https://www.americanhistorycentral.com/entries/spoils-system/
Spoils System summary, facts, history, significance, and AP US History (APUSH) notes. Patronage System. With examples.
Ohhhh I get it. The guy hated the stress of Mondays, so he killed Prez Garfield, who is later reincarnated as Garfield the cat who now hates Mondays because they remind him of his assassination.
Holy shit, it all checks out. President Garfield had a nephew named Rutherford B. Lasagna who he gave a high-ranking position to, just two weeks before he was assassinated.
(source: my ass)
Your sweet ass has about the same integrity as all the other bullshit I see (and sometimes even read) every motherfuckin day on this Internet we find one another on.. Source verified as original by way of alcohol.
Nice fuckin job, eh..
That didn't end. Most ambassador appointments are like that, and even though agency/department appointments require congressional approval, the wheels are so well greased, people with zero relevant experience get through. The horse breeder who was head of FEMA under bush comes to mind.
It's also kinda how governments work; merit is nice to have, but loyalty is vital. It doesn't matter how competent someone is if they're going to use their power to sabotage your administration to benefit their friends in the opposition.
Yeah the OP is doing a poor job of communicating what this is supposed to mean, something I'm actually noticing about their posting general actually. This isn't to say that appointments stopped all together, it's basically saying that there became two different tiers in government work. Political appointments are still around of course in terms of like you said ambassadors and secretaries and what not, but the more day-to-day aspects of government like the mailman are no longer appointed on political grounds. It's basically what project 2025 is trying to reverse.
Agreed. I appreciate the dedication @Don_Dickle@lemmy.world, but you don't have to simply grab reddit threads. It ends up feeling a bit... off.
Oh that's a huge over simplification on why the guy shot Garfield. Dude was literally insane.
For those like me who lack the attention span to read about it Sam O'Nella did a video about it
The man bought an ivory gripped pistol for the assassination because he thought it would look cooler displayed in a museum, IIRC.
He was just a complete nutbag. He wrote a poem in the style of "a child babbling to his mamma and his papa" which repeated "I am going to the Lordy" over and over again and read it on the way up to the gallows.
Check out the excerpts from his trial and what he said at his sentencing:
https://www.famous-trials.com/guiteau/2193-guiteauspeaks
https://www.famous-trials.com/guiteau/2196-sentencing
Edit: I forgot about the "Tableaux."
"As sure as you are alive, gentlemen, as sure as you are alive, if a hair of my head is harmed this nation will go down to desolation... all you can do is put my body in the ground, but this nation will pay for it as sure as you are alive."
Well, shit. Do you guys think this is why things have been going so poorly lately?
Not sure if this is your thing, but Stephen Sondheim did a musical about presidential assassins and set some of the poem to music (incidentally, Guiteau said at the execution that he hoped the poem would be effective if it was set to music) as part of a longer song.
I hate how history books refer to things like the "patronage system" or "spoils system" as if they're legitimate systems and not just open corruption.
I guess it ties into my general hatred of how history textbooks tend to treat history as a bunch of isolated facts to be memorized rather than trying to connect the dots in an insightful way.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muckraker
The link is one of the major reasons for reform against things like that. Teddy Roosevelt spearheaded the whole reform
Didn't know about this, but I at least know a little about the guy who assassinated Garfield from Sam O'Nella (assuming he got his facts right).
So when he says "make it great again", he means to bring back the good old days of unbridled corruption in the government. That tracks.
