by Jeff J. Brown
Trump and Roosevelt: two peas in a pod?
SoundCloud podcast reading: https://soundcloud.com/44-days/the-uncanny-similarities-between-presidents-trump-and-roosevelt-china-rising-radio-sinoland-170202
For the record, I voted for Donald Trump. Not that I was in love with the guy. It was really a matter of default. On the Oklahoma state ballot, I had the choice of Hillary “Crimes Against Humanity + Here Comes World War III” Clinton, the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Mr. Trump. I chose Trump, a populist, sometimes demagogue and buffoon, but a real outsider who might shake the establishment up.
It is still early, but no one can say that the first two weeks of Trump’s administration have been boring or predictable. He loudly called the outgoing CIA director, John Brennan, a liar and said that the agency’s Russia dossier was all fake news. John F. Kennedy said just as much in private and paid the ultimate price for his honesty. Trump has apparently kept on his own private security services, since getting elected, to avoid the same fate as JFK.
President Trump canceled the Transpacific Partnership (TPP), which was bad for everybody involved, except the transnational corporations who bribed, extorted and blackmailed some Pac Rim countries into signing on. But even America’s corporate owned Senate and Congress were resisting. Why? Because a signatory country gives up its national sovereignty to a corporate picked “international arbitration commission”.
Under the TPP, any company can take any country’s laws to this “unbiased” group of corporate jocks and claim that they are an “infringement on trade”. Think GMOs, agricultural chemicals, cultural and religious laws, subsidies to promote national industries and infrastructure; media and internet regulations; medicine and social security; environmental, worker and civilian safety laws, taxation, and on and on. Once this unelected, corporate board rules against any and all national laws, then the signatory country’s legislature is required to abolish those law and regulations, in the name of “free trade”.
So, Mr. Trump, thank you cancelling this Orwellian, plutocratic, corporatocracy. I can assure you, Baba Beijing wants nothing to do with it. China’s leaders want to govern and help their people, not be tyrannized and humiliated by faceless transnational corporations.
I watched Trump’s inauguration day speech. I also watched Trump’s press conference, with small and medium sized business owners, and in both cases, I was amazed at the similarities between him and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-1945).
The first observation that really struck me is how much Trump genuinely cares about “the little guy”. It’s not phony. He really does want to help the people in America who have been disenfranchised from having a voice in their destiny, something that has been building up for quite a long time. FDR was just as sincere about helping all the millions of hungry, homeless and jobless Americans, during the Great Depression. The US had to wait eight years after the Great Financial Crash of 2008, also known as the Great Middle Class Gang Bang, for populist Trump to ride to the rescue.
Both presidents came from wealthy backgrounds, with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths. FDR’s family made its fortune via the organized crime opium cartel in China, 1839-1949. Trump’s father was a big construction, slum lord and real estate tycoon in New York City. He was investigated on numerous occasions for illegal business practices. You don’t succeed in these Big Apple business sectors and not be in the good graces of the Mafia.
Using his patrician family’s name, FDR worked his way up to the top of the American political system, to eventually become president. Donald Trump used his father’s wealth and connections to work his way up the corporate and media ladder, to eventually occupy the White House.
Both men are “rich, fat and happy”, to use the expression, and do not have to make all the sacrifices and take all the risks to run the United States, but both have their principles, ideas and visions for the future (For simplicity, I will use the present tense to compare both presidents, even though they lived generations apart).
Both men want to put Americans back to work again and reignite the country’s industrial potential.
Both men are disgusted with the usurious, rapacious, private Federal Reserve banking system. FDR complained bitterly about the Fed in his private writings and only obliquely so, in public. Trump is more vocal and seems less intimidated by the elite banking families, Rothschild, Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie & Co., the real owners of the United States and Europe. JFK was circumventing the Fed, by having the Treasury Department mint “silver certificate” bills outside the purvey of the Fed banks, another reason he lived a very short life. With his purported private security forces keeping him safe from the CIA, maybe Trump feels just as safe from the agency’s historical deep state partners, the aforementioned oil bankers.
