**MOUNT RUSHMORE FINALLY ADMITS IT’S BEEN HOLDING THE WRONG PRESIDENTS THIS WHOLE TIME 💀🗿**
Okay besties, sit your democracy-loving a**es DOWN because the internet just broke. 💥
We gotta talk about Mount Rushmore. You know, that giant rock in South Dakota where four dead white guys stare at you like you forgot to return their Tupperware? Yeah, THAT one. Well, apparently the vibes have been OFF for like a century because some historian just dropped a nuclear truth bomb: we’ve been flexing the WRONG squad this entire time. 🚨
Let me catch you up because the timeline is literally crumbling. 🏛️💔
So this random TikTok historian (shoutout to @decodinghistory, she’s actually insane for this one) posted a video that already has 12 million views. She’s like “hey guys, fun fact, the original concept for Rushmore was supposed to be a tribute to the *Westward Expansion* with like, Lewis & Clark and Buffalo Bill…” and then she drops the mic: “BUT the final selection process was literally just a popularity contest run by a guy who hated half the candidates.” 📉📉
And y’all are gonna LOSE it when you hear who almost got CUT.
Thomas Jefferson? Almost didn’t make it. They were gonna swap him for Teddy Roosevelt’s horse. Not even joking. A HORSE. 🐴
But then it gets REAL spicy. The dude who designed this thing, Gutzon Borglum (say that name five times fast, I dare you), was apparently lowkey biased and chose presidents based on who he thought had the “best jawline for carving.” I’m dead. That’s literally the tea. He said “George Washington has main character energy, Lincoln looks like he could star in a sad indie film, Teddy gives chaotic good vibes, and Jefferson… fine, you can stay but only if you promise to look left forever.” 📐🫣
But hold up. The REAL tea is that historians are NOW saying the original concept was supposed to have FIVE faces. Yes, FIVE. And the fifth one? It was gonna be Susan B. Anthony. Or Frederick Douglass. Or both, but they ran out of budget because the granite was too hard. Bro, imagine pulling up to Mount Rushmore and seeing Susan B. Anthony rocking a granite bonnet next to Honest Abe. The timeline would be IMMACULATE. 💅✨
Now the internet is in shambles. We got people in the comments like “So you’re telling me we could’ve had a Black president and a woman on the mountain but instead we got four guys who owned slaves and a guy who talks to a moose?” 💀💀💀
And the memes? Don’t even get me started. Someone photoshopped Dolly Parton’s face onto the mountain and I literally can’t unsee it. She looks BETTER than the originals. Queen behavior. 👑📸
But here’s where it gets WILD. Apparently, the National Park Service is now “re-evaluating” the interpretive materials at the site. That’s bureaucrat speak for “we’re about to add a LOT of context.” They’re hiring consultants to basically put up signs that say “hey, we know this is problematic, please don’t @ us.” 🚧📝
And of course, the right-wing commenters are losing their MINDS. “They’re canceling Washington now?!” Bro, nobody is canceling anyone. We’re just saying maybe don’t put a slave owner on a pedestal (literally a 60-foot pedestal) without acknowledging the full story. That’s called nuance, not cancellation. Get with the program. 🤷♂️📚
The real question is: what would a 2024 Mount Rushmore even look like? The internet has opinions. I saw a poll that said Gen Z would replace it with a giant statue of Simone Biles doing a Yurchenko double pike, a crying cat meme, MrBeast, and a taco. Honestly, that’s more representative of America than four dead dudes. 🇺🇸🌮
But let’s be real, the most chaotic take came from a Twitter user who said “Mount Rushmore is just a boomer’s version of a group chat. You got the serious one (Washington), the one who overthinks everything (Jefferson), the one who’s too loud (Roosevelt), and the one who’s depressed but trying (Lincoln).” I felt that in my SOUL. 😭📱
So what’s the verdict? Is Mount Rushmore getting canceled? No, bestie. It’s a national monument, it’s not going anywhere. But the conversation is shifting. We’re finally asking the hard questions: who deserves to be immortalized in stone? Should it be based on legacy or vibes? And most importantly, why did they build it on sacred Indigenous land that was stolen? Oh, you didn’t know about that part? Yeah, the Black Hills were promised to the Lakota people in a treaty that the U.S. immediately broke. So the whole mountain is literally built on a broken promise. That’s a whole other can of worms. 🐛📜
But here’s the tea: the Lakota actually have their own monument in the Black Hills. It’s called the Crazy Horse Memorial, and it’s gonna be the largest mountain carving in the world when it’s finished. It’s been under construction since 1948 and it’s still not done because they refuse to take federal funding. Power move. Respect. 🙌🏔️
So yeah, Mount Rushmore is iconic, but it’s also a hot mess. Just like America. We love it, we hate it, we can’t stop looking at it. But maybe next time you visit, take a second to think about who ISN’T on that mountain. And maybe bring a Sharpie to
Final Thoughts
Having stood witness to the chiseled visages of Rushmore, one cannot divorce the sheer ambition of the monument from the troubling contradictions it embodies—a tribute to democracy carved into a sacred Indigenous landscape. It strikes me that the mountain serves less as a static homage and more as a living, unresolved argument between American idealism and its historical failures. Ultimately, to visit Rushmore is to confront a powerful, uncomfortable truth: our greatest national symbols are often the most unflinching mirrors of our unfinished work as a people.