> Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well?

yes, they were. the USA if the Unionists has followed through on reconstruction looks like a utopia compared to now

>Was the Union army complicit in the crimes of the Confederacy by simply allowing them to drop their arms and walk away as well? The world is complicated and full of nuanced takes depending on context.

I think the irony here is you are presenting this like a complicated choice, when I would argue many people agree that the way the Union handled reconstruction was extremely poor.

We are still paying the price for that today, some of us a lot more than others. It was well-intentioned but with hindsight being what it is, historians pretty much agree that it was the cause of a lot of the problems we fight with today.

It’s funny you bring up Union vs Confederacy, because Reconstruction should be a blueprint of what not to do. We’re still paying today for the failures of our forefathers to not have the bravery to stamp out the worst cultural elements of the Confederacy, let alone the extended century-long suffering of formerly enslaved peoples in what ranged from “separate but equal” to outright apartheid.

So yes, it was very much the Union’s fault for not properly cutting the many heads of the hydra with great prejudice.

Edit: the Nuremberg trials are a fantastic blueprint for what to do, though. And that’s what was missing after the Civil War. The sentences handed out at Nuremberg aren’t necessarily relevant to the crimes committed by those in power today, but the cultural shift that materialized in Germany post-war is the type of cultural shift needed to counteract the damage of the current administration: against corruption, grift, and executive overreach.

Yes. That’s a great historical precedent — Reconstruction was a hotly debated topic and the more radical forms would have banned former Confederate soldiers for voting, for example. Many Southern states had military governors imposed by the Federal government.

Andrew Johnson pardoned almost all Confederate leaders, didn’t care about freeing slaves, and is one of the worst Presidents in history.

Doesn't that still feel shortsighted? The way you speak, you cannot even imagine a world without a political landscape that is Republican vs Democrats. I think both parties have shown time and time again that they cannot be trusted steering the country.

Yes, that probably means that the US has to utterly break in its political system before it can get any better, considering that the current election process favours a two-party stalemate (or one party controlling everything)

> The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection

How do you figure? The previous Dem president literally promised, "nothing will fundamentally change" and that's exactly what happened.

We have a faux democracy / uniparty of capital interests where one "side" manufactures consent for the other.

rightwardRatchet++;

> The standards for the Democrats are impossible perfection

No, the standard for Dems is "don't rock the boat". The Right moves things further to the right, the Dems don't let them go back to the left.

> Thieves, grifters, rapists, pedos, just the absolute worst human garbage imaginable.

I would urge you strongly not to let yourself be this consumed by this kind of thinking. This is a distorted view of your fellow man - however accurate _some_ of it may be about _some_ people - regardless of their political affiliation. This kind of thinking is exactly how we got to where we are now and persisting in it will almost certainly get us more extreme reactions.

that said, the Republican establishment has proven itself unworthy of the office and should be shown the door in the next election cycle - in decimating fashion. So much so that it should cause a complete recalibration of that party.

The fact that this comment hasn't been flagged goes to show how ridiculous hn has become. I know we are not supposed to say "hn has become reddit", but hn has become reddit.

Same in Poland, sadly. Conservatives or rather "conservatives" can get away with way more...