Both men have a strong vision for what ails the country. For FDR, it was the New Deal. For Trump, it is “Put Americans First”.
Both men are despised by the elites. Both men are proud of it too. FDR famously said he welcomed the hatred of Wall Street. Trump has repeatedly threatened and is starting to act on his promise to “drain the swamp in Washington”.
Both men take the choice of Supreme Court justices very seriously and both have a chance to really change the political leanings on the bench. For FDR, it was to make the Supreme Court more liberal. For Trump, it will be to make it more socially conservative. Both believe their choices will be for the betterment of the citizens.
Both men know how relate to their constituencies, the man and woman on the street, the little guy and gal, Joe and Jane Sixpack. FDR ruled the radio waves with his famous “fireside chats”, bucking up the populace to work hard, stay positive and look forward to better times. Trump is a brilliant manager of the media and does not hesitate to take his populist message to his base, via social media, such as Twitter and Facebook. As a result, both presidents’ voters love them and are not hesitant to let everybody know this fact.
Conversely, both presidents have a big chunk of the electorate who despise them. For Trump, it is the wealthy elites and liberals. For FDR, it was these same elites, but the other group was middle America’s conservative and Christian block. So in essence, FDR and Trump have kept the wrath and indignation of the ruling Princes of Power, but have switched sides on Main Street, making a very interesting dynamic, for sure.
Both men talk about keeping America safe from external enemies. FDR ended up getting the US into World War II, ostensibly to do just that. The jury is still out on how aggressive Trump will be in dropping bombs and drones on thousands of innocent Muslims across the planet, in the name of fighting “Islamic terrorism”.
As a result of getting into World War II, FDR greatly increased the size and technology of the US military. Trump says he too, wants to greatly expand the military budget, and make it “unbeatable”.
Both presidents believe in Keynesian deficit spending, to boost the economy. FDR greatly expanded government programs to help the downtrodden, as well as turn the US into a war economy, with World War II. Trump wants to spend lavishly on the military and dramatically lower business taxes, just like a country at war, while going into even deeper debt than the already official $20 trillion void Americans are on the hook for.
Both FDR and Trump want to work with Russia. Roosevelt and Soviet leader Josef Stalin had a good working relationship together. Trump is signaling his desire to work on the positive side of the ledger, with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In part due to his family’s historical role of “working” in China (in fact, selling illegal drugs), FDR had a fancy for this country. In his own way, he strived to make China a part of the postwar Western world order, but with all the historical colonialist, imperialist baggage in tow, he was doomed to fail. This is why a guy by the name of Mao Zedong came along with a better idea for his people. Trump has been all over the place with China, saying he wants to “cut a deal” with President Xi Jinping, while raising tariffs 45% across the board, but mixing in Taiwan and threatening to upturn the “One China Policy”, which if pushed to the extreme, could cause World War III. Here’s to hoping that Trump takes a fancy to the People’s Republic, like Roosevelt, but without all the “Great Game” imperial megalomania and cupidity.
These amazing corollaries between Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Donald Trump will surely grow, as Trump’s presidency takes root. It’s going to be an interesting next four to eight years, indeed. And dare I say, like my grandparents did during the 1930s, that it’s a time for hope?
Soul brothers in a parallel universe…
This really is a joke!
12 days in office and an article comparing Trump to Roosevelt???
It isn’t sinking in with some Americans yet, but it will. Trump is not a good man and he does not intend to see a world at peace. Not at all. He has made some changes in attitude that are wonderfully welcome – pro-life for one thing – , but since the 70’s an American patriotic president is one who defends and enables its right to force dollars on the world to keep the sheeple in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Obama, Clinton, Bush are all patriots in this regard. Trump is a seamless transition from Obama. He may not call it globalism, because he does not want to run the planet, but he most certainly wants to kill anyone who messes with the dollar and your banks.
