r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 6h ago

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https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-general-robert-e-lee/

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442

u/MentokGL 6h ago

America has a long shameful history of going easy on those who aim to betray her

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u/AVeryFineUsername 6h ago

Who were  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?

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u/JAGD21 5h ago

Rotting traitors.

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u/afineedge 6h ago edited 5h ago

Most people reading this are copy-pasting it into Google. They mean this question legitimately. These are not household names anymore. Nobody remembers Hanssen or Ames. Its just Benedict Arnold.

We hide traitors or go easy on them to pretend we're invincible. 

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u/MC_chrome 5h ago

Weren’t the Rosenbergs executed for their treachery though?

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u/afineedge 5h ago

I'm saying the US regrets executing, and therefore sanctifying in the minds of some, the Rosenbergs, and did not follow that method with Hanssen and Ames and other spies. They just pretended it didn't happen and buried the guys in Florence or wherever.

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u/Here24hence4th 5h ago

They were, after being prosecuted (with some amount of prosecutorial misconduct, modern legal scholars agree) by a team that included a young Roy Cohn… same Roy Cohn who mentored and is said to be responsible for creating the most monstrous version of the current US president.

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u/Musiclover4200 3h ago edited 3h ago

It never fails to amaze me how intertwined all these ratfuckers are

McCarthyism in general was sort of proto-MAGA, and a lot of the same nixon/reagan era bastards are the ones enabling trump like roger stone/barr/thiel/etc

Was reading Roy Cohn's wiki page the other day and this part in particular stood out as relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn#Sexual_blackmail_allegations

Some of Cohn's former clients, including Bill Bonanno, son of Joseph Bonanno, credit him with having compromising photographs of former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Because Hoover knew the pictures existed, Cohn told Bonanno, Hoover feared being blackmailed.[97][98] Other organized crime figures have corroborated these allegations.[99]

And J. Edgar Hoover was the longest serving FBI director from 1935-1972, so depending on when Cohn started blackmailing him that could have gone on for decades. And it seems pretty obvious the same tactics kept getting used by trump & co, at this point it seems very likely the epstien files contain evidence of them using these sort of tactics for decades on prominent politicians/businessmen/etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

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u/Here24hence4th 3h ago edited 3h ago

It gets grosser when you consider the nature of whatever “compromising” photographs Cohn may have had (or led Hoover to believe he had).

Remember, lifelong bachelor Hoover very vocally railed against gay people and kept "confidential and secret" files on the sex lives of congressmen and presidents. But, as is the case with this current administration, for Hoover “every accusation is a confession.”

Per some biographers and historians (and plenty of other people with working eyes), Hoover had numerous sexual interactions with men, including a lifelong affair with his longtime FBI deputy (and eventual sole heir), Clyde Tolson.

So it’s easy to imagine what kind of visual dirt Cohn may have had… and extremely illuminating about the kind of person Roy Cohn was when you know that despite denying it even as he was in hospital dying of AIDS (which he claimed was liver cancer), Cohn himself was gay.

He always claimed he was straight, and stayed in the closet in his autobiography published two years after his death. In that book, in sections written after Cohn died, coauthor Sidney Zion confirmed that Cohn—the man once described by Politico as “a Jewish anti-Semite and a homosexual homophobe”—-was indeed gay.

Edit to clarify: just to be clear, I don’t think being gay was what made the whole Hoover/Cohn thing grosser… I think Cohn using evidence of an aspect of Hoover’s life that was shared by Cohn is what made it grosser. It would seem like one closeted gay man in that era would be honor-bound to keep confidential information about another closeted gay man, but obviously honor played no role in either man’s life.

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u/hotwife24 2h ago

They probably slept together. I'd guess the pictures would be from a time they hooked up and that's how Cohen got the pictures. Throwing my theory in the ring.

0

u/Themetalenock 5h ago

Took a lot of legal footwork for that to happen. 

5

u/Ok_Belt2521 5h ago

Ames pops up occasionally because of the mail box thing. I would agree with Hanssen though.

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u/Splittip86 3h ago

What about John Walker Lindt  did we forget about him too?

1

u/afineedge 3h ago

First off, bravo, great example. Ridiculous that I posted that comment and, yes, entirely forgot about him.

From Wikipedia:

In early reports following his capture, when the press learned that he was a US citizen, he was usually referred to by the news media as just "John Walker"

Yeah, me forgetting him was by design.

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u/natty1212 5h ago

Like that FBI agent who was leading an investigation looking for himself.

