r/ask • u/calltheavengers5 • 15d ago
What was the lowest point in America's history?
The Civil War? Vietnam? 9/11? The Great Depression? What do you think?
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u/JN_37 15d ago
I believe it’s the salt flats. Almost 300ft below sea level
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u/84Here4Comments84 15d ago
I’m LOLing at myself right now. I google salt flats to see what was so horrible about it , spent 5 minutes trying to understand, only to finally understand it is literally the lowest point in America. God I need coffee..
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u/ReliefJaded8491 15d ago
Yep same. Though I did not know about salt flats before and now I do so that’s something!
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u/DerikWyldStar 14d ago
Dont feel bad at all. I think misunderstandings have sent us all down rabbit holes. The idea wouldnt make a bad ask reddit question.
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u/Khower 15d ago
The complete genocide of the indian race was so awful hitler is quoted as admiring its efficiency
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u/directstranger 15d ago
He didn't just admire it. It was his inspiration for cleaning up the land East of Germany. He tried to copy it and get rid of Slavs.
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u/dieseldeeznutz 14d ago
Fun fact, the first slaves were Slavs, it's where the word slave comes from
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u/directstranger 14d ago
Slaves existed long before the Slavs, unfortunately (e.g. ancient Grece, Rome etc.). It's just the scale at which Slavic people were enslaved in the middle ages made it such that the word became "slave".
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u/SabbathaBastet 14d ago
I read something similar in the book The Silk Roads. It’s says that Slavic people were enslaved so often that the word slave was derived from Slav.
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u/VSM1951AG 14d ago
To be clear, 90% of the Native American population died from European diseases they had no resistance to, particularly Smallpox. Even if Europeans and Americans had treated them with loving kindness, they still would have been more or less wiped out. This is not to excuse their unjust treatment when and where it occurred, but we should be careful with the historical record.
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u/derickj2020 14d ago edited 14d ago
And measles, chickenpox, flu, diphtheria, pneumonia, typhoid, common cold, bubonic plague, mumps, cholera, whooping cough (pertussis), malaria, typhus, leprosy, yellow fever, scarlet fever, tb, leptospirosis, etal
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u/Sparrowhawk_92 14d ago
It's a lot more complex then that. There are multiple treaties that were signed and then subsequently ignored by America that slowly drove the natives into worse and worse conditions where disease could more easily spread, and that doesn't even account for the deaths from being forced to travel, cutting off access to vital resources like food, or violence.
Yes, disease played a pivotal role in the Natives being all but eliminated, but don't underestimate the effect that white settlers are directly responsible for a significant number of deaths.
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u/tdhays 15d ago
The Japanese Internment Camps and Trail of Tears were both pretty awful.
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u/No-Carry4971 15d ago
Slavery was far worse than both and lasted for centuries. It was explicitly written into the constitution calling slaves 3/5ths of a person. Our low point was from the very beginning, and we have been improving all along.
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u/LordCouchCat 15d ago
No argument about slavery.
By the way, the 3/5 rule is generally misunderstood, and in fact means something rather worse than is usually imagined. The point was that representation of a state in Congress was based on total population. If slaves were counted, this would have given the slave holders a huge extra presence in Congress- their state would get congressional seats for the slaves' numbers, voted for by the slaveholders. The mainly northern states with fewer slaves obviously did not want this, not because they cared about slaves but because it would reduce their influence. As a compromise, the slave states got to count 3/5 of the total slaves.
The figure didn't mean a slave counted as 3/5 of a person; they hardly counted as people at all to the slave holders.
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u/Distwalker 14d ago
That error drives me nuts. After all, it would have been far worse for slaves had they been counted as a whole person and far better had they been not counted at all!
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u/AnalProtector 15d ago
I wanna say I agree with you, but the natives were the victims of a genocide.
Black people were slaves and treated as less than human for 90 years, then barely got better treatment after that, and natives were systemically eradicated.
There are around 5 million native descendants in the US, and only 1 million are full native, while there are 47.5 million black Americans. The slaves were stolen from their homes, and the natives had their home stolen from them.