In the last week Bannan has grossly criticised Russia and S America, they are winding up a war with Iran and they are beginning to screw China over. Is this a man of peace and co-operation? He is out to make the US king by force and debt issuance. Like ever.
Beware, though, America. The provocations by Iran against the US are interesting. I am sure both China and Russia also see this as a great time for starting a war with America and finishing it off. Ridiculous, huh? Why would they want to? ….. Because there is no doubt in any economists or strategists mind that the US intends to kill them first if it can, because ti has to to survive. If I am smart enough to understand what ‘wiping ISIS off the face of the eart’ implies, namely, pursuing them the length of the silk road to China and occupying every country on the way and dropping military hardware into the Russian heartland, then I am sure Russia is too. Putin knows, as anyone with a brain knows, that Russia is going to have to stop Trump from doing this, and then you will see what kind of a friend Trump is.
Dwell on that for a bit. Your hot-head may be being tempted into war when you and your aristocrats are busy fighting each other and while your forces are in leadership transition. That would be damn smart and opportune.
Or one could compare him to the American patriot Herbert Hoover, whom CIA ‘history’ books or CIA Wikipedia say was not a popular president (of the Fed, the JM$M), and the Great Depression, orchestrated by the Zionist banks to install Hitler was blamed on him.
That pretty much dovetails with the fourth turning.
Good to see the similarities fleshed out. I am old enough to remember the rabid MSM onslaught on FDR, and his humorous response: “First you criticized me; but I don’t mind. Then you criticized my wife; she doesn’t mind. Then you criticized my children; they don’t mind.
But now you have gone too far: you have criticized my dog. Fido does mind!”
FDR was a socialist, the harbinger of forty years of socialist prosperity not only in the USA but across the whole of Europe. So it was only natural that the corporate fascists and financial bloodsuckers hated him. What I don’t understand is why his own class also hate Trump, who is no socialist. Perhaps because Trump is not a corporate fascist tool but, like FDR, Trump is his own man. Trump has followed the election strategy advocated by FDR: “Get to the White House owing as few favours as possible to as few people as possible”. Unlike Obama and the Clintons.
Dr., you are 25% right on FDR’s dog’s name. It started with F and was 4 letters long: FALA
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS712US712&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=franklin+roosevelt's+dog's+name
Donald Trump will confirm Jeff Brown’s comparison of the 45th President to the 32nd one IF he re-anacts FDR’s Glass Steagall law, as he promised to do Nov 1 in North Carolina.
Yesterday White house press secretary Sean Spicer said he is still committed to doing so.
Treasury Secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin disagrees, so far.
Here’s a report on the introduction of the legislation into Congress and the questioning of the press secretary yesterday:
“First, Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) announced the re-submission of her Glass-Steagall bill to this, the 115th Congress of the United States, with 26 co-sponsors. She also held a high-profile press conference along with Congressmen Walter Jones (R-NC), Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), and Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), during which she stated: “President Donald Trump even endorsed the call for ‘a 21st-Century version of Glass-Steagall’ during a campaign statement in Charlotte, North Carolina. We have an obligation to work with him to achieve that.”
This is precisely the sort of bi-partisan drive required to force the British Empire and Wall Street to swallow the medicine they so despise–but which the country and the world so desperately need.
Second, White House press spokesman Sean Spicer responded to questioning by EIR’s Bill Jones, as to whether or not President Trump still supports Glass-Steagall, as he had stated he did on the campaign trail back in October 2016. Jones referred to the “ambiguous” statements about Glass-Steagall made by Treasury Secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin, now up for Senate confirmation. Spicer assured Jones and the gathered press corps that Trump’s policy remains “consistent” on Glass-Steagall.”
We shall soon see.
Fala and I can’t wait to see it. Forbidding banks to gamble with peoples savings is an acid test for the gold in Trump. Just as repeal of Glass-Steagall and injection of “quantitative easing” was the acid of the fool’s gold that was huckstered by Obama and Clinton.
Tulsi Gabbard is Fighting to Bring Back Glass-Steagall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aIvo-exDGE&app=desktop
Trump is not a corporate fascist tool but, like FDR, Trump is his own man.