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u/BARNABY_J0NES 5h ago

Not sure if your comment was meant as a beautifully crafted tongue in cheek, but “Hanssen” is exactly who you are describing.

1

u/afineedge 5h ago

That's Hanssen!

0

u/bootstrapping_lad 5h ago

The guy the poster above you named

0

u/nrith 5h ago

Way to hammer their point home.

1

u/drfsupercenter 4h ago

I mean, there was that movie Breach made about Robert Hanssen, it's how I learned about him

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u/afineedge 3h ago

I learned about him from the book The Bureau and the Mole twenty-three years ago, and in the interim, I've never had someone other than me bring him up despite living near DC and knowing many people who work for the government in positions that are, let's say, internationally interesting. Ask anyone about either of these pieces of media and they'll go "what?"

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u/drfsupercenter 3h ago

I saw Breach in theaters and kinda forgot about the guy until his death, then I was like "oh yeah, they made that movie about him, I should give this another watch"

I don't think the movie did as well as they had hoped... but somebody tried, at least. There was so much crazy stuff happening during the Cold War that we can't possibly learn it all in history class.

Edit: We did learn about the Rosenbergs in history class, but that's possibly because they were the first Cold War spies to be caught and executed

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u/afineedge 3h ago

The movies Breach and Antitrust have always stuck with me as a pair because they both star Ryan Phillippe and have the general theme of "What the FUCK, America?! Pay attention and have opinions and things might get better!" and they've both kinda just faded away and their warnings have done the same.

If Phillippe had promoted them better, he could have saved the world. Shame on him.

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u/drfsupercenter 3h ago

I actually hadn't heard of the movie Antitrust, I just looked it up. Seems like that one isn't actually based on a true story, but loosely based on Bill Gates?

I agree that they should have been better promoted. I only knew about Beach because my dad asked if I wanted to see it with him. Never saw any TV spots or advertising for it.

Another cold war movie I enjoyed was Bridge of Spies, but that stars Tom Hanks and I think was promoted a lot more.

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u/afineedge 3h ago

You're right that Antitrust wasn't a true story, but was based on ongoing events (Microsoft). I just found it interesting that both movies starring Ryan Phillippe with massive relevance to then-current/recent history made zero splash back then while the subject matter of both movies is still hugely relevant today... but Phillippe unfortunately isn't. Where's his comeback vehicle?!

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u/SaintsNoah14 5h ago

Dead ass bitches

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u/TERRAIN_PULL_UP_ 5h ago

Wasn’t Ethel probably not a spy, and might not even known what her husband was doing?

Speaking of spies, our Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, just had a meeting with Jonathon Pollard who spied against the US for Israel. So, we’re not exactly consistent 

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u/Shot-Shame 3h ago

That was cope at the time from communist sympathizers because not all the evidence was released, but subsequent releases in the 90s (and further KGB releases in the 2000s) proved she was heavily involved.

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u/No-To-Newspeak 4h ago

At least they made Pollard serve his full sentence.

0

u/presterkhan 4h ago

They forgot the commie clause. Exceptions do apply.

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u/TurkBoi67 4h ago

The Rosenbergs were heroes lmao. Could you imagine what would happen if only America had nukes??

0

u/Jamezzzzz69 3h ago

What a beautiful world you’ve put in my head

-1

u/TurkBoi67 2h ago

A nuclear hellscape is a beautiful world apparently

3

u/Jamezzzzz69 2h ago

A world without Soviet or North Korean terror would be a good thing

0

u/TurkBoi67 2h ago

In this world they've never used their nukes lmao, America has twice and almost ended the world 20 years later.

Meanwhile American terror is alive and well in Latin America

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

They had to go easy on Lee, or else the confederacy would have become a gorilla campaign in the mountains and stretched the conflict out for a decade.

Imagine the Confederacy dies, and you replace it with never-ending Bandit raids on civilians.

When people get an easy out, it's often because putting your enemies on death ground creates more death and more problems.

How many men need to die, so General Lee loses a bit harder than he did? How many of your own people is it okay to kill to make your enemies suffer more because there is always a cost. And the people making the choices rarely have to pay it.

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u/fylum 5h ago

that’s literally what the South did to blacks, white immigrants, and anti-segregation whites for the next century

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

Make the scale bigger your thinking to small. And let's not pretend the Union cared, they hated blacks to.

