cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/shermanposting/p/1825854/i-mean-she-s-right
I'd love to see the timeline where native Americans were left alone.
this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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Political Memes
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Oh for the love of God. Reducing the current political climate of the United States to “we didn’t punish the Confederate States of America hard enough” is the kind of historically illiterate, rage-bait nonsense that thrives online because it’s emotionally satisfying, not because it’s true.
Yes, Reconstruction after the American Civil War was mishandled. Yes, former Confederates regained power. Yes, Jim Crow laws were a moral stain and a catastrophic policy failure. All of that is real.
But to pretend that modern polarization, institutional decay, media fragmentation, algorithmic brain rot, primary-election extremism, and post–Citizens United v. FEC campaign finance insanity are somehow just delayed consequences of not lining enough people up against a wall in 1865 is obscene. It is cartoon history. It is Tumblr-tier cause-and-effect thinking.
America’s current dysfunction has proximate causes. Social media incentive structures. Partisan media silos. Gerrymandered districts. The aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis. The political realignment of the South over decades. None of that is explained away by “we didn’t punish them hard enough.”
And let’s be honest about what that statement implies. It implies that mass punitive retribution 160 years ago would have somehow engineered a permanently virtuous republic. That is magical thinking. Nations are not firmware you can permanently patch with one decisive punishment event.
This is the kind of meme that sounds profound to people who consume history as morality theater instead of as institutional analysis. It’s outrage fuel. It’s not serious.
You want to critique Reconstruction policy? Fine. That’s a legitimate academic discussion. But boiling the entirety of 21st-century American political dysfunction down to one glib sentence about punishment is lazy, inflammatory, and historically unserious. We can do better than this. Or at least we should.
You can link that all back to stopping reconstruction early...
"become" implies it was something else to begin with. it started as a cess pool when it allowed slavery to persist past the declaration of independence.
Yes in a weird way, I take heart in knowing that America’s politics have been super fucked up for most of its history. I know that sounds odd but most people I know seem to think things have just suddenly turned bad recently. I think maybe they were born during a brief respite is all. And I do think that with the fuller context, the arc of history bends in the right direction, yes, albeit with famous latency.
"We hold these truths to be self evident - that all men are created equal. But when I meet Thomas Jefferson, I'ma compel him to include women in the sequel, work!".
Man that lyric slapped hard and I'm just now realizing that if it were the N-word, it'd slap hard but be horribly historically inaccurate, as Angelica Schuyler kept many slaves. As did Thomas Jefferson.
Sherman do it again
but in seriousness the failure of reconstruction destroyed america at its foundation
Not just our cesspool, the world's cesspool. They weren't sending their best.
Also Manifest Destiny