Wednesday, January 18, 2023

"The Paranoid Style In American Politics" 🥧

1800 in America: 

“we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.”

“murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced.”

Callender wrote that Adams was a rageful, lying, warmongering fellow; a "repulsive pedant" and "gross hypocrite" who “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character."

And 1828:

Because [Andrew] Jackson’s wife, Rachel, had previously been married to another man before hooking up with General Jackson, a question was raised by those aligned with the sitting president as to whether or not she had been properly divorced from her first husband before marrying Jackson. As a result, the Democratic candidate was accused of being an adulterer and running away with another man’s wife while Mrs. Jackson was labeled a bigamist.

Not to be outdone, the Jackson campaign fired back by accusing Adams of having lined up an American girl for the pleasure of the Russian Czar during Adams’ time as Ambassador to Russia.

And lest you think that these charges were the result of legitimate journalistic investigation, Andrew Jackson was known to write letters to the editors of sympathetic newspapers, giving them instructions on how to counter the opposition attacks while providing material for editors to use in launching scurrilous attacks on Jackson’s opponent who happened to be the President of the United States.

And, of course:


There is, indeed, nothing new under the sun.

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