What a badass

He also got shot in the chest at the beginning of a speech, calmed everybody down and told the crowd to give the assassin to the police and make sure nobody hurt him, and then spoke for 50 minutes before he left to get medical care.

He said later that because he wasn’t coughing blood, he was confident the bullet hadn’t pierced his lung, so he could go for a while before needing it looked at.

Before the invention of TV stupefied everybody, America was fuckin WILD.

America was so wild that our West was called The Wild West. There were like 12 rules in the United States for a hundred years. Beyond that you could do whatever the fuck you wanted. I'm sure it was fraught with peril, and subject to multiple attacks from all sides, but it probably felt free as fuck. You needed to be strong to survive. There were no safety signs for those without a sense of self-preservation.
- Yeah given how warped our understanding of the old west is from movies and TV I'm gonna bet most of what we think we know is bullshit and it was actually a lot more chill since people liked living. A lot like how if you check TV you'll see all sorts of stories on murder because those are prominent events. You'll see the same in history books and wiki articles. Years and years of nothing special being recorded, everyone being chill, but check out this Sheriff who did a backflip off a horse and shot three people in the dick in 1762.
I forget which president it was, but I remember that one of them would frequently insist on bathing in the Potomac.
- John Quincy Adams.
  Every day, at about 5:30 in the morning, totally naked.
  Anne Royall, one of the first female journalists, allegedly forced Adams to do an interview with her by taking his clothes and refusing to give them back to him until he answered all her questions.
  Andrew Jackson for his inauguration party invited literally anybody who showed up to attend, and a bunch of people got roaring drunk and wrecked up the White House.
  The fuck happened to us man
- Back then everybody swam naked in the Potomac. Ben Franklin is another one with written records about it.
  If you see the Potomac River today, you'd wonder what the hell happened, it is absolutely filthy and not even a rat would swim in it. well maybe a rat would drown & die in it.
- That was John Quincy Adams. I remember because I also learned that he did this nude, an image I've been trying to get out of my head for 30 years.

Can you imagine any of the current geriatrics taking anything more than a 6th grader’s punch?

Teddy is a real dichotomy to me. When I was much younger, living outside the US, i found him to be the worst that Americans represented: arrogant, bullish, and full of sovereign ignorance. Then going through college and beyond, living states side, I discovered his championship of nature and his passion for reading and education. Now a days, I can recognize him as an imperfect man trying to do the best he thought at the time. Kinda like a grumpy granddad with some ideas way ahead of his time.

His worst aspect was Imperialism, but his best aspects were legitimate concern for his citizens well being, hatred of corruption and money-politics, and love for nature and education.
As far as America goes that's like a perfect recipe for a president. Maybe not for the rest of the world.

TIL Teddy Roosevelt's dad was cold and distant.

Somewhere there was an article I quite liked that basically said, in the quest to discard toxic masculinity, a lot of modern US culture has also turned against the idea of nontoxic masculinity. Like if someone likes man stuff then there's automatically something wrong with them.
I don't know enough about Teddy Roosevelt to say for sure, but I suspect he was just a big boisterous person which is fine. If we find out he secretly beat his wife or was a womanizer or something then sure, but to me my rough impression is that he was anything but unemotional or evil and just had a good time with his life.
- It's pretty fucked up. I really enjoy a lot of traditionally manly pursuits. Hunting, fishing, building, grilling, doing stupid drunk shit in the woods, and a bunch of others. You know who the majority of people are who do those things (at least in my experience)? It's either guys who don't really enjoy it but pretend to because they think it makes them masculine or guys who also enjoy the manly pursuits of owning their wives and yelling about how the South will rise again. I'm not really into either of those things. I just like to have a good time.
  I know who I get lumped in with and why. There's a lot of overlap between me and toothless hillbillies. I yee a bunch of motherfucking haws. And I'm sad that all this stuff that's legitimately fun if you're the type that enjoys it is looked at as though it's a problem simply for existing and not because of the kinds of idiots that take part in it.
- Young Teddy was very much not athletic, in fact he was sickly and asthmatic. Over time he literally remade himself and overcame his early health issues. Getting into heavy duty physical activity and using that to overcome early challenges probably was a hell of a lot of fun, and it was continuing the process of self-improvement that made his life so much better to begin with.

I mean, he's neat, but Alice Roosevelt (his daughter) is more interesting imo.