan and Stevens relied heavily on their housekeepers who were also their business managers and partners. Stevens’ housekeeper was mixed race and considered black by contemporaries. Some portrayals imply they had a sexual relationship, but there is no clear evidence for this. She assisted him in running an Underground Railroad stop behind their house in Lancaster, less than 5 miles away from Buchanan’s Wheatland home.
Not necessarily – I think it’s hard all the time. When we look at history we have the benefit of knowing how things turned out – hindsight bias makes it easy to feel like outcomes were an inevitable consequence of a particular leader’s actions. People tend to equate good/bad outcomes to good/bad decisions – they’re not the same thing. It’s possible to make the best decision possible (based on available knowledge at the time) and still get a bad outcome.
No. Calls of “civil war” today are just shorthand threats of violence by people on the political extremes. Will there be acts of violence and small-scale standoffs? Probably. But currently it’s nothing resembling real civil war.
Buchanan is pretty universally derided – he fumbled a whole series of issues in addition to slavery. I think it’s at least partially from the fact that he was a man of caution and restraint when action was required…but given his proclivities toward slavery, I’m glad he wasn’t
I didn’t know much about them, but have read biographies on a few other obscure presidents that were fascinating – I would have loved to meet James A. Garfield in person, who was also from that civil war era. He was a fascinating man who never aspired to become president, but happened to end up nominated by the party. He had a talent for finding compromise between parties in the face of violent polarization.
Cutting church meetings down to two hours was one of the best concrete changes in a long time – he’ll be remembered for that. I think some will make the point that church growth stagnated, but I personally think that’s more of a macro-level thing for religion in general than anything to do with RMN directly. He took COVID seriously even in the face of some very loud opposition from some members. The issues with the SEC were definitely not great, but seem to be considered old news at this point. I think he’ll be pretty revered for all the temple building within the church. His alliance with the NAACP and push to “build bridges not walls” has been positive. The church hasn’t moved on LGBTQ issues as others have mentioned, but this really isn’t something specific to RMN…the church just isn’t going to move quickly here, and it wouldn’t be much different if any of the other current leaders were first chair.
@Jack Hughes my prediction is that 20 years after the Bednar administration it will finally come to light that Bednar was in fact a robot masquerading as a human. His demeanor and ways of speaking make so much sense in that light. Nobody will really care about RMN. I mean how often do we think about Heber J Grant or Harold B Lee? Mostly Mormons on the inside of the outside think about them for various statements and ABMs don’t care.
I tell people who advocate for violence and splitting the USA into pieces that they have no idea what they are asking for. The USA and probably the entire world would be far more chaotic and the standard of living less than we enjoy today. War really sucks and things have to be truly abismal to merit war. The Civil War was one of those. As a side note I grew up thinking the LDS was anti slavery but I’m ashamed that our legacy is more complicated and negative than that.
Regarding what makes a truly outstanding leader, it’s difficult. A leader standing the test of time has to be forward thinking but not *too* far ahead of their time, otherwise people won’t trust them or may think they’re half crazy. Trump will almost certainly be regarded as an order of magnitude worse than others (so far). Enthusiasm for Reagan seems to have tempered even though I think he won the 1984 election in a landslide. Musk, Gates, Zuckerberg fancy themselves as thought leaders and may indeed be genius creators of technical products but will share the same mixed legacy as the robber barons and not as true leaders.
Angela C,
You touched on the complexity of how society handles moral wrongs and disagreements. The first rule of fixing moral wrongs is to be very careful and wise about the methods used. For it must be appreciated that all genocides of all time are motivated by people who believe they are engaged in a moral cause. Lesser violence is also all too often justified as morally right because the person or persons view themselves as fixing a moral wrong. For example, those who attack doctors who perform abortions and who vandalize abortion centers see themselves as morally justified. Likewise, during Covid there were those who advocated the non-vaccinated should be forcibly removed from free society.
On a tangent, observe that humans are all too prone to commit atrocities in the cause of moral righteousness. After WWII Americans lamented their government had put Japanese Americans in camps and we vowed never again to repeat that mistake. And then Covid happened and people started calling for putting Americans in camps. Strong laws protecting personal Freedom are needed to stand against the Mob fervor that arises from moral self-righteousness.
Now we can say that 99% of people view Slavery as morally wrong and so in that case violence is warranted in stopping it. Well, not really. Forced labor and forced marriages exists in the world today and the American people are in no moral panic about stopping it. And we know from history that the Civil War did not stop Racism. In fact, the legal and political accommodations made for the South after the Civil War resulted in tremendous institutionalized Racism! Racism that became so acceptable that President Woodrow Wilson actively enforced racial discrimination in the Federal Government and this in the 1910s. (Read about that here: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/how-woodrow-wilsons-racist-segregation-order-eroded-the-black-civil-service/)
What history shows is the American government could have banned Slavery in the mid 1800s at the cost of temporarily losing 11 states to a “Confederacy”. The choice was made to go to war to prevent Secession. And today we face a similar friction. The American Government has been declaring a number of beliefs and practices claimed by American citizens to be unjust and immoral. The freedom of expression. The freedom of association. The right to bear arms. What do we expect to see happen if the American Government rules those freedoms and rights are immoral? Will those who claim those freedoms and rights be allowed to “secede” and continue in the exercise of them? If not, then what?
Earlier I mentioned that American Law has been subsumed by tribalism. The politics of LGBTQ provide an illustration. For years, the Political Left advocated for Muslims and they won their vote. But now Muslims are opposing LGBTQ policies. Progressives are quoted as being dismayed. How could they (Muslims) turn against Progressives when Progressives were friends to Muslims? They could because they can and they have. I highly recommend this article for context: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-09-25/lgbtq-muslims-evangelical-republican-christians
I’ve actually been hearing more and more libertarian-minded kinds cast doubt about how good Lincoln was saying that his digging in his heels against Southern secession precipitated a long, drawn-out, bloody civil war. The argument goes that secession, even with slavery, was better than the horrors of that conflict. I disagree with the argument. But it is an interesting point to hear.
Jimmy Carter, long perceived as a poor president, has seen a number of portrayals of his presidency arguing that it was much better than critics have long said it was. The Shah of Iran was installed in the 1950s with the help of a CIA-led coup that ousted Muhammad Mosaddeq. Rage had been boiling for years in Iran. But no one predicted that it would result in a revolution in 1978, let alone a revolution that radical Islamists would hijack. The Iranian revolution caused oil prices to spike leading to worldwide inflation, and Carter took the blame for that. There wasn’t much he could have done and he did what he knew to combat it. Carter is blamed for the hostage crisis, but he actually resolved it without escalating things into violent conflict between the US and Iran and with all the hostages alive. Carter brokered peace between Egypt and Israel, who had been in conflict since 1967. Egypt became the first Arab country to recognize the existence of Israel. This is a peace that has lasted to the present day.
Commenters have been right to point out how Trump is among the worst. I simply can’t imagine future generations will look kindly upon the Trump years. The MAGA fever will break at some point. It is unsustainable grievance politics filled with all sorts of conspiracy theories and lies.