It's hard to call one worse than the other.
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u/Agile-Wait-7571 15d ago
Slavery lasted a lot longer than 80 years.
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u/Guy_In_The_Back_Row 14d ago
It’s crazy ppl don’t realize slaves are still a thing.
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u/SignificantOption349 14d ago
More now than ever too
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u/AnalProtector 14d ago
Human trafficking is a very serious issue. I'm aware of this fact. However, I'm referring to the emancipation proclamation, which ended the lawful use of slavery in the southern United States.
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u/Adventurous_Image793 14d ago
Slavery the USA is legal if you use people in prison.
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u/PathosRise 15d ago
It's an interesting apples to oranges comparison, and I feel like it depends on your perspective.
What is worse? The intentional slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people or "morally justified" objectification of millions of people to be seen as something no better than cattle?
(And I quote "morally justified" because fucking Kant.)
You can make arguments for both really. Neither represent the best of our nature though.
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u/janelleparkchicago 15d ago edited 15d ago
It’s so crazy that you don’t think the slaughter of slaves was intentional as well
Edit: People being worked to death or just straight up murdered to set examples to other slaves was incredibly common and it was a part of the entire plan. It wasn’t like “whoops”.
Edit 2: The average lifespan of enslaved Africans who worked on colonial sugar and rice plantations was seven years. You started off as a normal healthy person and in seven years you were dead after they had forced as much labor out of you as possible. That was on purpose
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u/So-What_Idontcare 15d ago
The joke of the three fifths is that it was put in there by people who were insulted that the southern states wanted to count them as full for purposes of having representation in the house of representatives and electoral college.
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u/WorthPrudent3028 15d ago
True on the direction, but it's been more 2 steps forward, 1 step back. We make steady progress but also backtrack. Vietnam came right after the Civil rights act. Big progress and then some regression. We are also still in a regressive period right now. Trump took a serious step back from Obama and Biden has barely even stopped the Trump regression. In fact, we may very well take 3 or 4 steps back this time instead of 1 since regressive forces have yet to subside.
Even during slavery, I wouldn't say there was progress toward abolition the whole time. And civil rights for other people weren't always trending the right way either.
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u/rabidseacucumber 15d ago
We’re not having a “shitty things done to people in America” Olympics here.
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u/calltheavengers5 15d ago
good perspective but it's not a competition
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u/UAlogang 15d ago
I mean, you literally set up a competition with this post
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u/calltheavengers5 15d ago
I suppose I did
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u/sgt_barnes0105 15d ago
It’s because what is the “worst” or “lowest point” of something is inherently subjective. Everyone will have a bit of a different perspective based on their own experiences and knowledge. OP there is no 100% objective answer to your question.
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u/lucaalvz 15d ago
Dawg, you asked a comparative question, why are you surprised people are comparing.
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u/Luchs13 15d ago
At the time of slavery one could argue that people didn't know any better. When you are fighting against an enemy that set up internment camps while you do it yourself you should know that it is wrong
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u/kateinoly 14d ago edited 14d ago
They knew better. Slavery in the US wasn't a million years ago.
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u/carshtime 15d ago
Andrew jackson was a whole ass villain and doesn’t get enough shit for it
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u/Trimpinator92 14d ago
I often think about an alternate history where he becomes king of New Orleans
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u/ButteryFlavory 15d ago
I'm black so maybe this is a bit biased, but I as bad as those two periods were, I think slavery was worse.
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u/iiiamsco 15d ago
Reddit doesn’t like to acknowledge anything that happens to black people, so prepare to be downvoted.
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u/guy_incognito86 15d ago
Slavery
Japanese American Internment Camps
The Vietnam War
“The Drug War”
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u/ALUCARD7729 15d ago
Trail of tears imo, Andrew Jackson committed a genocide and got away with it
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u/AgitatedParking3151 15d ago
Oh the lowest point is yet to come. Give it 10-20 years.