Roosevelt is not popularly portrayed as a “fascist,” but a closer examination of his policies (Quigley’s “Tragedy and Hope’ would be n excellent general introduction, focusing as it does on the “behind the scenes” political-financial manovering of his era) tells a different tale.
In practice, he used the same strategy to get the various US interest groups working with him as Hitler did with the German anlogues — making sure each got their slices of the economic pie legally guaranteed (example : dictatorial control of medicine handed to the AMA by law) and using national-international policy to further the economic interests of various cartels (Junker industrialists in Germany, e.g.). In both cases, labor unions were especially empowered and used to control potential labor unrest.
This something-for-everybody, quid pro quo in return for not rocking the boat is the modus operandus of fascism everywhere. When the prosperity of all interests depends on the outcome of all co-operating in a common endeavor, co-operation is guaranteed. (Much more efficient than heirarchal state control as in the SU in Roosevelt-Hitler’s era, because the people who know what they’re doing are directing each operation.
I do not have the time or information readily available to develop this as a thesis, but investigation by anyone interested will find abundant evidence to verify it.
FDR was not a socialist — in fact he is credited with saving capitalism.
See https://www.quora.com/Can-FDR-be-fairly-described-as-a-socialist
and also, if you can find it, what R.D.Wolff said about it.
@blue. Thanks for the link. I would agree with the bloggers Scott Young and John Carter who opine that FDR was not strictly a socialist but a pragmatist who used socialist methods to rescue his country from the ravages of unrestricted capitalism. In my student days, communist friends were fond of quoting FDR’s New Deal and his TVA as socialism in action – and I hold to that opinion still. But more strictly I would call FDR a rationalist who preferred planned economy to the chaos of free range Darwinian competition red in tooth and claw; see “Le Plan, ou le anti-Hasard” by Pierre Masse. And for what it’s worth, I believe it was the planned, distributive socialist economies of the postwar era which brought postwar prosperity 1945-1985, not some magic worked by Mars God of War. As witness wartime Britain under Attlee’s equable distribution of food rationing “points”: the only time in history that the health and wellbeing of a nation improved during a war.
The dog’s name was Fala.
It’s nonsense to assume Russia or China can be goaded into war. Attacked, of course they’ll fight, but lacking that they’re both, especially China doing quite well, thank you. China has not fired a shot and has all Eurasian trade locked up. We’ve spent our load, are broke and the world hates us.
http://www.robertmagill.wordpress.com
World War is what pulled the US out of the hole last time.
This time there is no new deal or world war to save America’s bacon.
You can only do certain things once in a lifetime.
“……corporate-picked international arbitration commission”. = NAFTA. And that’s why Canasta lost the remainder of it’s manhood when Mulroney signed it…..and later fled to the US, as vassal/traitorous “leaders” have always done. Canasta should become the eastern terminus of the new EU>Central Asia>China Silk (Trade) Road and become “Canada” again. (However – it will NOT be a Liberal or Conservative government that does this).
Let’s play with historical dialectic:
1930’s crisis in world industrial/financial capitalism thesis
establishment of military/industrial/ financial war complex anti-thesis
globalized financial militarized corporatism synthesis
so the new synthesis will soon become the thesis of these times in the form of:
2018 ongoing crisis of world globalized, financial, militarized corporatism———————————thesis.
and the anti-thesis is not FDR redux…think outside the boxes! There is the internet, there is bitcoin, there is the very disaffected young and there is no mass industrial working class to back up an FDR which supports its interests (20% of US workers are organized into unions these days).
And as much as the old school manipulators would like to create a “Hitler” these days—there just is not one. In fact , I find it interesting that a day or so after Trump makes a call to Putin, high level cyber traitors ( double agents) are busted and busted bad in the FSB. hmmmm.
Let me also throw out that it is about time Trump brings up McCain and his golum buddy on charges of treason for meddling in the Ukraine.