A Disciple,
Your argument that the events of Jan. 6 were not an insurrection is negated by the fact that a number of people involved were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Enrique Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, wasn’t even present at the Capitol building on Jan. 6 and he given the longest sentence so far of 22 years. I have no doubt that Trump was involved in the planning of the insurrection. Whether or not we’ll be able to fully prove that before a jury who will find him guilty, however, remains to be seen. Still, there should be no doubt that Trump is a criminal with a long history of breaking the law. He is a proven civilly liable rapist and fraudulent businessman whose businesses were just ruled by a judge to be dissolved in the state of New York. Also in your comments you seem to imagine yourself to be above the tribalist fray somehow, and yet much of your comments propose outrageous ideas that are very much outside the mainstream. You seem to be very much a tribalist who enjoys provocation and stirring the pot.
Here’s how a civil war could happen. To be clear, I think this is unlikely and I am completely opposed to it. But we ignore the possibility at our own peril.
1. Texas announces its secession from the Union. Bills have been introduced in the Texas legislature to that effect, and the state Republican party has endorsed the substance of those bills.
2. One or more base commanders at Texas military installations recognizes the Governor/President of Texas as his commander-in-chief. My friends in the military are adamant that this could never happen. But Michael Flynn happened, so why couldn’t this?
3. The President orders other base commanders to effectively blockade the rebel base(s). They try to obey, but run into resistance from civilians who physically impede their efforts.
4. Extremist civilians open fire on the loyal military troops. The military eventually returns the fire and the violence quickly spreads.
I think time is necessary to assess presidents. Sometimes the impact is clear in the moment, but most of the time it’s not.
I think a civil war is extremely unlikely. A rebellion against a government significant enough to cause a war requires substantial financial and military resources. It really can only happen when a faction in an existing government has the power to commandeer some of the resources of the state, or, as happened in the US, a group of states set up a separatist government the power to tax in order to sustain the war. Another civil war would require something equally as drastic, and I think such a thing is harder to pull off in this century when our economy is so much more integrated than it was in the 19th century.
On the question of how church presidents will be judged, I think Nelson will be regarded as having normalized change after a period of stagnation, but that many of his changes weren’t especially consequential, other than temple construction. I think he will be remembered for a temple building spree that changed members’ relationship to the temple and expectations about when and how frequently one should visit the temple. Future presidents will struggle to get members staffing and attending all of those temples, particularly after the baby boom generation aren’t around any more. Sparse schedules will become the norm. Some temples will become white elephants within a decade or two.
Disciple, your assumption that the South would rejoin the Union is based on a faulty premise. You said that machines were taking over all the jobs that the slaves were doing, so very shortly slaves would become more expensive that those machines.
Well, one of the big jobs of the slaves was picking cotton. Look up when that machine was invented. Knowing that most of y’all are too cotton picking lazy to look it up. It was not even invented until 1930. And it was not really wide spread for a few years, in fact at the start of WWII humans were still picking cotton on smaller farms. My father saw people picking cotton when he went to basic training. And all machinery production was turned toward the war effort, slowing the machinery even further. So, the South could have still been using slaves to pick cotton until long after they had any desire to rejoin the Union.
So, anyway, we would not have a United States as we know it today. Course, I could make a crack about no one missing Florida, Mississippi, or Texas, or come to think of it, Alabama. But to tell you the truth, I have lived in Mississippi, in what was once slave quarters out back an old Southern mansion. I lived in Florida and loved it. And I fell in total love with San Antonio, TX.
I wasn’t going to argue with you, and I resisted for hours, but, bless your heart, it just kept bugging me that you didn’t know beans about the South.
On civil war. It won’t happen. It will remain a war of words only. Most Americans trust the underlying system, and the underlying system is functional and effective. What we have is a rare Trump phenomenon that only Trump can get away with because of some unique set of circumstances. Trump wannabees can’t pull off Trump, and they won’t. The fact of the matter is that all states contain large portions of red and blue. Utah is about 38% blue. It used to have a representative district that was often blue, until it got gerrymandered just recently. Most Americans aren’t hugely political. They catch wind of things here and there, but they are more interested in other things. Most Americans frown on political violence and see it as unnecessary. Although there is a lot of denialism on the right about Jan. 6, at the heart of it, the right condemns Jan. 6 and does not want to see a repeat of it. Ted Cruz denounced them as terrorists, even though he fomented them before Jan. 6, and walked back his terrorism comment on Tucker Carlson’s show.
Last Lemming, your #2 could not happen because each soldier makes an oath to uphold the the constitution of the US against all enemies, foreign or domestic. An oath that comes before loyalty to any general.
My reasons that I don’t think civil war will really happen are similar to the other comments here. As said in the OP, it can be a laboratory for autocracy when a state possesses a single party trifecta government as many (most) do, but that will lead to overreaching which will lead to backlash and change among voters. What is much more likely IMO is additional acts of domestic terrorism as the polarization continues. Dog-whistles to one’s voting base about “letting the second amendment people” address one’s political opponents opened the door.
Footnote 1 “For those paying attention to current politics, you’ll notice that they are still the bottom feeders of the American experiment.”
The footnote ties to a list of states, all Southern.
The footnote highlights a problematic tendency to categorize groups, ignore diversity in those groups, and proclaim derogatory statements about those groups. Those are the very elements rightly condemned in racism and discrimination.
Louisiana has the second highest per capita population of blacks, second only to D.C.
In many Louisiana communities, racial relationships and equal access to resources are far from perfect but there are large segments of people working toward common goals of fair treatment for all and healthy conversations about what needs to change and how to get there. Many American communities could learn from those examples.
If those are the bottom feeders of the American experiment, then I’m not sure what to think.
I think President Nelson will be remembered–by some at least–for his role in expanding the identity of the church from a quaint “Mormon” community to the Lord’s global Kingdom into which Israel is being gathered from every part of the globe. He might also be remembered for encouraging the saints get their own revelation because there is so much that the Lord wants to share with his people–even the secrets of the universe. His pattern seems to be one of trying to get the saints to think “big” vis-a-vis the Kingdom (generally) as well as our individual spiritual lives.
TJ: I absolutely applaud the efforts of any state to do right by their minorities, but any way you slice it, these seven states are not leading the way. Their trifecta GOP leaders are instead on unchecked sprees, testing out the ideas of autocracy, and in some cases, hoping that the highly partisan SCOTUS will enable them to continue disenfranchising voters that don’t support them. A few quick examples that come to mind:
Texas: Vigilante abortion laws, voting restrictions, refusal to address gun restrictions in the wake of school shootings. Texas has many great areas and people. Politically, not great.
Florida: Their governor wants schools to teach (using Praeger U propaganda) that slavery wasn’t so bad actually. He has also gone after an elected prosecutor whose politics he doesn’t like and has enacted a 6 week abortion ban (before women know they are pregnant). He also tricked migrants into being shipped across the country with no food or water and no notice to the receiving cities. I’m all for immigration reform, but these are human beings, including children. He has also taken aim at queer people, making the state a less safe place for them to exist.