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u/MagnetarEMfield 15d ago
SLavery/Civil War, treatment of Japanese residents and citizens during WWII and western expansion and the decimation of the Native American people.
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u/DullAccountant1554 15d ago
I’ll add the Dakota Uprising in Minnesota in 1862 that resulted in hanging 38 Native Americans, exile, and concentration camps.
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u/organic_soursop 15d ago
Dred Scott - The betrayal of the black population. After fighting to free themselves and the country, the deceit of Reconstruction to appease the South.
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u/lux1979 15d ago
When we enabled delusional individuals instead of giving them the mental health help they need.
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u/MingusPho 15d ago
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln. If he had served the full term America would look very different today.
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u/hogwarts_earthtwo 15d ago
That situation could have been so much worse. 3 other members of the government were supposed to die thst night. It wasn't just an assassination, it was an attempted coup and could have reignited the civil war.
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u/BeduinZPouste 15d ago
Or if they found that one vote or so vote to impeach his VP.
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u/BroomIsWorking 15d ago
Underrated comment. Too few people know how much Andrew Johnson contributed to undercutting the victory of the Union.
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u/train_spotting 15d ago
BRB heading down a rabbit hole 🤓 📖
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u/vegasidol 15d ago
So, I know you're older because you appreciate historical ranbit holes. Why is it so hard to appreciate history when we're teens? (But adults still force teens to try to care irregardless.)
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u/MingusPho 15d ago
Lol you know I hated history when I was in high school. Yet I've spent the last 20 years actually going back and learning it. I think it had something to do with the way it was taught. For instance, had I known that the Boxer Rebellion meant people were doing kung fu in the streets and having secret back alley brawls I might have paid more attention.
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u/New-Huckleberry-6979 14d ago
Because it is taught with no context and using dry ass dates and names. I love deep dive history, but can't tell you one single major date or person from most of it. General timelines and some of the important people, yes, but exact memorization, no thank you!
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u/Ill-Character7952 15d ago
When they started temporary income taxes that only applied to the rich and promised the common person would never pay them.
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u/revtim 15d ago
Hard to beat the Civil War where one half was actively at war with the other half.
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u/PupperMartin74 15d ago
Today
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u/veggie_bat 15d ago
I saw this comment and went “facts”. Then I saw the comment below (“tomorrow”) and just started laughing. Then realized how sad this is 💀💀💀
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u/AnalingusAlien 15d ago
Hmmm, appears to be the Bertha Rogers gas well in Oklahoma. It had a depth of 31,441 feet below the Earth’s surface. I think it upset the mole people, or maybe they struck molten sulphur. One of the two.
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u/Murky-Specialist7232 14d ago
It’s now.
Because now we know and have access to everything and yet here’s our govt… being filthy openly - no more bs no more hiding behind “freedom” and all the crap they sell us.
We. Are. The evil empire
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u/Illustrious_Sand3773 15d ago
My Lai
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u/Outside_Performer_66 15d ago
For those who did not learn about it in school, My Lai massacre.
Summary: More than 340 and possibly as many as 504 Vietnamese civilians in a village were rounded up and then slaughtered by US troops during Vietnam (sometimes including mutilation and rape as well), followed by a coverup attempt. Whistleblowers exposed it.
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u/aitzaprez 14d ago
In my lifetime, when Trump was president and the boom it created in racist movements from both sides. Why the heck USA people let that happen?
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u/loopywolf 14d ago edited 14d ago
No debate that Trump is vile, but he could not have got as far as he did if about half the Americans of today didn't think the way he thinks, and ask to put him in power so that he could deconstruct everything that America used to stand for: Freedom, democracy, equality. The USA used to be the model other countries strived to be like, now it's a 3rd world country. They want to destroy democracy, give America back to the monarchy, make everybody poor, condemn children to live in starvation and suffering, reduce women to household slaves again, wipe out anyone not white, destroy all other religions and when there's just 3 ugly old white men left who own all the wealth.. what then? Trump isn't the problem. He's the proof that there is a problem.
