What widely-praised historical figure do you think was actually not very admirable when you scrutinize them?

Bluetreefrog@lemmy.worldmod to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 71 points –
46

You are viewing a single comment

Mother Theresa, Barack Obama, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan to name the first few that occur to me before coffee. I can probably think of less obvious ones later.

Edit: Y'all I miss The Before Times too and it's great we were able to get a nonwhite POTUS; I was talking about his drone strike and deportation track record more than anything else.

The stories that Christopher Hitchens told about Mother Teresa were largely made up. For example, the reason that her hospices didn't give opiate painkillers to their patients wasn't a belief that poor people deserve to be in pain ... it was that they weren't doctors, so they could not legally possess opiates. India has drug laws too!

Even ceding that, she still defended convicted sexual predators. The whole Catholic church is essentially a rogue nation shielding pederasty across the globe. Anyone they would canonize is suspect in my view.

Hot take, Washington.

I liked reading about his misadventures in youth, and he did look pretty grand sitting on a horse, but yeah. Practically every president is a terrible person

2 more...