Louisiana & Alabama: GOP leadership lost in court over their heavily gerrymandered maps yet they refuse to redraw them.
South Carolina: Until quite recently (2015), they refused to take down the Confederate flag from government buildings.
Alabama also has literally changed the locks on the courthouse in one small town rather than granting access to the duly elected mayor. Why? Because he’s black: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/alabama-towns-black-mayor-claims-locked-white-predecessor/story?id=102862563#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20want%20to%20take%20my,Patrick%20Braxton%20tells%20ABC%20News.&text=The%20Black%20mayor%20of%20a,keeping%20him%20out%20of%20office.
These are the states trying out other anti-democratic ideas as well like removing elected prosecutors whose politics they don’t like, ballot initiatives to require a 60% majority to change laws, voting restrictions, and criminalizing traveling out of state for reproductive health care. There are many, many more examples. This is just a quick start. These are beautiful states with lovely people and disgusting legislators who will do anything to retain their unchecked power despite the will of the people.
“How do you think history will judge President Nelson’s tenure?”
He will be known as the president that thoroughly mainstreamed us with American Christian Evangelicalism. He erased mormonism- even the name.
Yes, we’ve been mainstreaming since David O had the men shave their beards, but under Nelson’s administration- (the era Holland jokingly warned us we should take our vitamin pills for) we have shifted away from our weird Mormon ways and into the core of mainstream Christianity. What do we talk about all the time now? Jesus. Not even God the Father- just Jesus. Yet Jesus said he was not the focus, but pointing the way to the Father!
And what has been shuffled under the rug? All the weird Mormon stuff like BOM historicity, golden plates, everything about our embarrassing Midwest history. (I can’t believe we have $100 B in the bank while our Midwest historical sites are in embarrassing decay and decline. Some, like Haun’s Mill, have not even been preserved or properly marked. Hinckley appreciated LDS history so much so that he brought back the Nauvoo Temple and Winter Quarters Temple. In contrast- Nelson is having the Cainsville Tabernacle torn down.He only looks forward. He erased the murals, theater, and progression in the old temples, took out the LDS History museum and turned it into an “on-message” extension of the visitors center. Pioneer Day is a whimper of what it used to be- intentionally so. And the BOM is being de-emphasized in favor of all things New Testament. Global mormonism (oops- that was a win for Satan…I mean thchirchofjesuschrostoflatterdaysaints) is generic Christianity. Nelson isn’t just letting history fall by the wayside- it’s an intentional erasure.
Have you seen pictures of Nelson’s house? He lives in a sterile new construction home just outside SLC in a treeless subdivision with cookie-cutter homes. He must have purchased it in his 80’s, but he didn’t bring anything from his past into it. There are no sentimental knick-knacks laying around, no walls of framed portraits (decades of senior pics, yellowed ancestor portraits, wedding photos, family reunions, babies, etc.), no family heirlooms, no sentimental furniture, etc. The decor and furniture are all contemporary- like a sterile model (demo) home for a new subdivision. His administration is run like his home- throwing out the past and setting up the future. I hate to say this, but it’s relevant and supports my point. He didn’t look back for more than 6 months when his wife of half a century and mother to 10 children died. At the 6 month mark he was already dating, and at about a year- married. He’s not sentimental or nostalgic and he doesn’t allow the past to inconvenience the future.
He’s erasing all our uniqueness. I just searched DB’s website for “golden plates” and found 17 results (mostly false hits) compared to the thousands for Jesus. Been to a renovated or newly built temple? The murals were literally white washed over with paint and most of the BOM art has been replaced with purely Jesus art. I climbed 7 flights of stairs during the DC Temple open house and of the dozens of pieces of art there, I counted only 2 BOM works. . One was tucked away in a non-trafficked stairwell. and the other, a Minerva Techart piece, was sufficiently abstract and ambiguous as to not look particularly Book-Of-Mormon-like.
The new hymnal will (I guarantee) conveniently forget “If you could give to Kolob” and “Adam-On-site-ahman” and “Sons of Michael He Approaches”. . “Come Come Ye Saints” technically isn’t Jesus-y enough, but will likely last for a few more editions, but not permanently- as we all used to assume. And of course our foyers were mandated to include correlated Jesus art (in case we foolishly had Mormon-y stuff hanging on the walls.)
What does this mean? Unfortunately, I think it’s the end of the pioneer-flavored “Mormonism” and the beginning of streamlined global Christianity. The Community of Christ abruptly removed the BOM from scriptural cannon, but we’re doing it by replacing it with The Chosen episodes, Christian rock music, and other right-wing evangelicalistic practices.
I’m one of those people who would like a “keep mormonism weird” bumper stickers, in large part because this alignment is not merely religious- it’s deeply political- we’re digging ourselves into evermore entrenched conservative territory. In doing so- we do the country a terrible disservice as we abandon core progressive principles of our previously peculiar faith.
Bednar and the other newer Q15 are business gurus with no professional expertise in history ir the arts. (Soares’ piano playing being an exception).Their passion is business and correlation. The path we are on is set to intensify as they do what business bots do…grow the status quo.
Nelson’s legacy will be the erasure of Mormonism and push to mainstream us. He will get credit for COVID, NAACP collaborations, and some banal changes for women. However, he will not shake off the POX, spiritual polygamy, LGBT treatment, and the infernal “religious liberty” crap that prioritizes church power above underprivileged individuals in a decidedly un-Christ-like manner. Those things aren’t going to age well.But, as has been said- he won’t be around to see or correct things as the consequences appear. We really need younger GAs.
Lastly, I just wanted to say that according to the SL Tribune podcast “Mormon Land” from last week, there are approximately 70,000 malnourished (starving and physically compromised) primary-aged LDS children across the world. They are in pain and at risk of death, debilitating comorbidities, and long-term side effects. There is no way we aren’t under condemnation from G- as we build extravagant temples wile allowing severe hunger to continue among our own primary children, let alone any children of any background, we encounter.. (Hunger knows no religious boundary).
This is a silent pandemic that has grown exponentially since we’ve globalized. It’s exploding under our modern prophets. I would bet most members aren’t familiar with this statistic, and are too busy patting themselves on the back for our humanitarian successes during the Great Depression and WWII to believe there is a modern problem. But, future historians will certainly point to this worsening and inexcusable condition among us with harsh rebuke. And, let’s be honest- Jesus told us repeatedly throughout scripture that this is our priority and the metric he will judge us on- not how many temples we built or how many sessions we attended.
There’s not going to be a “classic” civil war for a couple of reasons. First, there’s no territorial bright line as there was in 1861, with actual political entities seceding, uniting, and forming armies; the national government is a little disorganized but so far the GOP hasn’t managed to dismantle it entirely. (Although this is the plan of the radical right – the better to install the dictatorship.) Second, if it comes to some kind of ongoing guerrilla action, much of the left has effectively disarmed itself over the last 50 years. It would be a one-sided fight if it comes to that. Third, the radical right can’t get its poop in a group any better than the radical left, and both extremes continue to eat their own and purge for insufficient ideological purity.