How can a person not swim in the ocean of his times? FDR is no more like Trump either personally or politically than a trout is like a shark.
there is no mass industrial working class to back up an FDR which supports its interests (20% of US workers are organized into unions these days)
One of his first meetings as president was with labor union leaders. Charles Krauthammer called it a “great act of political larceny” (labor unions habitually support the Democrats)
He promised, “We’re going to put a lot of people back to work.” No details were offered but the president said, “We’re going to have a lot of building going on . . . You guys will be responsible for getting those plants built.”
There are similarities, rhyme’d songs of history’s mythic cadence…
FDR said, I believe, that rather than saving the country for the working class, he had saved it for the capitalist class. This truism is understood only if one recognizes that FDR stopped the revolution – and offered us the crumbs of the capitalist victory. The canon taught now omits that it was a brutal bloody growing revolution…but it was. You cannot starve a revolution. But FDR gave us crumbs.
Pretty tasty crumbs. It was enough for most to simply have a job and public schools and unions and housing ..the new deal was enough.
Shall we assume that such a stark similarity obtains to-day? I’d hate to see another revolution – one that T-Man failed to stop…
Is Trump’s Agenda Starting to Show “Shades of Brown”? The Million Dollar Question
By Peter Koenig
January 31, 2017 “Information Clearing House” – Where is Mr. Trump coming from and where is he going to? What is really on his agenda, what is trustworthy, and what is sheer farce and eventually killed by its own weight of controversy? – While out there, the different agenda items are spun around by the presstitute as anti-Trump and pro-establishment propaganda.
Left and right do no longer exist. The so-called liberal elitist intellectual ‘left’ has sold its soul to the neocons, they may not even realize to what extent. The benefits they cash-in have blinded them to the disaster politics being propagated by the globalist-Atlantists. They are now fully in the realm of the Neocon crony directed western mass-media. After all, the lush western comfort zone is difficult to leave – while it lasts; key sentence – ‘while it lasts’. Thereafter the deluge – which may mean eradication of life on earth as we know it.
In comes Trump, thinking he doesn’t need the establishment; a multi-billionaire who doesn’t need the approval or the money from the establishment. In a symbolic gesture, he renounced his salary as President of the United States. – If it only were that simple.
The rest:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46342.htm
The US has just cancelled sanctions against the Russian FSB. They were imposed because of the supposed involvement of the FSB in the supposed election ‘hacking.
meanwhile, ‘partners’ are singing the same song. New Samantha Power looks better I have to admit.
” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, blamed Russia on Thursday for the recent surge of violence in eastern Ukraine and warned Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Moscow returns Crimea to Kiev.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-4186118/U-S-Ambassador-U-N-Blames-Russia-new-violence-eastern-Ukraine.html
And right now Ukrainian ‘brothers’ are shelling Donetsk with MLRS and ballistic missiles.
Russia doing nothing apart from occasional barking at Kiev.
I guess Syria is more important for Kremlin than Russians in Donbass.
Well they were both from very wealthy families. They both were able to talk to the “common” people. And the Elites hated them.But I’m not sure I would compare them beyond that.I see no sign of Trump wanting to make the changes that benefited the mass of Americans FDR did.But its too early to really say.
As I’ve said before,I mostly supported Trump because of his willingness to improve relations with Russia.And that he wasn’t the demoniac Clinton. But “so far”,other than “words” I don’t see any actions to improve relations with Russia. He isn’t making them worse I don’t think.So I suppose that’s “something”.
I posted a while back my thinking on why Trump was willing to improve relations with Russia. I still believe it to be true.He thinks of Russia as another white European Christian country (yes I know that isn’t totally true. But its truer than not). While he seems unwilling to improve relations with China or Iran. And with Iran (egged on by his other love Israel) it looks to me like a war is coming,almost certainly. He seems to think as long as he doesn’t try and bully Russia (without actually furthering Russia’s needs),that Russia will stand back and let him attack Iran,and bully if not attack China. The jury is still out if he is right with that thinking.But either way it wasn’t what I hoped for in supporting Trump.