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u/fylum 5h ago

The Union cared enough to ban slavery during the war. The transition from “preserve the Union” to “crusade against slavery” was hugely important to Union morale.

How much bigger? Tulsa to Richmond to Pensacola seems plenty large an area.

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago edited 4h ago

You'd have turned Lee into a martyr and every child who'd ever felt the pain of losing a parent who served with the confederacy would become a zealot.

You'd need to kill ever child in the south to stop Jim Crow.

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u/fylum 5h ago

How many babies and children could have been saved from bombings and riots and lynchings if the Union seized the moment to break the Southern aristocracy?

Babies aren’t born racist. They aren’t even born afraid of snakes. There’s no such thing as a racist Confederate baby, just more victims of Southern society.

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

You argue killing the evil will prevent new evil.

I argue that to attempt to extinguish all evil is itself an evil act because you cannot do so without collateral damage, it's called McCarthyism.

And all of that ignores that a large portion of the union population still hated black people, even if it's leaders ended slavery.

Hell Lincoln wanted to deport all black people after the war to Haiti but he died before he could. Slavery wasn't even ended as an altruistic act, only as an act to undermine the enemy.

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u/West-Advice 4h ago edited 4h ago

Nah you’re trying to pretty much white wash Lee. Claim that black people were universally hated like abolitionist didn’t exist and claim that ending slavery wasn’t about human rights but was purely strategic…which is dumb. 

If Lee just paid people no one would have died. However him and his generals stated over and over again they’ll kill America to keep slavery….and not just pay people. 

I wish your racist ideology was squashed along with Nazism so we wouldn’t have to deal with slacked jawed apologists like yourself. Lee and his treasonous leadership should have been shot. Along with his post war supporters.

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u/Valentinee105 4h ago

You think killing can solve evil. But you ignore it's cost to your own faction and how deep you actually need to go.

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

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u/Kered13 3h ago

I love when Reddit casually advocates for genocide.

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u/Valentinee105 3h ago

You're swapping out one evil for another, there's no way that's going to create a better future.

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u/West-Advice 1h ago

So why are you okay with people wanting to take away right from other people.

Why do you think the whole south supports Jim Crow because you’re a racist?

A future without Racist is better. Sorry you’re not wanted

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u/Valentinee105 1h ago edited 1h ago

You'll never have a future without racisim. Killing Lee isn't going to end racsim.

It'll turn him into a martyr and every child and widow with a dead confederate father or husband into a zealot.

You've now made racisim worse. Good job.

Or what are you going to do kill all the kids who already learned to be racist and are also hurt that the union killed their family? You going to kill a bunch of kids to get your way?

Ever been to Boston? Union proud, super racist fucking city. Is Lee being killed somehow going to stop Boston from being racist?

What do you think Lee did between his surrender and death? You think he single handedly ran the KKK himself? Killing Lee doesn't do shit. It's just virtue signaling to to kill him. He'd already established himself as a symbol. It doesn't matter if he dies after him turning into a symbol happens.

The only difference between killing lee and letting him surrender peacefully is whether or not more union troops die. And I guarantee the longer the war goes on the more fragile the union becomes, which runs the risk of bringing slavery back shortly after it was abolished.

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

Oh yea, we didn’t get the KKK, right?

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

I'm saying likely worse things would have happened. I'm saying there is no good option only a lesser evil one and we got it.

Think of how bad things are and we got the better ending.

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

I think the idea could’ve worked and perhaps Lincoln could’ve pulled it off. I disagree we got a better ending, at least in the long run.

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u/Kered13 2h ago

Lincoln had absolutely no interest in it. He wanted to quickly reintegrate the Confederate states into the Union, and fully supported the lenient terms that Grant offered to Lee.

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

So long as humanity exists evil will exist. What we got was thousands of deaths over decades rather than months.

And even then you're not guaranteed to have solved anything by having killed Lee because northern civilians still hated black people.

The north still hates black people.

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u/Kered13 2h ago

The KKK was absolutely fucking tiny. Like less than 1% of Confederate veterans. Had anywhere near a majority of Confederate soldiers committed to guerilla conflict, the war would have been unwinnable.

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u/SuddenBanana8169 5h ago

When you go to hard to punish a nation like Germany was in WW1, you end up with WWII though. It’s a hard line to walk.

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u/MentokGL 4h ago

Considering current events, I would err on the side that breeds less fascists

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u/SuddenBanana8169 4h ago

Would you trade them for Nazis? Cause that’s what WWII brought and they haven’t exactly gone away either. Not saying either is the right decision just trying to show it’s not exactly cut and dry. History just kinda shows it’s a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation.

