It is a rare day when I can write a blog-post that has the potential to piss-off every one of my readers.
Today is one of those days.
Trump is more like FDR than Hitler
FDR was a disrupter. He liked stirring the pot and twisting peoples noses. For example, he appointed Joe Kennedy, Sr. as ambassador to the Untied Kingdom. Kennedy was a very low-brow Irishman who hated the English and whose fortune was based on running illegal booze during the prohibition. The royal family wouldn't have hired Joe Kennedy to walk the family dog.
FDR exploited new communication technology. FDR gave masterful, fireside chats to connect directly to the voters as-a-real-person. Trump has been equally agile in using internet-based social media.
FDR's policies were constantly embroiled in legal challenges.
FDR was a meddler and experimenter.
FDR gleefully appointed people who were tasked with goals that worked at cross-purposes of other people he had launched.
FDR struggled to have constancy-of-purpose, seeming to chase after every gum-wrapper blowing down the street.
FDR was POTUS during times of unprecedented change and stress.
The national debt exploded under FDR.
The reason this comparison will piss-off so many
The liberals are scandalized by this comparison because the constant rewriting of history made FDR an unblemished saint in their eyes. Until Obama came along, there was no other politician who could be considered even close to him in greatness. To say Donald J. Trump is a lot like FDR is heresy and burning at the stake is too good for somebody who dares to think that.
Liberals are also horrified that Trump might be only the second president (after FDR) to serve more than two terms.
The conservatives are scandalized by this comparison because FDR's policies resulted in enormous growth in government and wholesale losses in personal freedoms.
According to my dad. His dad (my grandad) asked him when he returned from WWII. "What are you doing back home? Why aren't you fighting Joe Stalin and his communists?" FDR loved Uncle Joe.
ReplyDeleteTrump is not FDR. He is LIKE FDR in SOME ways. He's also LIKE Hitler in SOME ways.
ReplyDeleteFDR broke tradition by being elected for a third term. Trump would be breaking the law.
Which is something you don't seem to care about when it's your tribe doing the law-breaking.
Care to actually point out real things that Trump is doing that is Hitler?
DeleteBe prepared for the rest of us to point out how quote YOUR SIDE did the same or worse.
Something about throwing the first stone at the woman caught in adultery when the man involved isn't included.
Michael
Well, I was interested In Gary's Hitler reference. But no followup. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteI think FDRs commerce secretary stated that after all the years of spending, they had the same amount of unemployment as1933, and tremendous debt to boot. Well done!!
My first thought wouldn't have been FDR, probably would have been Ted Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson. I see a lot of similarities to Jackson, where he was an outsider who broke into the establishment structure of the Virginia planters as a common-man populist.
ReplyDeleteThe Trump administration isn't stuffed with people trousering Moscow Gold. Nor has Trump dispatched American citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps while encouraging theft of their property. Not has he yet defaulted on US federal debt.
ReplyDeleteHe's got a long way to go to reach the fascist/Bolshevik standards of FDR.