Memes

Washington owned slaves. He was not some moral high ground individual. The only reason why they even got independence from Britain was that Britain wanted to stop the expansion of the territory and the people in the colonies wanted to continue it and kill all the natives.

Edit:

In 1784, Washington paid unnamed “Negroes” for nine teeth. We don’t know the precise circumstances, says Van Horn: “The president’s decision to pay his slaves for their teeth may have been a recognition on his part that teeth were something sacrosanct and personal.” On the other hand, being enslaved meant that any economic exchange was inherently not fair.

He literally took advantage of enslaved people to get their teeth and you consider it as just “bought”. Top tier cracker mindset. I guess that to you it was also fair for him to own his slaves because he “bought” them.

https://daily.jstor.org/were-george-washingtons-teeth-taken-from-enslaved-people/

Washington's teeth were made of diamonds and you can't convince me otherwise.

The US Empire is definitely one of the worst States to exist in history, though, consistently.

This is an ml community. Anything that praises the USA or normalizes it (that is, reducing the awfulness) is gonna get down votes.

Do not demonize people in the past who do not meet current norms. There will never be anybody who will meet those standards.

"Nazis were just a product of their time!"

Okay. There were staunch abolitionists across the US and especially in the UK. Many of whom were operating on the basis of equality, i.e. not the American belief that black people are a subspecies that were sent from heaven to serve whites, like all the leaders of the US though before the 1900s.

So by your own method, Washington was a disgusting human being, one would argue a demon.

Product of the times isn't a great way to put it, but you can certainly make the argument that most people have shades of grey morality.

Science can back you up, too, as I teach social psychology and when you dig in, you find that normative human nature is pretty complex but generally very supportive for in-group and mildly empathetic even with strangers. It's only when you dehumanize a group do you get the worst behavior, and in all four cases you see that, be it slaves or indigenous people.

When you look at those times, it's people who recognized their humanity that ended up in the just side of history.

What if MLK did not support feminists? Would he now be considered scum, thus negating everything good he ever did?

he literally addressed the national organization for women in 1966 and espoused their ideals.

giving a pass to the people from history is problematic because the same ideals of progressiveness that we pride ourselves on today were present in the past and people knew that it existed; they simply weren't as popular back then as they are now and anyone espousing them back then were treated like tankies of their own time.

giving them a pass only helps to excuse regressivism and anti-progressive sentiment like both the republicans and democrats (respectively) practice today; this is a key reason why we have trump as president today and probably jd vance tomorrow.

Lots of "what-ifs" to dismiss people highlighting historical genocidal slavers.

There were plenty of peers, even UK and European ones, that opposed the US colonial project. Read Losurdo - Liberalism, a counter-history if you want an in-depth look at the debates of the time.