What I think we’re in for is an increase in violence – domestic terrorism, heavy-handed (and often misdirected) policing in response, and a great deal of insecurity about the future. I’d note that this is probably exactly what the fascist Right would like, as it sets up the conditions for the election of a smarter, less obviously insane strongman-savior who will promise to restore order. Trump was a test balloon.
Anna says, with innocent hopefulness, . . . each soldier makes an oath to uphold the the constitution of the US against all enemies, foreign or domestic. An oath that comes before loyalty to any general.
At least five of the January 6 traitors were active duty military, including (shamefully) US Marines. They thought they actually were “upholding the Constitution.” Note: The wording of the oath is “support and defend.”
The track record of the average member of the US military at disobeying an illegal order is mixed, at best, as incidents like My Lai, and more modern examples, attest. Our recent C in C actually pardoned convicted military war criminals, to the detriment of morale and good order. I’d love to believe that the military rank and file would rise to reject illegal orders and stand to defend the [actual] Constitution and the liberal democracy it establishes, but the odds are not good. Ironically, unlike in other countries, it may be the better-educated higher officers, the generals and admirals, who are the most important defenses against tyranny in the military. I’ll take one Jim Mattis (Gen, USMC (Ret.)), or Mark Milley (Gen, USA) over the traitor enlisted Marines recently convicted for the attack on the Capitol.
As a Marine Corps veteran it makes me sick that there is this racist, fascist cancer inside my Marine Corps.
Brad D,
I belong to the tribe of common sense and of accrued wisdom gained by observing history and experiencing the ups and downs of life. I belong to the tribe of informed decision making and of having the humility to admit error and change one’s ways and thinking. I belong to the tribe that appreciates that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I belong to the tribe that sees government as useful but only as it serves to enable people to be self-reliant, to practice self-government and to enjoy for themselves the blessings and promises of Liberty.
I claim George Washington was America’s greatest president. Not only did he provide legitimacy to the American government but he demonstrated the ideals of humility, justice, mercy and wisdom that are so necessary for good governance.
One example of Washington’s wisdom: Contrast how he handled the Whiskey Rebellion with how the Biden DOJ has handled J6. Washington himself pardoned the persons indicted and/or convicted for Treason for having literally going to war against Federal tax officers. Washington wrote that it was his desire “to temper the administration of justice with a reasonable extension of mercy in cases which appear to require it” https://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/glc08072
The J6 prosecutions are demonstrably vindictive. They are political and going forward we are going to see more political prosecutions. This alone destroys the integrity of Government and its claim to be a fair arbiter of justice and the law.
I pray that America will avoid the shedding of blood and misery that has befallen other nations as their governments lost legitimacy. The French Revolution yielded the “Reign of Terror”. The label fits as thousands were indiscriminately executed and imprisoned. The Bolshevik Revolution likewise spawned the “RedTerror’ that resulted in the executions of many tens of thousands, and established the murderous, Communist, regimes of Lenin and Stalin.
How does America avoid a similar fate of a terror of revolutionary retribution sweeping the land? What makes the American government legitimate? How is legitimacy sustained?
There is not going to be a civil war. If things escalate it will look like the Troubles in Northern Ireland, or the Years of Lead in Italy. Sporadic episodes of violence, but not open warfare.
@Mortimers comment has me reevaluating how I would rank the Nelson presidency in significance. The Church has been moving away from its Pioneer roots for years (arguably since McKay), but Nelson’s Presidency could arguably be the point where we see an acceleration in that change.
Washington himself pardoned the persons indicted and/or convicted for Treason for having literally going to war against Federal tax officers.
You’ll note that Washington did not encourage and egg on the “persons indicted and/or convicted for Treason” to attempt the overthrow of a legal election. Not at all the same thing. I suspect that someone shooting an IRS agent today might not be charged with treason, as they were during the Whiskey Rebellion, but they probably would be charged with murder. Not at all the same thing as attacking Congress at the behest of a sitting president – this is false equivalence at best and a poor, poor argument in any case.
A Disciple: The most important thing, IMO, that Washington did is step down from the Presidency after his two terms, reinforcing the idea that the President is not a King. I can’t think of a more stark contrast to #45 who repeatedly referred to the idea that he would never step down, and then he did all in his power to prevent his successor from taking over. He repeatedly *joked* about more than two terms before his loss in 2020. If the military had backed his movement (as they would have backed Washington whose scruples prevented him from holding on to power), we would be in a different situation today. On the upside, if we do end up in a fascist Trump presidency in which he refuses to step down after another term, he’s old enough that it will probably not be a multi-decade fascist state as it was in Spain. The fact that Trump is suggesting that Gen. Milley should have been executed for treason is further evidence of his fascist leanings. He wants a pliant military who will support his power, regardless of the legality of his commands.
Mortimer: Your take on the Nelson presidency is breathtaking, and rings true. It’s something I hadn’t looked at from the same high level view you’ve described here, but it definitely makes sense. My own views of where the Church has gone under Nelson have been more related to the local ward cultures shifting to the right, even further than top leaders would prefer (although they are nearly all conservatives, they are from a much older generation of conservatives). What you’ve laid out feels a lot more like a spiritual correlation, stripping out the artistic, emotional side of our faith, and reducing it to bleached, sanitized bones.
Sure we could debate for hours about who was the worst president. I don’t think we have to wait for 20 years either.
We believe our country has a divinely inspired Constitution but when we really look at it, it may have been divine at the time but there were problems not addressed in the midst of those great words about life, liberty, and property. The most blatant issue was slavery with a compromise to the South that gave them 3/5s of a black person on their census roles but the blacks had NO representation. This resulted in the South having more power than the population would entitle it to, particularly in the House of Representatives.
In the next few years, it became apparent that Slavery was not good. The trade was outlawed internationally, and most countries also outlawed slavery itself, all except the United States. The divide between the North and South grew. Churches split into Northern and Southern groups severing relationships and changing doctrine to justify it. Even the LDS Church was caught up in it as witnessed by a very confused “policy” on blacks and the priesthood which was ignored pre-civil war but became more justified in the years afterward.
Buchanan was a lousy president because he didn’t see what was so apparent to so many others, even to Joseph Smith who prophesized about the Civil War beginning in South Carolina, which was one of the most brutal slave states. The Civil War was fought on the issue of Slavery. This is evidenced by how the Southern states stated their articles of succession and by the Northern response with the Emancipation Proclamation striking at the heart of the Southern justifications. The problem was after the war, while slavery was abolished, the hate and attitudes that allowed it to exist were not addressed. Sure, Lincoln was shot and maybe he would have done things differently than Johnson but we really don’t know. The bottom line was the South lost the war they started an insurgency that was not open conflict unless you happened to be black, but of changing history and establishing a new order, which we now call Jim Crow, that allowed for discrimination, racism, hate, and even death.