As a side note,I suppose at least one benefit for Russia with Trump’s election is that the Western MSM is so intend on their hatred of Trump that they aren’t spending much time on demonizing Putin.Its been a while now since they ran many stories about Putin being the “new Hitler”. They are saving those for Trump.
It wasn’t what I hoped for in supporting Trump.
I, on the contrary, was hoping this since the very beginning of this campaign and so I never suppoorted Trump.
Some good points, UB1
It is far more complex than the know it alls that abstained from voting Trump or Hitlery smugly assert, while offering no plan.
Cynicism in 20/20 hindsight sounds so smart, but is worthless.
She had to be stopped with whatever tool available, and Trump made himself available. That rough tool had to be used.
If all you gained was a POTUS that could talk to Putin and thus buy one lousy year for Putin to further calm down the flailing, sinking dumb giant, Ugly American USA, that’s a gain!
If all you gained was a massive discrediting of MSM, that’s a gain!
If all you gained was a handful (few million Americans) getting agitated enough to begin looking for serious answers, that’s a gain!
Take your gains. Don’t give them back. And keep fighting to bury Empire of Stupid Fear and Control and Lies. Box it in and bury it. One teaspoon full at a time if there is no skip loader or even shovel available. Even if Trump breaks down, implodes tomorrow, at least he was a good wrecking ball for taking down Clinton Foundation Towers.
The FDR comparison is strained. Trump is smart but FDR had real intellect. I don’t expect Trump to go nearly as far. He’s gutsy but not 1/10th as moral.
There’s a long, long way to go. Trump might take you/us 1/10 of the way, if we’re lucky. 1/100 of the way if we’re not so lucky. That he has already done.
But additional leadership must emerge and either make him far better than weeks 1 & 2 or at least severely limit further damage from him.
Donald Trump is also comparable to Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Jesus Christ!
The Trump propaganda on this site is getting pathetic.
It’s obvious what is going on: Russians and their sympathizers believe that Trump is friendly to Russia.
Hence, they are pimping for Trump, regardless of what he does, even if it involves continuing America’s threats and aggressive wars carried out by Obama or Bush–which these people claimed to oppose.
Just as Obama supporters quickly dropped their antiwar mask once Bush was replaced by Obama.
Now Trump supporters are dropping their antiwar or even “multipolar” mask now that Obama has been replaced by Trump.
And if Trump really is comparable to FDR, remember that Roosevelt allowed America’s original 9-11, Pearl Harbor, where he deliberately steered Japan towards attacking the USA, had intelligence of the impending attack, and deliberately allowed Japan to bomb that US military base –all in order to whip up American war frenzy for entering World War 2.
This was not only treason but a war crime of the first order.
Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor
https://www.amazon.com/Day-Deceit-Truth-About-Harbor/dp/0743201299
Day of Deceit
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2005/12/07/day-of-deceit/
Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor provocation was the template for subsequent events like Sept. 11th, which was oh so helpful pretext for launching America’s phony War on Terrorism.
Hi Jeff, great to hear from you again !! Thanks for wonderful hopeful article. I didn’t think about the similarities until now though….
I guess President Roosevelt probably regrets getting into first world war now – up there in the Spiritual Worlds. He probably wouldn’t do it again, given the chance…
I hope Trump is as wise as the spirit of Roosevelt – and by the way…Trump is calling himself DJT –
The author is ( removed,violates the rules.MOD)
“he strived to make China a part of the postwar Western world order, but with all the historical colonialist, imperialist baggage in tow, he was doomed to fail.”
China was a colonial prize and he wanted it. He was on team empire, an insider. In the 20’s team empire in ‘merica set up a territorial treaty with Japan with no enforcement provisions. This imperial treaty game went right back to the beginning of the century, Japan took that 20’s treaty for the open invitation it was. Team ‘merica used the useful idiot Japanese to take the Europeans out of Asia, while team ‘merica had simultaneously set up the nazis to keep those same Europeans tied down in Europe.
