I know nothing about him other than stuffed bears and and an elk is named after him.

Robotnik ass looking nerd.

  • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    'cause in our national mythos he’s basically styled as a gentleman adventurer sort. his whole bag is “overcame a sickly childhood and grew up into a badass tough guy who was also president, wowzers!” jagoff

  • HarryLime [any]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    As vice president, he put together his own army unit that was like the Avengers in 1898 or something. It was made up of, like, famous college athletes, glee club singers, old west outlaws, Texas rangers, and Native Americans. So, that’s kind of nuts and people really ate it up. (The whole Spanish-American war was like that. There was another army unit that was commanded by an elderly Southern politician who’d been a Confederate officer, and in one battle, he had a fit of quasi-dementia where he shouted “Come on, boys! We got the damned Yankees on the run!” Stuff like that was fun to Americans at the time and for a long time afterwards.)

    He also busted up monopolies as president. He was also instrumental in establishing the US as an Imperial power.

    • buh [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      15 days ago

      As vice president, he put together his own army unit that was like the Avengers in 1898 or something. It was made up of, like, famous college athletes, glee club singers, old west outlaws, Texas rangers, and Native Americans.

      is-this the village people?

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    Classic Teddy:

    In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt concluded his Lincoln Day Dinner speech with the proclamation that “race purity must be maintained.”13 By 1906 he blatantly equated the falling birth rate among native-born whites with the impending threat of “race suicide.” In his State of the Union message that year Roosevelt admonished the well-born white women who engaged in “willful sterility—the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race suicide.”14 These comments were made during a period of accelerating racist ideology and of great waves of race riots and lynchings on the domestic scene. Moreover, President Roosevelt himself was attempting to muster support for the U.S. seizure of the Philippines, the country’s most recent imperialist venture.

    From Angela Davis’s Women, Race, and Class

  • FlakesBongler [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    Well, he basically is the idealized USAan

    Loved shooting animals, got college kids drunk to force them into his special big boy army unit and took a bullet to the chest without dying

  • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    He built the regulatory state, which was unquestionably good. Capital had become so concentrated and the government so thoroughly captured that it was in dire need of reform. Through his outsized personality and blue blood background Teddy Roosevelt was in a unique position to break the logjam and put badly needed constraints on capital in a government that was otherwise ossified.

    He was also a genocidal freak. So in that sense he appeals to many different sensibilities.

    Honestly we could use a second coming of the first half of Teddy right about now, the situation is set up very similarly. Minus the genocidal part ofc but then whether you can have one without the other is a meaningful point of debate. Imagine Trump but instead of concentrating power further in capital he flows it in the other direction, back to the state. Trump has the rizz but his policies are just the total opposite of what we need, so he’s like the anti teddy Roosevelt, just careening us off a cliff at full speed in a way few other politicians would be able to accomplish. Hence the JDPON DON memes lol.

    There are moments in us history when individuals are able to subsume competing factions through sheer force of personality to effect transformative change. Teddy Roosevelt was one such figure, as was Washington, Jackson, FDR, Lincoln. Most of these guys are just riding along on the current but a few of them embody the moment.

    Highly recommend hell of presidents btw.

    • Assian_Candor [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      15 days ago

      Listening to hell of presidents and recognizing that need for the charismatic figure to break the regulatory capture is one of the things that is so disturbing about the current moment-- if you look at the Dems there is nobody even remotely close to this, unless they can pull a trump and pull someone out of the celebrity pile.

      This is the tragedy of Obama in my view-- he was such a figure, but in his cowardice rather than leaning in to his base of popular support and applying pressure he kowtowed to capital and pissed the opportunity away. It’s the people who are able to combine the policies that are needed in the moment with the personalities to bring them to life that end up on the currency

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    Real answer: he was a big asshole who got things done and said good words and occasionally did good deeds regarding the common people and he was so long ago most people don’t know the intricacies and can just kinda go with a vibe check, plus he predates the modern party identities so he can be whatever their imagination needs

    Joke answer: because he was a big porkchop of a man with a bushy mustache but the tiny glasses made it funny, kinda like the tall man in the tiny car scene from the Simpsons

  • CloutAtlas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    He did a lot of wildly different things in a way that you can’t really pin him on a modern political compass, so everyone from libs to conservatives are able to find something worth liking about him, thus exalting him further.

    He was nicer to Native Americans than other presidents of the time. He argued for racial purity and was against interracial marriage. He greatly expanded the national parks and public land. He colonised the Philippines. He worked with unionists and regulated capital, threatened to nationalize coal if the striking miners’ demands weren’t met, and introduced the concept of “workers compensation” for injuries. He shot animals for fun. He argued for conserving natural resources. He sent most of the US Navy uninvited all over the world just to flex/intimidate. He did an imperialism in Central America.

    He was a racist maniac hell bent on expanding the US empire, but believed that at least the subjects of the Imperial Core should at least benefit from the imperialism like the bourgeoisie already do.

  • RION [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    15 days ago

    Trust busting, Food and Drug Administration, and national parks. I think this whole bull moose party thing titillates the libertarians and Yang folks, especially because it’s far back in history enough to be more mythologized than the Reform party and such

    • medium_adult_son [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      15 days ago

      The Ken Burns PBS documentary about National Parks has a good overview of their history.

      It breezes through the expulsion of the indigenous people from the future national park land, and goes on a pro-car tear near the end of the series. But the stories of artists/photographers and creation of newer parks was nice.

      The national parks used to be far too unregulated, but the best part of them (the visitors would come by train!) has been replaced by cars :(

      • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        14 days ago

        Best way to explore them imo is the hiking trails. Driving from major point to point ok, but to really experience them in the best you gotta get out in trails and touch-grass. You can only get a preview from the main strip and at that point you might as well watch a documentary.

        Just heed the warning signs - as you pointed out too unregulated. Those signs and rules were written in blood.