Americans, if you put yourself in the shoes of Washington, Jefferson, Adams and their ilk at the founding of this country, what questions do you think they would have for the leaders of today?
Washington: Oh, so y'all polarized the country into two separate parties when I specifically told you not to??
Adams: Didn't I tell y'all about that slavery bullshit?
Tommy Jefferson: How can anyone live in NYC?
Benji Frank: You can just fly to France like a bird while you sleep to dunk your oui oui?
How can anyone live in NYC?
Having read through accounts of Washington and Adams, it would seem that there was a very prevalent dislike of New York city in the colonies. They described NYC residents as lacking in decorum, which I still find fairly fitting today.
I can't speak on Washington and Adams in regards to their dislike of NYC, but relevantly, Jefferson had a unique understanding of freedom. To him, freedom wasn't a list of established rights protected by government. He was a major opponent of government and would likely agree to many anarchist ideals of today. Most founding fathers would likely agree that when they were discussing freedom, they meant freedom from England and monarchies. Jefferson was on another level though; he was extreme with the idea of freedom. Freedom was the ability for someone to live exactly how they pleased without any outside influence, both physically and mentally. It was a natural right for every single person to do whatever they pleased with their life as long as it didn't affect anyone else's ability to live their life as they pleased. Governments, churches, large companies, etc. were in strict opposition to this ideal of freedom. In practical terms, that means he had a vision of the USA as a land of self-sustaining farmers so that no one would be dependent on others to live or think. He was truly revolutionary in that sense. To him, urban areas were rife with corruption of not only politics and economy, but also ideas. He had a disdain for anything centralized: cities, government, churches, etc. He was the main advocate for the separation of church and state. Fun fact! Last I checked, when someone swears on a Bible in an American court, they swear on a Jeffersonian Bible which has all supernatural phenomenon omitted.
I think that the most influential American in the history of the USA is Jefferson, followed by Adams and then Washington. Jefferson was extreme in his vision of freedom, and those ideals are entrenched in the US Constitution. However, he was somewhat hypocritical with how he lived his life considering he became a president, owned slaves, and even let Louisiana continue slavery. In contrast, Adams was a principled person that truly held to his values and beliefs. He advocated for abolition of slavery and didn't own slaves. He even defended British troops that killed Americans because he was steadfast in his belief that valid legal trials not only protect citizens from government overreach, but that is the only way to achieve legal truth. Washington is famous and popular, but he didn't have the impact on foundational ideals that the other two had. Washington was more concrete and likeable. He was a practical leader. Shit...I'm digressing. Back to Tommy. If Jefferson wasn't involved in the foundation of the USA, I think the country would have turned out to be quite different from what it is today...maybe even unrecognizable. I'm not as confident that would have been the case for Adams and Washington.
This is stupidly accurate. Fucker.
Why the fuck are you still looking to us to give you answers? The whole point of this thing is to give you, the contemporaries of your time, the power to change the system to meet the demands of the day. And somehow you're hung up on what we did or did not write down?! Embarrassing.
You let the supreme court say that the president is above the law!?!
"What the fuck is the internet?"
Then Ben Affleck would show them movie poop shoot dot com to demonstrate
Bahnnngggg
snootchie pootchies!
I think they would be surprised either that we still adhere to the Constitution (I.e., we haven’t replaced or rewritten it), or that there are so few amendments.
gestures vaguely at everything
“How should I bet on the Hamilton-Burr duel?”
"What the fuck happened here?"
Wait, you let the negroes vote? You let women vote? You let people that don't own property vote?
"How do you control the masses when so many of them can vote?"
The usual stuff, propaganda and outright lies, but the most effective way is through echo chambers...
Just make people able to pick and choose with what communities they want to engage with and soon plenty of people will form self-radicalizing communities.
Who are you and how did you get in here?
“why are all these black people not in slavery?”
I sincerely doubt they'd be asking that. Many of them would probably be happy we'd moved past that point.
https://www.history.com/news/declaration-of-independence-deleted-anti-slavery-clause-jefferson
My understanding is that many of them saw it as more of a necessary evil vaguely justified on racial grounds. We need to be willing to talk about and acknowledge America's racist history with the slave trade, but we also need to understand the era and the fact that it was never broadly accepted as the right way to do things.
This might make folks uncomfortable, but it's not all that dissimilar to folks buying cheap imported stuff today built primarily for the US consumer in sweatshop conditions, via outright slavery, and/or with various child labor schemes often at an extreme cost to the health of the environment. We've made things better but we've also recreated some of the problems that we'd destroyed in the WW II era with the justification of indirection ("well I didn't do it, the big company I bought from did it") instead of racism.
I fully expect a future generation to hold us to the pitchforks for buying cheap junk on Amazon or at Walmart and not ever asking "what behavior am I supporting? How did they make this at this price?"
That’s not the question they would ask. Slaves were considered property, not people. Well, until they became 3/5 of a person. And finally, much later on a full person.
3/5 compromise wasent even about considering them as "mostly" people. It was about how they should be counted as far as a census was concerned, in order to determine the amount of congressional representation for that state. They still had no rights and were fully considered property.
If only Jon brown had been one of the founders.
true, the founders were even worse than I could put into words
Even during the 3/5th era, they were 0/5ths a person and an extra 3/5th a person to the slave owners who could actually vote. Spoiler alert: the slave owners did not vote with their slave's best interests in mind.
I think they would say, "what's this I hear about women voting? and, uh, who was that in the White House from 2012-2020?? was that one of Thomas Jefferson's grandchildren?"
credit to Joe Machi on season 8 of Last Comic Standing, the only season that I've watched.
“What do you mean you might elect a black woman” is probably a big one they’ll be mad about. They weren’t good people
"Shit, that white house is lit fr tho" - Georgie Washington
Washington: "Wait, all my slaves are free?!? I can't just keep moving them every 5 months to keep them from their freedom?"
Personal power, leadership abilities, integrity and morals were much stronger with these people, and in their times in general.
So I think they would ask:
How do you think you can lead a country when you are such a bunch of corrupted whimps?
Personal power, leadership abilities, integrity and morals were much stronger with these people, and in their times in general.
There's just no reason at all to think this. Most obviously, people who signed their names to the idea 'all men were created equal' while themselves owning slaves quite obviously did not possess a high degree of moral integrity.
More a different definition of "men".
There's just no reason at all to think this. Most obviously, people who signed their names to the idea 'all men were created equal' while themselves owning slaves quite obviously did not possess a high degree of moral integrity.
could this have been a tree they planted knowing they would not live to see fruit?
while themselves owning slaves
I did not say that it was good morals (from today's point of view: most of what they did was actually criminal). I said strong ones.
Interesting take. I presume you've never actually read any of the founding father's treatises.
No, of course not, since I do not live in their corrupted country.
And you should not judge people only according to what they write.
Realistically Franklin: "So the women of today bathe regularly, are shaven, are disease free, and can decide to be incapable of pregnancy, and I can search for them easily in every city?!"
Jefferson: "You centralized the banks?!"
Franklin was a big fan of older women as well.
I think he would have a good time today.
That guy fucked
Dude was a straight up cougar hunter lol
I stand by the assertion that Benjamin Franklin would have learned about trans women and promptly attempted to cause a syphilis epidemic in the trans community based on his description for why he prefers older women
Modern Franklin: Damn this VR porn is fuckin sick