This period of time did nothing to heal our country. The values in our Constitution we not applied to all people so the division began to deepen. There was a long struggle for civil rights for all which resulted in promising legislation in the 60s. Some things changed but it was mostly lip service where people wouldn’t use certain words or found new ways to limit where blacks and other people of color could live, work, or go to school. Books have been written about this and people are divided even now about simple issues like housing, employment, schooling, and the right for people of color to have access.
Which brings me to Trump as the worst president. Why? He exploited the divisions in our society, not to fix them but to exploit the anger and hate that’s never been confronted and use them to “Make America Great Again,” which is nothing more than saying going back to a time when one group of people ruled over another group without much pushback. Buchanan may not have read his times very well and made big mistakes but Trump read our times with clarity and exploited one-half of the people to go after the other half and did so with lies, half-truths, promises he wouldn’t fulfill, and charges to others that he conveniently sat on the sidelines for, like on Jan. 6th.
Finally, I’m just going to say it, LDS members who follow Trump in droves like they seem to have done are on the wrong side of history. When the scriptures warn us of those in the later days calling right wrong and wrong right, it’s a perfect picture of Trump. In addition, I can not see how Christ would say any of the things Trump says whether is about building a wall or saddling up with Putin. People can say they are following Ezra T Benson but all those ideas of the John Birch Society that he seemed to endorse directly or through his son are not for ALL people but only for the elite or some of the people. When I see comments in the Deseret News or even here in Wheat and Tares about how Christ is too Woke because of what he said on the Sermon on the Mount it makes me think that being Christian today is more about Republican politics than it is about following Christ (the same said about LDS).
A Disciple,
“The J6 prosecutions are demonstrably vindictive. They are political and going forward we are going to see more political prosecutions. This alone destroys the integrity of Government and its claim to be a fair arbiter of justice and the law.”
This and other things you have written reveal you as someone who is on the far right of the political spectrum. So far, 716 people have been given criminal charges in relation to alleged crimes perpetrated in connection with January 6th across dozens of jurisdictions. All the major convictions reached where the defendant pled not guilty have been through jury trials, as prescribed in the Bill of Rights. At best you can say that some have been found guilty of minor charges and given sentences who probably shouldn’t have been. Such as people who entered the Capitol but didn’t really do anything apparently vandalist or violent. But some 140 police officers suffered injuries as a result of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. Brian Sicknick died as a result of the violent mob. Four police officers committed suicide possibly from trauma sustained during the violence. All Congress persons fled once the Capitol was invaded. To say that the insurrectionists weren’t guilty of crimes, especially after having been tried in a court of law, is preposterous in the extreme. To say that these were Antifa or leftists when all convicts have been shown to be right-wing Trump supporters is similarly preposterous. I only hear the narrative you’re presenting about Jan. 6 from far right extremists and propagandists such as Tucker Carlson.
“I belong to the tribe of common sense”
Hardly
Fist bump—Angels C! Thanks!
Brad D
Officer Sicknick died of natural causes. This is the declaration of the medical examiner. Why do you say otherwise?
https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/medical-examiner-finds-uscp-officer-brian-sicknick-died-natural-causes
Your citation of J6 indictment and convictions is the evidence of political prosection. How interesting that you claim this evidence shows political neutrality. You see, in recent years Code Pink protesters have disrupted and physically intimidated Senators and I don’t recall any of them being jailed. Why the different treatment?
Those guilty of J6 violence deserve punishment. Those who committed no violence but simply walked about do not. And yet hundreds of such people had the book thrown at them. Why? And contrast how J6 protestors were treated to how BLM protesters were celebrated. Massive mayhem and destruction occurred throughout American cities in 2020. Only the most violent actions were prosecuted. None were arrested simply for “being there”. And yet that is how J6 protestors are treated – guilty for simply being there, and some guilty when they were not even present!
And most important, the government has yet to inform the public of what it planned and did in preparation for security on J6. Should not the citizens know why security failed that day? Why the secrecy? Why the hiding of video? Why is it a “conspiracy” to ask for transparency? Do we have a government for, of and behalf the people? Or is the government acting on its own agenda and hiding what it is doing? Why would you trust such a government?
A Disciple:
J6 and the government response happened under Trump’s watch. It was escalated by Trump’s remarks both before and on that day to the Proud Boys and like-minded individuals. It is also the Republicans who are refusing to investigate and in a constant state of denial hiding their agenda and motives. As for comparing J6 with BLM it just shows the inherent racism at the very foundation of the Trump movement or the ultra-right wing that it sprang from. The BLM “riots” were in response to the deaths of blacks by a militarized police force that disproportionately targeted/shot blacks at a much higher rate than whites. There were events all over the country, the two that I remember happening in Utah, one in SLC and the other in Provo. The violence that happened in SLC happened after the BLM people had left the protest and was carried out by WHITE thugs caught up in the moment to vent whatever frustrations they had. This was very apparent by following Twitter at the time it was all happening. As for Provo, there was no violence but at the march, the BLM people weren’t the ones with guns. They were the ones on the sideline yelling at the protesters which to me indicates the racism and hate that was in our society before J6 and resulted in such a large group of people there on J6. Finally, it’s this constant denial of reality spurred on by Trump that makes him before 20 years even up to judge him by, the worst president we’ve had to date. After 20 years, he’ll be judged worse, at least by people who value the truth. To think that people not only marched but broke into the Capitol, smashed windows and doors, broke into offices, threatened to kill Pelosi or Pence, and desecrated one of the sacred places of our nation ALL UNDER TRUMP’S WATCH and with his encouragement shows his complicity in treason. Any Latter-day Saint who believes in Trump after J6 and his constant denial of the election results needs to ponder and pray and listen to the spirit more and ultimately repent.
I’m Canadian and a teacher, so this means I am both less interested in the details of American presidents and more interested/appalled at the idea of not teaching accurate history. Tomorrow is Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada, where we acknowledge our awful history with our First Nations.
I love my country. I consider myself a patriot. (Although I don’t think it’s necessary, or even healthy, to think that loving my country also means I must consider it “the best.” Hierarchical thinking is not needed for patriotism.) And because I love my country, I think it’s really important to recognize past racism so we can do better now. I didn’t learn about the residential school system while I was growing up, but my children did. The idea that they shouldn’t because it might make them feel bad… such an odd concept.
In terms of judging leaders, I think that what we get with the benefit of time is we later learn what was going on behind the scenes. The book “David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism” wouldn’t have been possible without the diaries of his secretary or the interviews with Hinckley and Monson. So we can judge a leader’s actions right away, but time reveals a fuller picture.
I exist outside the American ecosystem of cable news, both far-right and far-left, and my ego and self-identity is not involved in US politics, and my perspective is that Trump was uniquely unqualified and disastrous as an American president. It’s my impression that most nations look to the States with utter bafflement at his appeal.