Most people pan forward to the MCollum memo’s “If by these means Japan can be led to commit and act of war, so much the better” (including forward Pacific naval deployment to strike-able Hawaii and blockades as bait).
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/war/mccollum.htm
However, the Anglofile supporting Stimson, Hull , FDR team were only free to go pro-Brit after the latter were tied down by Hitler.
Before the Washington Conference in ’39, on the US side it was still all Plan Orange and Red to fight a combined Jap/Brit alliance, which the US themselves had always thought impossible. ie: They needed Hitler, and once they had Hitler tieing up Europe without undue force losses themselves, then they could reneg on the under the table Teddy Roosevelt era accord for the Japs to be their white men of Asia mini empire, split Japan off from Britain, and use them to take out Euro assets and interests from Asia, coerce Japan into the axis alliance, and finally force them into the fight.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/war-plan-red-orange.htm
In the ’30s the Australians were flat out shipping their pig iron to British ally Japan and were perfectly aware of the US naval threat to their existence. That same which first became clear with the White Ship fleet call in Australia in 1908. It was only after the Brits couldn’t hold Singapore that they went full tilt over to the US.
And as for that empiricist FDR and his new deal (the abject failure that could only ever have been bailed out by war), nobody says it clearer than Garrett Garrett in his succinct little book The People’s Pottage:
“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”
As Garrett made plain there was nothing but empire and war before the American people and the New Deal locked in Lodge/Hearst/Teddy Roosevelt’s “Progressive” pursuit of empire and never-ending war. Despite his associations with Ford, Garrett was no supporter of totalitarianism of any sort.
Three essays that were bought together in The People’s Pottage were “The Revolution Was”, “Ex America”, and “Rise of Empire”
https://mises.org/system/tdf/Peoples%20Pottage_2.pdf?file=1&type=document
JJB
Actually, I suspect trump is more like netanyahu than Roosevelt. One area I think trump and Roosevelt are similar are their tasks to deceive the working class with sympathetic rhetoric and minimal changes to effect a counter revolution to any real empowering of the public. They co-opt the rebellion and tame it for the oligarchy.
Roosevelt prevented any real socialism from taking root in the usa. Trump appears to have cleverly harnessed widespread disaffection with the status quo to put it to use to defend the zionazi solidification of power his handlers are seeking. Both cultivated the image of a person primarily concerned with empowering people, while actually doing the opposite, consolidating oligarch control over the people. IE: their further enslavement.
One area I hope the two do not prove alike is in war instigation. The Roosevelt regime worked to bring WW2 about to expand american power. I hope the trump regime isn’t as successful in its instigation of wars for greater israel.
His Supreme Court pick advocated for the separation of the races in 2012.
Which is, of course, supposed to be evidence of evil.
Meanwhile, Congressional Black Caucus Chafes at Latino Who Wants to Join http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/congressional-black-caucus-hispanic-adriano-espaillat-234575
which is, of course, evidence of the caucus’ moral rectitude . . .
Do you laugh ? Cry ?? Get angry ? Or vomit ?
George Orwell explains Doublethink :
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process…”
I also voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils, while recognizing his insurmountable defects and pathologies of politics, value and temperament that would make his term in office a trauma of proto-fascist bullying, gross deregulation, and the further triumph of Wall Street over government. Trump’s ignorance allows him to believe that he can have good relations with Russia while treating the rest of the world as his punk whipping boy, including China and Iran. The idea that he is the friend of the working man is sheer fantasy. When in his life has he ever worked for or supported labor over management; now he wants to eliminate any minimum wage. Trump and his cabinet of thugs is worse than I anticipated, but probably still the lesser of the two evils. This article, however, is delusional.
Trump is a show master and entertainer, with stolen money and stolen ideas. His – privatized – New Deal and democracy of the common man is just a bad copy of FDR and Wallace, a play for the theatre intended to make the people stupid and happy. It’s a farce that could become a tragedy.
People . . . small sample size !!!!!