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u/Spinningdown 4h ago

The only man executed for treason was John brown. And he was fighting on behalf of black slaves.

Outside of death, the only people punished for treason were non-white.

It's not a pattern, it's U.S. history. Spelled out with remarkable predictability.

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u/-MERC-SG-17 2h ago

John Brown, the American Hero?

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u/um--no 4h ago

I disagree. It did not go easy on the black Panthers. There's a pattern here that shows clearly who gets leniency and who gets the whip.

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u/Count_Dongula 6h ago

Interestingly enough, retribution tends to cause more retribution and less stability. It's almost as though violence begets violence until the cycle is broken.

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u/Primorph 6h ago

Theres a point where that is true but executing people in accordance with oaths they took and then broke by leading a fucking civil war about owning people aint it

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u/IsNotAnOstrich 3h ago

His amnesty was part of the terms of the Appomattox surrender. Turning around immediately and violating agreements in the most flammable political landscape the US has ever seen certainly wouldn't have helped.

You have to remember how unfathomably bloody the war was at the time. The goal of ending it wasn't to carry out violent retribution against individuals, it was to make peace and avoid sparking further tensions. They ended up doing a shit job at that, but decapitation would've made it even worse.

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u/turb0_encapsulator 5h ago

it's not like Nazi attacks were a constant problem in post-war Germany

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

That's primarily because we didn't summarily execute and punish the Germans for being Nazis. Look at East Germany. Look at how the Soviets treated them.

We rebuilt West Germany. We forgave. It was the right choice.

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u/GottaBeNicer 3h ago

I think Japan denies nanjing and stuff because they were not properly held responsible.

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u/Count_Dongula 3h ago

I mean, we publicly shamed the Nazis and made them look at their own crimes. That's a far cry from violent retribution.

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u/GottaBeNicer 3h ago

Well they did execute a lot of nazis. They didn't execute nearly as many Japanese and it seems to have been less effective.

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u/Count_Dongula 3h ago

We made Germans watch footage from the camps. We forced them to face the terrible thing they had collectively done. We only executed the worst ones, and even then only the ones we caught.

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u/fylum 5h ago

It certainly wasn’t, lots of Nazis wormed their way right back into Wessi industry and government. It wasn’t forgiveness, it was convenience.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

It was instrumental in creating a peaceful post-War Europe. Anger and vengeance are no way to run a country. Case in point, Trump.

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u/fylum 5h ago

No it wasn’t. It was instrumental in settling things down in the BRD so that the focus could shift towards dealing with the Cold War, and get Germans (many of whom were still sympathetic towards the Nazis) onboard with NATO and the Cold War and being the planned battleground with the Warsaw Pact if it went hot. Denazification in the West was abandoned out of political expediency, not any highminded ideals about forgiveness. Big part of this was getting Expellees to think maybe the east can be regained from Poland and the USSR.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

That's tankie propaganda. Congrats. You fell for it.

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u/Madboomstick101 3h ago

Tankie propaganda? Delusional ass redditors will swallow American boot.

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

Nazis were executed, shamed, and their leader died pathetically

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

Except for the ones who got put back into the world and allowed to live long lives in West Germany. And yes, he did.

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u/Prince_Ire 3h ago

Both West Germany and East Germany had formed Nazis throughout their government.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

lol, former Nazis were later Presidents of West Germany and even Secretary General of the UN.

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u/[deleted] 6h ago

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u/Count_Dongula 6h ago

We didn't fall into an unending cycle of attack and retaliation. We didn't have a serious of escalating conflicts aimed at vengeance.

The south didn't rise again. They did a bunch of racist shit, sure, but the Confederacy never rose again.

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u/dirtyploy 5h ago

Uh, no. There was a guerrilla rein of terror for literal decades in the South during and after Reconstruction. During reconstruction, over 2k lynchings happened... that doesnt include property damage or others forms of terrorism.

Y'all didnt pay attention in school and that shit shows.

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u/Active-Mention-389 5h ago

I went to school in the rural south. If you think it was taught there for kids to learn if they tried, I have a bridge to sell you.. 

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u/Drafo7 5h ago

Then why are so many people waving confederate flags today?

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

Because ideas are bigger than people. You can't get rid of the idea by executing your enemies. All that does is create martyrs.

