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PaperclipPerfector  21d ago (text post)   32014 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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While Obama was likely a turning point in these dynamics, I think they clearly go back much further. The phrase "[President] Derangement Syndrome" was invented for Bush Derangement Syndrome in 2003, and at the time it was referencing dynamics generally acknowledged to have already existed under Clinton. Reagan and Nixon stand out as facing similar, and it seems entirely likely that Carter got the same at the time and it's just faded in his post-presidency. Johnson? Kennedy? Maybe this is just how people treat presidents.

JFK is today remembered as a mythical ‘good president’, but he had not-otherwise-insane haters too.

While the specific derangement syndrome indeed originated with W, there was the concept of Clinton crazies before it.

I was going to say, Hillary was the subject of absurd slander when I was in elementary school. I remember hearing even back then, that Monica was no big deal because you should hear what Hillary does to the men AND THE WOMEN on air force one!

She’s still the subject of absurd slander.

Wasn't that the era when they had to close down the high school congressional page program because everyone in congress was doing coke and fucking them?

I only remember because one of my friends was in the last batch.

Excuse me what? Is that another rumor or did your friend confirm that was the reason?

Oh no, it's all on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says there was a sex-and-coke scandal in 1983 (uncovering a 1973 incident and a 1980 incident), then a sexting scandal in 2006, and yet the discontinuation of the program (ostensibly because the House was finally sufficiently computer-savvy enough to obsolete "kids running around with documents") was in 2011. Was there an additional scandal they're missing, or is the inference that they wanted to shut down the program in 2006 (or 1983?) but just took 5 (or 28?) years to do it?

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