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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 1, 2025

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Seven years ago, I saved this @JTarrou comment, for the purpose of remembering to monitor future developments:

The current Republican president is always the worst person in history. The last one is always surprisingly human. The one before that is always a pretty decent dude.

The current Democratic president is Star Trek Jesus with sprinkles, the last one was a corrupt liar who wasted his vast potential, and the one before that was a Republican.

I'd say that Obama is probably still well-regarded, possibly having something to do with some people thinking that he was pulling the strings during the Biden Administration. I'll be interested to watch his future trajectory as years continue to pass, but I do think it might be hard for people who lean left to say much that is negative about the first black president. I suppose I've heard some criticisms from the left that he "was a Republican" in terms of his national security policies, but I certainly don't think I've seen him go through a "corrupt liar" phase. At least not as of yet.

The Republican one seems to me to have the ring of truth to it, but this one:

The current Democratic president is Star Trek Jesus with sprinkles, the last one was a corrupt liar who wasted his vast potential, and the one before that was a Republican.

does not.

The Dems were fortunate to have two very popular, charismatic presidents in Clinton and Obama, but I don’t think anyone would use terms like “Star Trek Jesus” when talking about Biden or Carter. Likewise, I’ve never heard anyone say anything remotely bad about Carter as a person or call him a Republican in disguise. Before that you’ve got LBJ (a charming scoundrel, but no Republican), JFK (a different type of charming scoundrel, still deified by Democrats today), Truman (who’s too forgettable to engender any strong feelings one way or the other), and FDR (who is of course the OG Star Trek Jesus).

JFK (a different type of charming scoundrel, still deified by Democrats today)

Which is odd, considering that JFK's main political policies were cutting taxes on the rich, beefing up military spending based on lies, and bungling regime-change adventurism.

Contrastingly, JFK's main rival, Richard Nixon, re-instituted wage and price controls and founded the EPA.

Ah, but he was sexy and had lots of sex. Women wanted him, and men wanted to be him.

One man once died
but did you know before that he could read all our minds
he was the US Adam with Jack the wife
he was a hyper-charismatic telepathical knight
Jaaaaay-ehehey Ef Kaaaay....

If that song lives in my head from now on whenever I hear JFK, I'm blaming you.

if you're not familiar with the Professor Brothers, I do recommend them. They're a goldmine of old-school internet humor.

How would we prove if Republican presidents have in fact been getting worse by this metric? The comment kinda only applies if there isn't a trend.

That's a fair point, but I think the pure contempt with which I remember people speaking about Bush, compared with the number of times I've heard similar people point to him as a surprisingly human decent dude in the past 10 years makes me really skeptical. If he was truly so awful back then, he wouldn't be forgiven and nostolgized so easily, even if someone worse came along, at least not by an intellectually honest person.

I don't think Biden ever had the "Jesus with Sprinkles" phase?

Maybe Biden was never truly president in anything more than a ceremonial sense, and was essentially understood consiously or not, as simply giving executive power back to the administrative state that the Obama administration installed.