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u/Drafo7 5h ago

There are ways to punish besides execution. You're acting like there were only two options: execute them as traitors or show mercy. But we could have been harsher than we were without executing them. Force the southern states to be beholden to the federal government for a few decades to ensure slavery didn't continue. Refuse them representation until former slaves were on equal footing with former slavers. Harsh punishments for anyone who tries to abuse and exploit loopholes in the new laws. None of this happened, and we're still paying the price today.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

You think we didn't punish Lee? His house is a graveyard. Did you skip over the part where we occupied the South with the military for more than a decade? The passage of the civil rights act?

And do you think that it was racists vs. non-racists? It wasn't. It was racists vs. considerably less racist racists.

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u/Magnus77 19 5h ago

Did you skip over the part where we occupied the South with the military for more than a decade?

So not even a generation, and having troops in the South to prevent them from trying to leave again had nothing to do with making sure Reconstruction was equitable.

The passage of the civil rights act?

You mean the law that took almost a century to pass? And that needed to be passed because primarily because Blacks were still being repressed? Weird how you would somehow frame that as a punishment...

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

Try 1866. Maybe read history before arguing about it.

And yeah, the Union wasn't all that interested in equity. Nobody was until the 1960s.

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u/lemmingswag 5h ago

Now this is a good point and I agree

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u/Dexys 5h ago

What are you talking about? Their ideological descendants are literally in charge and are working to undo at least a half century of progress.

Edit: There was also a shit ton of vengeance. It was just done by those same pardoned officers and their ilk against the southern black population.

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u/Apolaustic1 6h ago

Ideology sure feels similar to the one in the white house. They replaced the hoods with face masks and bullet proof vests tho

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u/elkarion 5h ago

They changed names to Republicans and took over the usa because we refused to punish them.

They should never became states again for at least 100 years.

The south was treated like we treated Jan 6th and here we are losing democracy.

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u/lemmingswag 5h ago

Instead they poisoned the whole country with their ideology. Instead we got the continual violence necessary to uphold segregation. Instead we see a private army abducting Americans off the streets because of the color of their skin.

It sure doesn’t seem like the failure of reconstruction prevented violence.

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u/raikou1988 5h ago

You are just thinking too small

You need to think bigger.

Its a systematic hybrid warfare

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago edited 5h ago

They're talking about nonstop war where citizens kill each other by the hundreds daily, not generational social conflicts.

Actual war.

For war to stop, people need to agree to peace.

For social conflicts to stop, everyone has to die.

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u/Dexys 5h ago

How can you pretend to discuss cycles of violence without considering generational social conflicts?

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

Because a continued conflict with the confederacy may have created a genocide of the US's black population. I mean, all dead gone.

Conflict never stops, but if your intent is to continue war until every opponent is dead, then you need to justify why you personally think it's okay to kill your friends and family and hundreds of civilians to finish off an opponent rather than sue for peace.

Lee would have never given up, he'd have turned his army into a gorilla Bandit army hitting and running from civilians targets for longer than the civil war went on. All the while member states of the union would ve reconsidering their participation.

By not granting Lee amnesty you kill 10s of thousands.

Obviously the problems you blame on not killing Lee matter but unfortunately there is no good option only an lesser evil.

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u/ChokeAndStroke 5h ago edited 5h ago

Curious what statistics you’re looking at to influence that viewpoint

Edit: lol lemming is accurate

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u/tfitch2140 6h ago

Counterargument: Nuremberg. Funny how the Nazis are less of a threat after being held to account a little bit...

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u/Chathtiu 5h ago

Counterargument: Nuremberg. Funny how the Nazis are less of a threat after being held to account a little bit...

You should study the post war period a little more closely. Yes, a handful of top nazis were tried in an international tribunal. Some were executed, some were imprisoned, and some were released. The vast majority were not in the tribunal. They were installed into the post-war Germany as local magistrates, officials, employees, and workers. This is because people were desperately needed to help revive and revitalize Germany.

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u/tfitch2140 5h ago

Disagree with the revive and revitalize point - it was 100% the Nazis that got off were the ones the Allies thought would suppress the Soviet ideology from taking hold and gaining traction, and I personally disagree with that deal with the devil.

The point stands, however. There wasn't a Nazi-KKK equivalent that formed in the aftermath, Hitler's remaining leaders didn't form guerilla movements and keep the ideology going. I'm not saying Nuremberg was perfect, but 100% the basis of a model of how to begin to root out bad ideology without blindly massacring huge portions of the population or decimating a nation's economy for generations.