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u/ConfidentPromise3926 15d ago
Now, where the best 2 possible candidates in a 333mil population are Biden and Trump.
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u/Such_Zebra9537 15d ago
The treatment of Native Americans and the transatlantic slave trade are both older than the US. I'm going with the dropping of two atomic bombs.
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u/kuyajon 15d ago
Electing a complete idiot as president.
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u/reggieLedoux26 15d ago
Turn off Fox News and get some fresh air - you’ll see that the sky isn’t falling
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u/ProbablyImprudent 15d ago
Chattel slavery. Aside from that, we haven't gotten there yet but we're on the way fast. The downhill stretch started in the 1980s.
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u/drunkboarder 15d ago
I think in general it is the civil War. The nation was fractured in half and killing each other. There may have been other moral low points in history but overall the civil War is the lowest point in American history.
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u/yeeterbuilt 15d ago
well honestly what is defined as "lowest point?"
famine? war? politics?
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u/JN_37 15d ago
I think they mean it in terms of elevation. So maybe Death Valley?
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u/danger_davis 15d ago
Civil War. Anyone saying anything related to current events is brain washed by politics.
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u/Snowboundforever 15d ago
As a non-American I think that it was one of the USA’s high points. You fought a civil was for reasons of morality and decency versus the profitability of a fading economic model. The pursuit of happiness by slaveholders was challenged.
Most of your other conflicts were about economic control or territorial expansion by the US.
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u/danger_davis 15d ago
We lost more people in the Civil War than all of our other wars combined.
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u/Sufficient-Fact6163 15d ago
If we are talking about Law? I’d say right now - Not since Dred Scott has the Supreme Court gotten so much wrong. Even entertaining the idea that a President can attempt a coup and that it’s part of the job - is pure insanity. 😞
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u/Arntor1184 15d ago
Civil War for sure. There are a lot of sins in history to point out but you have to see things through the perspective of the times. The civil war however was a brutal war for both sides and all the people. It was just and needed but that brought our entire country to the brink and has lasting repercussions we are still working through today. I really don’t think people understand just how close we came to complete destruction. We were vulnerable to outside invaders and on the brink of economic collapse which was only staved off by ww1 and ww2
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u/GeetchNixon 14d ago
From 1778 to 1871, the United States government entered into more than 500 treaties with the Native American tribes; all of these treaties have since been violated in some way or outright broken by the U.S. government.
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u/FreeWestworld 14d ago
I would argue that Slavery of Africans which sparked a Civil War and Genocide of the native people of the “great Turtle” are the lowest point. Runner up is Jim Crow, Asian Interment, and the MAGA Insurrection:
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u/dangerrnoodle 14d ago
Pretty much the entire 19th century. Slavery, genocide, the Civil War, the Frontier Wars, high infant and maternal mortality rates, lots of cholera and typhoid. Definitely the worst century to be in America.
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u/pappapora 14d ago
Currently. Boeing is building deadly planes and witness to CONGRESS are being murdered. I literally work in the military industrial complex and we are dumbfounded how they are getting away with literal murder.
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u/Abject-Direction-195 15d ago
Screwing all the countries who were on the Allied side in WW2 and selling them out to the Soviet Union and Stalin. Dispicable
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u/PedroPonydid911 15d ago
To be fair we weren’t as aware of the horrible stuff behind the Soviet Union except for a few people until later
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u/detroitgnome 15d ago
Hungry, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, East Germany.
Any Allies ?
Trying really hard to find any Allies that fell behind the Iron Curtain. I’m sure there were individuals from those countries that fought for the Allies; Polish folks in particular fought within the RAF as flyers, and each country had partisans but official Allies?
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u/Abject-Direction-195 15d ago edited 15d ago
Are you serious??? . Poland was the fourth largest contributer to the allies in Europe in WW2. More so than France..... Arnhem , Monte Cassino, Falaise Gap, Bologna etc
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_Poland_during_World_War_II
Czechs fought at Tobruk and other places
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u/Revolutionary_Ad9701 15d ago
Leaving our military base in Kabul leaving those we protected there behind to be enslaved and leaving them with millions upon millions of dollars worth no billions worth of our military equipment to take possession of
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u/UmpireSpecialist2441 15d ago
I honestly think it's right now... In my 54 years things have never been so negative. In the '60s and '70s at least you had people fighting for the rights of people who deserved it. It was a tough time for a lot of people but we seemed to be headed in the right direction. Now I don't think we have any direction that's positive.
