"Fun fact": Mount Rushmore or Six Grandfathers was a sacred mountain for the Lakota to actively disrespect their beliefs
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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other "fun" fact: the man who defaced Six Grandfathers, Gutzon Borglum, was a member of the KKK
Gutzon Borglum
I refuse to acknowledge this is a real name.
The history of Washingtons teeth is uncertain. The evidence that those were slave teeth seems to show that the teeth were purchased.
Internet pictures with words are fucking dumb.
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/
I didn't suggest anything about his character, and we could probably have an entirely separate discussion about imperialism.
What is important is how you source information when it comes to dental prosthetics.
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Lincoln also commuted the sentence of 264 other Dakotans that had to be executed the same day. If he didn't intervene the executions would've been 303
Yeah. Cherry-picking can be used for good AND evil.
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Not to mention defacing a mountain by putting a bunch of faces on it
Defaced then refaced
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I understand the point, but as an exercise, try to find four historical figures without glaring character defects. Eventually, I figure we’ll all be either judged or forgotten in time.
We only learn about the ones with defects, because they are the most interesting. Most people in history were fine.
One historic figure who had no known defects: Alan Turing
Its telling that your example is someone explicitly kept out of the public eye during his life. Basically any account of Turing is from personal friends or his professional work. He was a generally good person and great scientist that helped defeat the nazis, but he's only celebrated by progressives for his persecution as a gay man.
I struggle to find any major social cause he publicly championed or records of his views on controversial topics. I'd like to be wrong, but it's easy to not have a mixed record as a private citizen. Nobody was grilling him to free slaves or asking his opinion on systemic injustice.
Einstein is a contemporary comparable. He was a great scientist, opposed the nazis, and by most accounts a decent guy. He was even had to flee his homeland to escape persecution as a jew. Clearly lots of parallels. The main difference being he was an idol in his own day so we have way more first hand accounts.
Turns out he was a socialist with varying views on communism, had shifting support for zionism and wrote rascist shit in his travel diaries. You could probably find a quote like Roosevelt's and slap it on a picture of him, that doesn't sum up his life.
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These are a little more than character defects... theres lots of historical figures who didn't rape and murder.
Yeah every political leader have little oopsies like being called "town destroyer" by the people which land they invaded and towns they destroyed. They also were proud of it, used it to invade even more land, and their grandpas were also called that because it's their family and nation thing to do for generations.
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Not pictured: the giant, shitty looking pile of rubble under them.
They just blasted chunks off the mountain and left the mess behind
Also not pictured: that the mountain is a spiritual site for the local tribes.
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All four of them carved onto a sacred natural site known to the Plains Indigenous people of the area as the 'Six Grandfathers'
This is why I find it surprising when USAians say "This is not us." When talking about Trump. No bro, it was always you, maybe you just weren't paying attention.
As a Native American this attitude is so grating. People outside the US really don’t seem to understand that it’s 55 different states, districts, and territories, along with dozens of sovereign tribes, all being forced to pretend to be one nation. Many of us can and do claim “this is not us” in the same way many Europeans would say the same about Viktor Orban.
"Why don't Americans just march on DC and take their country back??"
If I lived in Lisbon, Portugal, Moscow would be the equivalent distance of how far away DC is from me.
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303 natives were convicted and sentenced to death following the Dakota War of 1862. Lincoln actually commuted the sentences of 264 of those natives, allowing the convictions to stand only for those he believed personally engaged in the murder of innocent women and children.
Therefore, the last one is deliberately and intentionally misleading.
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Teddy Roosevelt never said "The only good indian is a dead indian." That quote is typically associated with Philip Sheridan.
A number of sources claim a similar quote (“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are...") alleged to be from an 1886 speech in New York, but this still goes against how he treated native americans generally and I can't find the original speech so I'm a bit suspicious of this as well.
That would require the democrats to actually do something
I'm picturing 200 dems walking slowly chanting "we shall overcome" on the way to brunch. George Bush is there. No one tips.
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That would require democrats to have fundamentally different goals than Republicans.
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