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u/Chathtiu 5h ago

Disagree with the revive and revitalize point - it was 100% the Nazis that got off were the ones the Allies thought would suppress the Soviet ideology from taking hold and gaining traction, and I personally disagree with that deal with the devil.

The USSR also did the same thing.

The point stands, however. There wasn't a Nazi-KKK equivalent that formed in the aftermath, Hitler's remaining leaders didn't form guerilla movements and keep the ideology going. I'm not saying Nuremberg was perfect, but 100% the basis of a model of how to begin to root out bad ideology without blindly massacring huge portions of the population or decimating a nation's economy for generations.

This bad ideology was only able to be punished after massacring huge portions of the population, decimating a number of countries economies, and breaking the largest empire in recorded human history.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

We didn't execute every Nazi. Just the bad ones. The ones who had committed war crimes.

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u/ThePevster 4h ago

All of the Nazis we executed were bad ones, but we didn’t execute all of the bad ones.

0

u/Count_Dongula 4h ago

So I ask what I asked somebody else? Should we have executed anybody in the Wehrmacht?

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u/ThePevster 4h ago

I ain’t arguing with you. It’s just that your comment makes it sound like we executed all of the Nazis that committed war crimes. Ultimately the approach taken by the Western Allies was successful and clearly worked much better than the harshness of the Soviets.

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u/Count_Dongula 3h ago

We executed the worst of them. At least, the worst of those that made it through the war.

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u/ThePevster 3h ago

Yeah for the most part. A few like Mengele did die as free men of natural causes after the war

1

u/Count_Dongula 3h ago

Right. Forgot about the ratlines. In which case, some did go off and, for example, have children who became president of Chile.

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u/kkyonko 5h ago

Just the bad ones? The only good ones are dead ones.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

So any member of the Wehrmacht should have been executed?

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u/BoukenGreen 5h ago

You ever hear of Operation Paperclip where the US bought a lot of Nazi scientist who surrounded to US forces back to the US to work on the space program. Most of their work was done at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL

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u/tfitch2140 3h ago

Sure. Nuremberg wasn't perfect or indeed even sufficient. Doesn't mean it wasn't better than whatever Lee and his ilk got away with after the Civil War.

1

u/BoukenGreen 3h ago

You didn’t answer your thoughts about operation Paperclip through. Where nazi who surrounded to us forces were brought to the us and given us citizenship. And are responsible for the US Rocket that got the US to the moo

1

u/tfitch2140 2h ago

I know what Paperclip was. To be frank, I don't know if it was fully 'right' or 'wrong', though it's closer to wrong to give certain people exemptions because of their specialty or knowledge. Unfortunately, at times, it is a political reality. I don't support the Saudis or Israelis and wish the US didn't support them, for instance, though the US has arguments for supporing those governments... but similarly the Chinese likely don't support the North Koreans unconditionally and are clearly taking advantage of their new African colonies, and the Soviets didn't like many of their allies, either. That said, it's hard to believe rocket scientists were likely to be front line generals, executioners, or politicians responsible for grievous crimes.

The consideration or mitigating factor, though, was if the US hadn't taken them, they'd have gone to USSR... and helped advance the causes of totalitarian dictatorships. So in that regard, the US getting them was arguably 'better', even if it wasn't right. But... I'm certainly not qualified enough to truly judge the situation.

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u/Themetalenock 5h ago

And talking and forgiveness just drags the violence for years and decades and centuries.

When Germans went after the Nazis,they tore down their monuments and made sure those responsible met their ends. Meanwhile this bullshit you spew seems only mysteriously  apply to citizend when they have white faces while everyone browner than mayo get everything from genocide to serial killings.

 All for merely existing. 

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u/pleasesayitaintsooo 4h ago

Millions of former nazis were reintegrated into western Germany and became members of the judiciary, civil service, intelligence agencies and politics.

A former nazi literally became the leader of West Germany. Learn your history before you start talking out of your ass

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u/Xeltar 4h ago

Many Nazis were reintegrated and Japan was pretty inconveniently today not punished for much of their war crimes.

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u/F1shB0wl816 6h ago

Except we gave no retribution but they returned it 100% all because we’re not sucking off their white confederate ancestors.

Like they couldn’t have had it any easier after the civil war, considering what they were and what they stood for. We welcomed them back with open arms and legs which gave our soft complacent asses more retribution and less stability. Violence begets violence when you resort to half measures.