As far as President Nelson goes, I think history will look less kindly on him. The idea that changing church from 3 hours to 2 is visionary sounds bizarre. Imagine telling that to a non-member as an example of what modern-day prophets do. I think I’m disappointed because I was hoping for two things:
1) that as a doctor who saw first-hand the limitations of President Benson and Monson, and knowing there are no treatments for dementia, I honestly expected him to change what he wanted to change and then say, “It’s time to have a retirement age for apostles.”
2) After marrying Wendy Watson, I sincerely hoped his opinions might change about women. Nope. He quoted Section 132 in his initial press conference when he spoke about women’s worth. We get LESS women speaking at GC now than we did before, temple ordinances are still sexist – just less obvious unless you’re listening closely, and nothing was done for women during Covid who didn’t have access to the Sacrament. And I’ve come to believe that all of our issues around LGBTQ+ issues are an outgrowth of sexism. How appalling for a man to act like a woman!
So for all his talk of “taking our vitamins” little has changed. In the end, his rhetoric feels overblown. And in 20 years, I’d loooove to find out just why he’s quoted and praised SO much. I suspect that the confidence that is needed by a medical specialist to do their job well doesn’t transfer well when they become a church leader.
Margot:
My daughter was living in Virginia/D.C. area during Covid and attending a singles ward. The stake president decided that because women were unable to take the sacrament, no one would. Hooray for leaders who notice the unfairness and act accordingly.
@Margot: Your point of learning from history and others is critical. We shouldn’t be afraid of learning…even if it’s uncomfortable or even if it’s from people we may dislike. I think this is true of a country or a church – we need to acknowledge problems of the past and work to make things better.
On this same idea, you mentioned the international community feeling baffled at Trump’s election in the US – I think a lot of people in the US were just as baffled. Love him or hate him, Trump played the power game masterfully and it won him the presidency. Unfortunately Trump has pretty decent odds of getting re-elected…especially when ~68% of voters already have concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health. Even the odds were 70% for Biden and 30% for Trump…things with 30% things happen all the time (you could very possibly get rain when the forecast says there’s a 30% chance). The real odds are probably closer than that.
Regarding Pres. Nelson, I wouldn’t say the 2-hour church was visionary, but it is popular and memorable. It would be nice to see at least a voluntary retirement mechanism for the Q15. I really don’t understand the lack of women speaking at GC
I’ve seen stories hyping up concern about Biden’s age and physical and mental health, and I think to myself, “why isn’t the media writing about Trump’s mental health?” If you watched any of the video produced by the J6 committee, you knew that Trump was told many times by people close to him that he LOST the election, and yet he decided to go forward with the narrative that there was election fraud. There wasn’t. The man is either delusional or a sociopathic liar. Demonstrated mental health issues. And he’s only 3 years younger than Biden. Trump’s physical and mental health is a lot more concerning than Biden’s.
I also point out that Trump LOST the popular vote in 2016. He was elected President due to the electoral college. A majority of people in the USA wanted Hillary Clinton as president. Yes, we were baffled. This wasn’t election fraud, just the electoral college. Did you know that every time the electoral college has changed the outcome of a popular vote in the last 100 years, it’s in favor of the Republicans? The electoral college has never put a Democrat who lost the popular vote in the last century into office.
For worst President, I want to throw Ronald Reagan into the discussion. Reagan disliked antitrust policies and sowed the seeds for the monopolies we’re dealing with now. His tax cuts for the rich set the stage for billionaires to bloom like toxic algae in the USA. Trickle down economics is irrational and does not work, yet Republicans still tout it. Reagan broke the back of labor law and started the decades long process of destroying the American middle class with his economic policies. He created the myth of the “welfare queen” to gut social programs for the poor. He also ignored the AIDS crisis, which wiped out a generation of gays and accelerated the combination of Christianity and politics, which has led to political disaster. He was really popular while he was in the White House (the Teflon President), but his legacy 50 years later shows just how bad he was for America.
Mortimer – add me onto the list of people who are really impressed with your observations. Thanks for that comment.
A Discipline
“Massive mayhem and destruction occurred throughout American cities in 2020. Only the most violent actions were prosecuted.”
Simply not true. I’m beginning to think that bothsidesism is mostly an argumentative tactic deployed by the far right. Most discussions I’ve had with far right-wingers about Jan. 6th, Charlottesville, or Trump have resulted in bothsidesist and whataboutist deflections on their part. Sorry, but Jan. 6th is unique. Bear in mind that the court is not bothsidesist. It looks at matters on a case-by-case basis. I’ve never heard of any supporters of Biden or Obama or the Clintons being charged with seditious conspiracy let alone convicted of it for actions done to keep those presidents in power.
Implicit in your argument is a deep distrust of the court system, as of there is a massive conspiracy afoot within it. No. The court system may not be perfect, but it is the most thorough system we have. I take the convictions that it reaches very seriously. It didn’t arrive at these convictions without painstaking effort.
Lastly I find it rich that many of the people who most loudly proclaim to support the Constitution and liberty are the ones who are willing to either commit or justify the actions of those who commit sedition and armed insurrection against the US. That doesn’t sound very constitutional to me. That doesn’t sound at all like the liberty that the patriots and Founding Fathers fought for. They wanted a system of checks and balances. Not groups of violent thugs threatening to kill elected officials for complying with constitutional procedures. That’s not liberty. That’s tyranny.
Brad D, just so you know, my hands are sore from applauding your excellent comments.
Janey: Me too! I think that Trump gets a pass on the looney things he says because he has always said looney things, whereas Biden’s looney things are (maybe) increasing. But age isn’t helping either of them. Trump just doesn’t have as far to fall in terms of sounding like he knows what he’s talking about.
To take a trip back to the OP discussion, Buchanan suffered from being too much of a (successful) politician, to the point that he didn’t seem to have a moral center. It was all about expediency. Trump, by contrast, instead of a moral center has a narcissist center: anything good for him is good. Anything bad for him is bad. He has never admitted defeat in life or the presidency. He claims wins that didn’t happen. He lies about everything, but always in his own favor. As for Biden, it’s fine to disagree with his policies or decisions, but I find it hard to believe he is a nefarious actor or a narcissist. I’d love to get back to voting between two candidates based on what we think of their actual ideas and policies and leave this grievance nonsense behind us.
@Janey: Maybe nobody brings up Trump’s mental fitness because there’s not enough left to bother? 😉
@Angela: About Buchanan being too successful of a politician – it’s a frustrating that the skills and traits it takes to get elected aren’t the same skills required of a good president (or other elected official). Now it’s escalated to a point where now the two parties are more like coke vs pepsi…they’re both mostly the same thing and neither is be nearly as interesting without the rivalry between them.
I have been staying out of this discussion because of the American president angle. But.
The church has been grooming members to support trump for decades. Nelson has been in high leadership in the church for decades.
Racism, then sexism, abortion, and anti lgbti, all told members they should be republican, and supporting leaders whether they are competent or not, is also part of the culture.
Nelson is irrelevant and now he has to be careful not to offend the majority of trump supporting members; he is becoming less important in mormon country too. If he got a revelation to tell members to vote against trump; how many would support him, and how many are trump first Nelson a poor second?
