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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

If I were president, knowing that I would certainly have my own chapter in the history books, I would spend at least some of my thoughts on how it would read. "President rootusrootus spent the entirety of his term in office attempting unsuccessfully to undo the legacy of the previous occupant." is not exactly what I would be going for. Tearing down a legacy is not the same as building one.

I hope the adults are back in charge next time around. This was not a fun experiment.

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It's interesting to see populism take hold in real time. Growing up, I remember teachers and student asking, "well how did $HORRIBLE_LEADER even come into power." Now we know.

Turns out it's ridiculously easy to get people to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Someone recently made the observation that we should not describe people who did terrible things in the past as monsters, because it allows us to rationalize away our own action or inaction. "We could never do <whatever bad thing our ancestors did> because they were monsters and we are not." Better to keep in mind that they were very much human, just as we are, and take the history lesson as a warning. And we just got a shot across the bow.

Hannah Arendt: The Banality of Evil

...which was extremely controversial when published, because people thought it was diminishing the Nazis' atrocities. I always felt your point to be the far more immediate lesson, apart from any argument of her view of Eichmann (that he was a paper-pushing bore as well as a mass murderer) simply being the correct one.

I think it makes complete sense to describe us as terrible. We are what we are. No point in sugar coating it.

Write the books to talk about how a lot of people were upset with the way things went. But don't forget to include the part about how lots of people were happy with it.

Especially given the fact that Henry Ford was an incredibly pernicious anti-semite who supported Adolf Hitler's movement in its infancy with financing for vehicles and uniforms. Nazism got its start in America and for us to pretend like it's some foreign ideology is bonkers.

There is historical evidence that Hitler got many of his ideas and policies from American eugenicists.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/09/hitler-th...

Problem is: if the other side had one, lots of people would feel exactly the way you do. But from the other side. So who is right?

Of course. I advocate writing both perspectives, knowing that the bias of the victor would show up.

But looking back, I think we’ve done a major disservice in the US by not including the dark parts of history in our stories: civil war -> states rights. Nazis -> no american ever supported that idea.

Stuff like that. It makes the times we live through now feel like a surprise to many I think. They’re shocked people could actually support racists, bigots, worthless people.

But here we are.

> They’re shocked people could actually support racists, bigots, worthless people.

Oh please. Just take a look at the shenanigans around HRC's nomination. Democrats have no claim to moral authority, if that's what you're suggesting.

Nope. Not at all.

> "President rootusrootus spent the entirety of his term in office attempting unsuccessfully to undo the legacy of the previous occupant." is not exactly what I would be going for. Tearing down a legacy is not the same as building one.

That assumes the previous occupant had a legacy worth preserving. The real underlying problem is that a lot of people honestly believe the previous occupant's legacy needed to be torn down.

It’s not about rational, every president disagrees with the previous one to some degree. I mean the point of the political system is to make changes they believe in.

However, the world is a chaotic place so no president can actually remove the legacy of the previous one. Revert all policies on day one, and the next president reverts all yours in an endless cycle that’s not a legacy. The actual legacy is the impact of your choices.

They didn't though. Just recall during the Healthcare repeal debacle, the very same voting base was foaming at the mouth against Obamacare while complaining about the threat against the Affordable Care Act.

Ah, but you read books.

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