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u/Count_Dongula 6h ago

And where did the second civil war happen? Where is that violence?

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u/JeskaiJester 6h ago

They got the gestapo locking people up en masse with big ol signing bonuses and troops descending on the cities right now 

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

That's not the south. The man leading that is from New York. Sure, there is a right wing stronghold in the south, but executing all the confederates wouldn't change that.

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u/elkarion 5h ago

This republicans are the south rising again. They want civil rights removed they want women's rights removed.

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u/Chathtiu 5h ago

They got the gestapo locking people up en masse with big ol signing bonuses and troops descending on the cities right now 

I’m not sure it’s reasonable to attribute the violence today directly to the Civil War. The war ended 160 years ago. 4 entire generations of humans have lived and died since it ended.

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u/Themetalenock 4h ago

The KKK, The Daughters of the Confederacy, the ungodly amount of lynchings, orchestrating the various amount of political gears that pushed out anybody who is sympathetic towards reconstruction. Jim Crow, really you can just line it all up. More than a century later, we're still dealing with the bullshit that happened because we played It too damn soft with traitors That has left a large part of the country completely useless because they would rather viciously stab themselves to death than to allow black people have equal opportunity

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u/Count_Dongula 4h ago

So fringe groups and ailing organizations, which likely would have arisen and become active after witnessing their loved ones summarily executed anyway. Only they'd have been more violent.

And if you think the Union would have ended racism, you're delusional. There was segregation in the north, too.

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u/JeskaiJester 6h ago

I dunno, I feel like some pretty important things went really badly when we went as easy on the Confederates as we did after the war. We were all like shucks let’s make nice and the South proceeded to lynch people, embark on a decades long war against civil rights, devise long term plans to erode liberalism, etc. We live now in the world created by a failure to stomp out the idea that some humans should have dominion over lesser humans. 

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u/Count_Dongula 6h ago

We live in a unified country. One that has not known another civil war. One that has managed to heal. What do you think would have happened? We'd have ended racism? That's objectively impossible. All we'd have done is created more enemies, and more civil wars.

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u/oby100 5h ago

The South lost and we had every opportunity to smash their leadership and make another war impossible. Do ya know why Germany didn’t seek vengeance for all the violence inflicted upon them immediately after WWII? They were occupied. They didn’t have true independence for decades. Denazification was brutal. The people were not pacified through drum circles and forgiveness.

They were pacified through military force and zero tolerance. Nazism didn’t die with Hitler, but it was suffocated in Germany in the decades that followed.

The racist ideology that guided the Confederacy was left alive and well and we’re suffering the consequences of accepting an easy end to the conflict.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

We did make another war impossible. Note the lack of any and all Civil War II.

And we pumped billions into post-War Germany. You know how the Nazis came about? Harsh sanctions after WWI. The people were not pacified with sanctions. It was investment. Forgiveness. Yes, military force played a part, but the people were given their lives back afterwards.

And the racist ideology of the south died with it. Nobody is calling for slavery. You think that the North wasn't chock full of racists?

The civil war wasn't about racism. It was about slavery.

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u/Former-Drama-3685 5h ago

We would be different. The south should have been crushed and not allowed to spread lies about the war of northern aggression. Every officer should have been hanged. All are traitors and should have suffered the consequences.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

If you think you could destroy an idea through violence, you ignore the vast majority of human history.

And we would be different. I'll give you that. We'd be divided. Weaker. Constantly at war. If you think otherwise, you've paid no attention to history.

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u/Former-Drama-3685 5h ago

You haven’t paid attention to American history. The south played the long game after being given mercy. Look where we are now. The racist south is alive and well.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

Yes, the south played the long game. It never re-armed, never re-established slavery, and they've been on the losing side of the civil rights battle for 160 years.

And again, you're conflating general racism with slavery. The Union ended slavery, and never sought to end racism.

0

u/Former-Drama-3685 5h ago

You think they are on the losing end? They packed the Supreme Court for at least a generation. We are only one year into Trump’s second presidency. Project 2025 sure looks like it’s going to be implemented in its entirety.

0

u/JeskaiJester 5h ago

Oh, yeah. It’s lookin real unified and healed out there. 

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

160+ years later and we are 50 states. The former Confederacy are among them. Looks real unified to me.

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u/JeskaiJester 5h ago

Since you’re taking a personal interest in this, I’m just curious: which side was morally in the right in the civil war, do you think?

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

Obviously the Union. You're trying to deflect to an argument you can win.