I would like to see Biden removed (by health issues or whatever), and Kamala as the democrat president/candidate. Hopefully enough Americans will vote against trump, even with Biden.
The numbers are for trump to be the republican candidate. Whether he gets the votes or not he will declare himself the winner, and the insurection will be better organized next time. So without the votes he could still take power.
The consequences for the world of a trump presidency are terrifying. Fighting climate change without America won’t work, for a start.
America has been the leader of the free world since ww2. You would leave the free world and join the other side, which would tip the ballance. All the super powers dictatorships.
Hopefully Ukraine has beaten Russia by then but could be velnerable again along with any country that borders Russia such as Finland, Sweeden etc. Would NATO without the US be enough of a deterrent?
America has defence agreements with most free world countries, like Australia. During the last trump presidency we had a conservative government, we now have Labor. Even last time there were questions about supporting trump/America.
China would be free to invade Tiwan, and has been trying to make inroads into the south china sea and also the pacific. The whole world would be much less safe, let alone less habitable. I would not visit Russia or China at present. Could America be as unsafe with a dictator?
This year we have had 2 of our 6 state premiers (governors) resign aged in their 50s claiming they were exhausted, having given all they had to give. They were both in powerful positions having won a series of elections each. The WA premier has 53 seats on his side of parliament while the major opposition party has 2 and their coalition country party has 4. And he resigned with the budget in surplus.
What is it with American leaders that they cling to power well past their use by date?
Please vote so overwelmingly against republicans in the lead up to 24 so that even the right wing media can not support an insurrection.
I left out a section about trump being convicted of lying about his finances, and the church being fined for the same.
There is no one teaching morality, from the high ground in mormondom.
It is very difficult to judge a leader in their current time. One thing is certain, that the judgement on the leader will depend very much on external factors. Buchanan would likely not be remembered as the worst president if the civil war has never happened.
As far as Trump goes, his presidency seemed like a dumpster fire while it was happening, but other than Covid and J6, not much happened. If he doesn’t get another term, I expect he will be remembered only for his two impeachments, which are bad, but not civil-war level.
Which is to say that when all is said and done, Trump will not be remembered as the worst US president, in spite of his efforts to the contrary.
And if he does get another term, I think it likely that he achieves one or two more impeachments.
I like Mortimer’s take on Nelson, and mostly agree with it.
One thing interesting about what I might call The Nelson Reformation is that he has done many things that I wanted leaders to do, but in a way or for a reason that I don’t like.
For example…
We got out of the scouting program. Now I wanted out of that program for a long time, but it seems like the reason the church left was because the Scouts became too liberal, which is not the reason I would have left. And when we did leave, we replaced it with nothing Burger.
He let women witness baptisms. But then he let 8 year olds witness baptisms too, because what’s the difference, amiright?
Etc etc
All that said, if Nelson is remembered as a bad president, it’s most likely because of the diminishing church numbers, which likely would have happened under most any leader given the circumstances.
The Civil War was unavoidable, because the US constitution was fundamentally broken at its conception. The founding fathers designed the constitution to keep non-property owners away from the levers of power. They assumed that people like themselves (wealthy property owners) would always be on the same side, and that the natural opposition was between men of means and property and, what they called “the great beast” the unwashed masses.
At the very beginning they acknowledged that this would never work if political parties ever became a thing, that is to say if there were every conflicts of interest between the wealthy property-owning class. And that happened almost immediately, as the interests of the northern state merchant wealthy diverged from the interests of the plantation and slave owning wealthy of the southern states. The 3/5ths compromise is evidence of this divide and of the founding fathers’ reluctance to actually deal with the problem. They kicked the can down the road for someone else to deal with. And so the constitution broke less than a generation later and the Civil War happened. The Civil War was, at its core, the failure of the constitution. After the Civil War, what they should have done, was scrap the constitution and write a new one. But that didn’t happen and so we’re stuck with the same dysfunctional oligarchy that we’ve always had that guarantees that we’re largely incapable of ensuring that all American citizens can actually attain life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Now, despite still having this fundamentally flawed constitution, I don’t think there’s a new civil war coming. Jan 6. was the closest thing right-wingers could do to initiate a civil war, and it was pathetic and hilarious.
What I think is more likely to happen, is a decay into a sort of hyper-federalism. The federal government doesn’t actually do any domestic governing anymore, it’ll just be 100% the National Security state keeping the foreign wars going and making sure that the imperial logistic lines are still going so Americans can still get cheap food and consumer goods.
Governance will happen between coalitions of states, largely red vs blue states, the federal government will step out of governance entirely, so life in red states will be very different from blue states with regards to access to certain services. Aborition will end up illegal within red state coalation, police will probably also get a free pass to assassinate LGBTQ people and labour unions will probably just be banned outright. Blue states will probably more or less resemble life at is currently is now in the USA.
One final note, on Donald Trump, yes he will definitely be remembered as one of the worst American presidents ever, and he does deserve it. But I don’t think he’s the worst by a long shot. Especially compared to either of the Bushes. I’m always incredulous when people say something like “yeah I used to hate GW Bush but then I warmed up to him when he stood up to Trump”. Guys, Bush’s body count is WAY higher than Trump’s. GW’s role in getting the Iraq and Afghanistan wars going and all of the —completely unnecessary—death and destruction (and the subsequent enriching of his family because of it), is many, many, many, many times more evil than anything Trump has done (yet).
Is the sad thing about the liberals in the USA at large, in the early 00’s they were virtually all onboard with the war, but, a decade+ later, were horrified and outraged at Trump’s disrespectful behaviour. Talk about priorities being backwards.
As I’ve been thinking about this post, what struck me is how little I know about the church presidents whose tenure predates my childhood (even though I was as much a student of church history as your average member in my TBM days). I have vague memories of Benson being the prophet when I was small but I couldn’t really tell you the difference between Lorenzo Snow and Joseph Fielding Smith or the difference between Harold B Lee and David O McKay.
I think for the average Mormon kid, you’ve got to do something really big to have something to associate your name with after you’re dead. I know Kimball rescinded the priesthood ban. Between Brigham Young and Gordon B Hinckley, that’s about it.
I don’t think Nelson has done anything near that big, so young church members learning his name as part of that one song will probably not know him for anything. We who lived during his tenure will have plenty to say about him, but to kids born during the Oaks or Bednar years, he will be just another face on a church manual and another lyric in the song. You know, unless he does something truly unforgettable for good or ill.
I just want to remind people that Musk never invented a single thing. He bought things and hired people who had ideas. clap. clap. clap.
Vajra2, Don’t drive a tesla?
Skwellington,
In support of your perspective we have James Madison who in the Federalist papers argues that State Legislatures are corrupt and short-sighted and the Constitution and the Federal government is the remedy. Never does Madison explain why the Federal government won’t become corrupt and short-sighted. It is simply presumed. Clearly, we see that no government is immune from corruption. No government structure ensures people are governed fairly and with justice and equity.