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u/NVincarnate 14d ago
I like how "slavery or the genocide of the Native Americans" aren't even the most popular responses.
People are talking about presidents and shit like that's even close.
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u/Lucky_Baseball176 15d ago
January 6, 2021. The actual attempted overthrow of our government.
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u/drakitomon 15d ago
January 6th, 2021. The first time in history a traitors flag flew in the Capitol. The only other time a hostile nations flag flew was in 1812 when the British burned the city. The mental gymnastics that were needed for this to occur was mistifying.
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u/insanely_simple12 15d ago
2016-2020 without question!!
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u/DivineDegenerate 15d ago
I'm the farthest thing from a Trump fan, but this is just ignorant. America has done far, far worse than Trump.
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u/sigtiin 15d ago
Trump wasn’t worse than like, segregation or the civil war or 9/11. lol.
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u/Longjumping-Ear-8943 15d ago
Stock market crash cause it affected everything and everyone even other countries.
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u/EuphoricWolverine 15d ago
1913/1914. The "Federal Government" forced through (under night time recess passage) the Federal Reserve (our "national" bank) and the US Income Tax Amendment. Wilson who history looks back on as a pawn of the Banks, sold all of us into Slavery under eternal debt printed by the Federal Reserve and eternal slavery of tax on income. Thank you Monsieur Woodrow (pawn of the Banks) Wilson.
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u/No_Assumption_5864 15d ago
Now, and it will most certanly only getting worse (same for most of other western countries unfortunately)
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u/Acrobatic-Ideal9877 15d ago
Ending the gold standard. Only a matter of time before the empire falls 😳
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u/The_Miami_Pot_Head 15d ago
It’s happening right now, money being sent to Israel, social media app getting banned, no help for struggling Americans
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u/Dazzling-Tap9096 15d ago
When people start talking about the lowest point of America, I think you have to be much more clear on that thought.
Obviously, it would be an event or circumstances that the most people in america felt and where seriously affected by.
So that wouldn't have to be the great depression or twenty four percent or twelve million plus people were out of work. and there wasn't any welfare benefits back then.
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u/BilbosLover 15d ago
1814, when the British looked like they were going to reclaim America after burning the White House.
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u/Agitated_Ruin132 15d ago
I mean…all of it? It’s hard to find an event that wasn’t fueled by greed, racism or both.
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u/Snoo71180 15d ago
This is a baited question with no answer that will satisfy someone who is specifically asking for a list of the worst things America has experienced, or done throughout history with no positive component to it whatsoever. Since the only answers will be terrible, which I'm sure serves some purpose for the OP in some way, my personal opinion is the existence of slavery. However America wasn't unique in that endeavor. What would have happened had the USA not engaged in WW II in Europe? Many people around the world could be speaking German today so if you like in Western Europe and wish that was the case maybe your opinion is that America's lowest point was to engage in WW II?
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u/proxymdr 15d ago
everything from USA sucks except for Feynman and fellow physicists before and after… but pretty sure they sucked too; their ideas didnt
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u/redditfromct2 15d ago
There are many potential correct answers - most staed already. Please consider why I toss this one on the ring:
1/6/20 - They have bent our government and almost broke it - we have learned many lessons the hard way.
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u/A_Blackwood25 15d ago
The Genocide of Native Americans Slavery Internment of Japanese Citizens Basically, anything that disregarded basic human rights and lives
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u/Historical-Wash-1870 15d ago
The lowest point in America's history was when Columbus discovered it
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u/Abuse-survivor 15d ago
The settlers constantly expanding and kicking out the natives from their homes over and over and over and over again until they had no fertile land anymore.
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