He has been POTUS for 15 whole days, and extrapolating from this already people are sure what the next four years hold in store ? ! ? !
Chronically overlooked is his uncanny ability to get people (not already bought and paid for) on his side. This is REAL diplomacy in action. Do not mistake the blustering to make impressions on his audience for ineptitude.
Consider : His deadliest enemies are the “fifth column” in the CIA. So he goes to the CIA (not summons the big dogs there to his office) and makes friends with the rank-and-file in it he will be depending on.
Union people imagined him to be a rich, predatory Republican. So he tells union leaders he’s going to not only kill the TPP, but make them prosperous again with new business. Not the “union busting” pseudo “conservative” they probably assumed he would be, but a trades unions supporter.
You can go down the list and see this time and again. People who can genuinely “get things done” are good at this. So naturally he picks those older, white men — billionaires — who have proven that they can as his key people and hits the ground running.
Already the old power structure is reeling and disoriented. And the people he does pick fights with are in genuine trouble. (How much more market share can CNN lose before there is a boardroom insurrection and a new regime there with a new set of marching orders ? Feel-good politics are all very well, but if your stock is cratering, and there is no sign of a viable strategy to turn this around, “the market” will correct the problem with new management). (When push comes to shove, “Money talks; bullsh*t walks”). I expect the same will be the case with Microsoft, Twitter, Google, Reddit and other current bitter enemies as Trump continues to gather support. All of these could be in real hot water as illegal monopolies if he were to have the Justice Department make an issue of it and follow through with indictments.
He scares me too sometimes. But though past performance is an unreliable predictor of future performance, it is the only predictor with any validity at all (as the history of “expert assessments” of a criminal’s likelihood of recidivation by psychiatrists in parole hearings has proven over thousands of trials).
FWIW
The significance of Haley’s speech is not what she said but what she said which she did not have to say — with virtually no doubt that Trump and Tillerson was not aware of it and supported it, of course. This is an ambassador — a mouth piece — with no authority to determine policy on her own. The speech was not a holding action, and damaged both the US and the administration, and laid out and revealed the US policy to the world — about the same as before, on the about the same long slide downhill, but with worse conditions both in the US and abroad. It’s just more doubling down nonsense.
An interesting observation by Eric Margolis that bears both on his pro-Israeli and anti-Islamic postures (both dear to Scofield Reference Bible Protestants (Zionist fanboys & -girls) here in the USA :
“We must remember that nearly half of all Republican voters – Trump’s base – describe themselves as practicing born-again Christians. The Christian fundamentalist right played a key role in George Bush’s two victories. Some 78% of born-again Christians voted for Bush.
“These religious right voters come from the Bible Belt South and Midwest, a vast expanse routinely ignored by East and West coast pundits and political operatives. The Trump campaign was extremely clever in analyzing this political geography and focusing efforts on the evangelical empty spaces between New York and Los Angeles – the same region that brought Prohibition in 1919 and Trump in 2016.
“One of the key tenets of Republican theological voters is the hatred of Islam as the ‘new’ Communism and the fear that Islam’s growth is far outpacing Christianity.
“Few of these confused Republican core voters have any sense of geography or history. After the 9/11 attacks, surveys showed that 78% or more were convinced that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. This was a glaring example of what expert Kevin Phillips terms `the American Disenlightenment.’
“President Trump benefitted from this accrued ignorance in his startling electoral victory. East and West coast media were astounded because they had never attended a Pentecostal Church or listened to the poisonous sermons of ‘Rev’ John Hagee or so-called Christian radio from whose bizarre ravings many Christian fundamentalists receive all their news . . .
“Christian Conservatives are one of America’s leading political forces. President Trump just called for the ban on churches preaching politics and fundraising be lifted.”
Politicians kiss a lot of babies they don’t like or plan to adopt.
Did O’bummer keep even ONE of the campaign promises that got him elected the first time ?
Politics : you “tell them what they want to hear.” Then you go back to your office and do what you intend to do.