The mercurial nature of politics and human tribalism is perhaps most easily exhibited in how political labels are redefined to fit desired narratives. Today, to be skeptical of government authority and critical of government controls gets one tagged as “Right-wing”. In the 1960s through the 1980s it was the opposite. Liberals – the “Left-wing” were outspoken against government and critical of government restriction on personal liberty.
Over the past fifty years the meaning of “left-wing” and “right-wing” have reversed. Likewise has the “party” view of economics switched. Democrats were the party of the common people and Republicans were the party of bank and corporate executives – the country club party. Now Democrats love big corporations and powerful institutions – the bigger the better – and it is Republicans who are anti-corporation.
As for Trump. He is a northeast country club Republican which would normally make him a RINO. But Trump is a skilled conman, I mean self-promoter, and so he ran in 2016 as an anti-establishment Republican and he won election. Trump then governed as a centrist, except he was attacked so persistently by his political enemies that it gave the perception Trump was a political outlier. He wasn’t. Today, Trump is running as a very moderate Republican or even as a moderate Democrat and he is openly critical of Conservative Republicans and Conservative positions on morality, abortion and the size of government. And yet the narrative persists that Trump is a “Right-winger” all while he openly criticizes “Right -wing” political issues.
This is why government is so hard. Humans have an unbelievably strong ability to simultaneously hold and possess contradictory beliefs. How does one get such a species to agree on anything!
Disciple – I usually don’t reply to your political statements, but this one is just so blatantly wrong that I have to say something. You said, “Now Democrats love big corporations and powerful institutions – the bigger the better – and it is Republicans who are anti-corporation.”
Where do you get that idea? What is your source for that?
That is completely the opposite of reality. I work in corporate finance and follow many paywalled news sites that aren’t partisan. They just print what’s happening. And for as long as I’ve had the news subscriptions, it’s an unending string of “Democrats are trying to keep big companies from trampling consumers underfoot” and “Republicans are defending big corporations from everything Democrats are trying to do to save consumers.”
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is working to reduce or ban overdraft fees from big banks and credit card companies. Republicans are screaming about how that’s going to hamstring America’s banking industry.
Democrats want to tax big businesses and make them pay their fair share. Trump’s Congress passed a huge tax cut for big businesses, and most of that money went to the Republican rich cronies who spent it on stock buybacks. There’s a reason billionaires are (mostly) Republicans. Republican fiscal policies are like Santa Claus for big business.
Low taxes on billionaires and big business! That’s Republican. Get rid of regulations against dumping chemicals into the water and pollution into the air! That reduces business profits! That’s Republican.
It’s Biden’s Democratic administration that is finally filing lawsuits against Big Tech’s monopoly.
I know you’ve got questionable news sources, just based on all the wrong information you spout about J6. But I had no idea they were SO COMPLETELY BACKWARDS that they’ve somehow persuaded you that Republicans would ever stand up for individual rights against a big company. There are a few bipartisan efforts, in which a couple of Republicans are willing to join the masses of Democrats in standing up to huge businesses, but Republicans are not leading those efforts.
As for Trump being a centrist, google Project 2025 and read all about how the Republicans want to better support Trumpism. It isn’t centrist. It’s hugely radical.
Janey,
I have to add to what you said to A Disciple. Another blatantly wrong statement is how the left-wing and right-wing have reversed. Left-wing has always meant socialist/communist while the right-wing has always meant fascist. It was defined that way in the 50’s and it is still defined that way now. Your justification about the common person and/or corporations goes to the mistruth that you, Janey, spoke about so false built on false is false.
Has there been a change in politics, YES, but it doesn’t involve left-wing/right-wing, it involves civil rights and social justice. Democrats voted for slavery and were very much a part of Jim Crow with a stronghold in the South. Republicans were more business oriented and for a brief time around Teddy Roosevelt, progressive. But starting with FDR and the New Deal things began to change in the platforms of both parties. It culminated with LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act that JFK and RFK had pushed for in JFK’s administration. Once that was signed, democrats left the party in droves to follow Goldwater in 1964. Just look at the election results. The South was solidly Democrat until 1964 and has been basically Republican ever since. Also look at the party platforms. Democrats limited voting rights but now it’s Republicans that do that.
Janey, you nailed what Trump is but you could have mentioned that he is also selfish and a misogynistic narcissist.
Janey, +1
Trump a moderate? He brought us to the brink of war with Iran and North Korea. He cut taxes mostly on the wealthy. He reduced regulations. He made it easier for polluters to pollute. He crippled progress against climate change in the US. His budget for 2021 proposed cutting $1.6 trillion for low-income programs. His 2020 budget would cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. Trump was all about trickle-down economics. And it was a complete disaster. A recession officially started in Feb. 2020, before COVID policies were introduced. I dread the world that A Disciple wants to live in. A world pretty much without government. A world where cheaters can’t be held fully to account and the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. A world of anarchy. And of course a world where his ideal anarchist libertarian country would be eventually swallowed up by domestic and foreign power hawks. The federal US government has grown significantly since independence. The most celebrated US presidents, Lincoln and the Roosevelts, grew the size the government and the role of the executive branch considerably. John Marshall grew the role the Supreme Court. Even Thomas Jefferson, often considered to be some sort of proto-libertarian, expanded the role of the government in regulating commerce as in the 1807 Embargo Act. He expanded the role of the executive, asserting that the president could act outside the constitutional framework when needed, as in the Louisiana Purchase. He selected the leaders of the Republican caucuses. He used the political party to align the executive and legislative and by so doing managed to push through legislation with amazing speed. I think the expansion of the government over the last 200 years in the US has mostly been welcome and has mostly enhanced freedom. Libertarians today are stuck in a mid-1700s patriot narrative where colonists criticized British taxation. That world is gone. It has passed. It is no longer relevant. And many of the patriots, such as Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine, didn’t support the 1787 Constitution. The real US was created by visionaries who knew who to expand the government effectively and creatively to meet the needs of the people. Libertarians often criticize “statists.” I proudly identity as a statist. I believe in the government and in its power for good and its ability to enhance freedom.
Also on effects of former President Trump’s policies, he packed layers of courts with very conservative judges. They’ve already weakened authority of the Environmental Protection Bureau. This coming session SCOTUS could leave conservative imprints on the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, gerrymandered voting districts, mandatory minimum sentencing, etc.
After reading Geoff – Aus & vajra2’s comments about Elon Musk, I looked into the history of electric vehicles, and Elon Musk.
Elon Musk did not invent the electric vehicle or Tesla.
General Motors developed, produced, and selectively leased their EV1 from 1996-1999. Then they recalled it and crushed most of them. They didn’t think it would be profitable.
Tesla Motors was incorporated by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003, with Ian Wright joining them that year. In 2004 Elon Musk came on board bc they needed venture capital.
Musk earned Bachelor’s degrees in physics and economics. He seems to have decent engineering skills. Though a few years back I remember reading that engineers who have worked with him are critical of his engineering abilities, so maybe he’s better at design?
I’m not a fan, but acknowledge he has a knack for making money.
How often are reputations enhanced beyond reality?