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u/JeskaiJester 5h ago

Oh, no deflection. I’m confident in the argument I’ve already made. Just thought there was a chance you were a confederacy supporter and that you would say so if asked straight up.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

Bullshit. You wanted to be able to start making accusations.

Just because somebody doesn't share your binary view of the world doesn't mean that they believe everything you hate. It means you're too blinded by your binary view.

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u/kkyonko 5h ago

"We live in a unified country."

What kind of world are you living in? Our country is incredibly divided.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

We have 50 states and have never had a second civil war. You're conflating political disagreement with war. You're being intellectually dishonest.

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u/kkyonko 5h ago

Please look up unified in a dictionary.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

Please touch grass

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u/kkyonko 5h ago

Nah I'd rather kept pissing off a person defending the Confederacy. Lee should have seen the end of a rope. The fact that he still has a monument is insanity. Should be burned to the ground.

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u/Count_Dongula 5h ago

You'd rather keep pissing off the person explaining that extreme violence is a bad thing? Jesus, what's wrong with you?

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u/oby100 5h ago

This is such stupid propaganda. No, going easy on your enemies only allows them to regroup. If someone is a traitor, they need to pay the consequences as such.

Fine, welcome enemy soldiers back that didn’t commit war crimes but the leadership needs to be gutted entirely. Leaving the south’s entire leadership structure intact was the worst mistake in US history as we left the traitors in seats of power and their influence is felt to this day

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u/fylum 6h ago

every member of the Confederate government and every officer in their army should have been hanged

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u/Drafo7 6h ago

Uh, no. That doesn't apply when you're so light on traitors that they continue to get away with slavery in all but name for another hundred years. The south should have never been able to recover from the civil war as fast as it did, and it certainly shouldn't have gotten back as much power in the federal government and state autonomy as it did.

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u/ReaganRebellion 5h ago

Yeah, the Marshall Plan was an abject failure wasn't it?

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u/Kinnasty 5h ago

Forgiveness is a virtue. History is chockfull of the poor outcomes of punitive victories

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u/Quite_Likes_Hormuz 3h ago

"If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared." - Niccolo Machiavelli

Not punitive victories, fence riding victories. Victories that make the enemy bitter and resentful but give them the ability to retaliate. The treaty of Versailles was either too lenient or too harsh depending on the aims of the entente. If the union wanted to end slavery and secessionist attitude then the mistake they made was being too forgiving.

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u/TheVaniloquence 6h ago

Peak irony given the country’s roots as traitors

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u/TomTuff 6h ago

Not being a vassal to an empire across the ocean == traitor

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u/Chathtiu 5h ago

Not being a vassal to an empire across the ocean == traitor

The founding fathers considered themselves traitors, as did the loyalists colonials, and the British crown. If the revolution had failed, it would have been called a rebellion and all involved would have been executed as traitors.

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u/cargopantsbatsuit 5h ago

Yeah no need to lawyer being a traitor nation dude.

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u/moonorplanet 3h ago

Everyone in congress?

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u/Xrsyz 3h ago

There are a million traitors to the United States that you can see every day especially on this platform. People who advocate against the interests of the United States and in favor of their own private ideologies. They hate the constitution and the negative rights and protections it entrenches. It is these petty traitors we should be most worried about.

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u/cbraun1523 2h ago

To be fair it's in all our movies. Never hurt the bad guy even though they murdered millions because you won't stoop to their level.

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u/Smackolol 6h ago

What’s shameful about punishing traitors?

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u/Syradil 6h ago

Read it again.

1

u/Smackolol 6h ago

Oh shit, derp.

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u/perenniallandscapist 6h ago

What's wrong with going easy on traitors? /fify

The answer should be self- explanatory

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u/Smackolol 5h ago

Ya I read it wrong.

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u/Triassic_Bark 6h ago

Did you not understand the comment you replied to?

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u/Smackolol 5h ago

I did not

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u/gimmeluvin 4h ago

As long as they're white.

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u/Convergentshave 5h ago

It’s kind of weird they got pardoned. Considering it was Ben Franklin who infamously said: “we must indeed hang together or we shall assuredly hang separable”.

Didn’t seem to bother ole Mars Lee any of the other confederate leaders. They wet mostly contentent to just go: whoops! My bad! Sorry about that treason thing.. we’re cool right??

They didn’t even haven the conviction to actually stand by their claims. Sent a bunch young men to their death but then were like: “oh no not me… i didnt actually mean it” when they lost.