The predominantly ludicrous lawmaker from Georgia did Biden a solid this weekend, telling Republicans the Democratic president is fiendishly attempting to make people’s lives better.

      • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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        Travesty that wasn’t taught in schools. Talk about based, it’s everything we’re fighting for now

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        People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

        Truer words…

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            But have you considered that she is mother and cunty and the orb queen who will use her crystals to heal the darkness in America’s spirit? /j

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              Self help author that rose to prominence on Oprah as a “spiritual advisor”, she should be viewed the same as Dr Phil, Dr Oz, and Rachel Ray

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                And? How does this make her a grifter? How does this make her like Donald Trump? How does this mean that she scams people like Dr Phil, Dr Oz, etc.?

                I vote for people because of the policies they believe, and I think that she actually believes them, and has for a long time.

                Other than Cornell West, who is running as a third party, I think Williamson is the best candidate on the ballot so far.

                And I say this as a non-spiritual athiest.

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                  You clearly didn’t watch her debate performances in the 2020 primaries. She’s a nut.

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      He’s not bad though all things considered. I don’t know if we could do much better in Ukraine than how Biden has responded. His global policy approach is pretty impressive. He’s had a few misses in domestic policy but overall I’d say he is doing quite well.

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      You could be damned sure FDR wouldn’t have soft-pedaled any part of a pandemic response.

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        Wholly cow, I just realized if they put him in a wheelchair, he’d win the next election. No one would vote against a guy in a wheelchair, right?

          • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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            Keep fighting against that b@st@rd. How hot is it there? You had high wet bulb temperatures last week. Stay safe. On a side note, those wet bulb temps weren’t supposed to happen for years, and they already happened. Scary 😧

            • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.world
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              It’s hot (101 right now), but not the worst summer we’ve had for sure. That’s the thing about global averages - they don’t mean that everywhere is having their hottest days on record, even if the globe is.

              Fortunately right now the highs have just been dancing above and below 100 by a few degrees each day. Some summers we hit those 110+ days and it’s rough.

        • /home/pineapplelover@lemm.ee
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          I’m sure the same party that repealed the right to abortion and is fighting for assault rifles in schools will campaign against a guy in a wheelchair.

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            Not if it had flag hubcaps with a mounted .50 cal BMG and LED ‘s . And it should play “Living in America” by James Brown as he rolls. Nah, they’d still vote against him, but they WOULD hesitate.

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            And Trump would call him “Wheels” Biden.

            “Look at him, senile, rolling around in that chair all hrrrrrrr.”

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    If the Left had a clue about marketing, they would be producing some patriotic video showing the successes of FDR and LBJ and then tying that imagery to Biden. Americans winning against Nazis, New Deal, waving American flags, etc. Have the whole video being narrated by MTG’s own words. Using the enemy’s own attacks against them.

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      If by “left” you mean democrats then they will not do this because it is not what their views are. They are ideologically as neoliberal as Reagan and Thatcher. This is part of why they don’t do as good of a job opposing the far right as they could, because they only exist as long as their only opposition is unhinged far right politicians.

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        And I would say that’s fairly representative of the views most voters have. The left needs to win the argument with voters before they can complain about the politicians.

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          I mean the opinions of the voting public are nearly always more complex than either Republican or Democratic party dogma. The problem is that there is no substantial way of politically engaging besides voting. I would argue actually that generally the public is way more left wing than it is given credit for, but a lot of people have no accessible ways to transform these ideas into action. And for this I don’t have an easy answer. Disclaimer, am a leftist so I would obviously think this, but I do still think that we would see more diverse political ideas if our political systems were made to be more open.

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        I fuckin wish the Dems were reliably neoliberal, in the vein of Clinton(s).

        Neoliberalism is dope as fuck. Free trade and open borders let’s gooooo

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            End occupational licensing, end single family zoning, cut corporate taxes, encourage freer trade and common markets. Raise taxes on non-poor people to pay for social programs. These are core neoliberal tenets.

            Why do you want to make being poor even harder? These are evidenced-based methods of helping poor people.

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              I find the “raise taxes to pay for social programs” and “cut corporate taxes” to be somewhat contradictory. Reagan and Thatcher were textbook neoliberals if you need any examples, and they destroyed social programs and labor unions rather than supporting them.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
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                In the 80s people also smoked indoors everywhere. Lots of dumb shit happened in the 80s. Then, over 40 years, people got smarter.

                Individual taxes need to go up. Corporate taxes do not

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                  I fail to see why you think helping corporations earning money will help individuals, especially with raising taxes on them. Corporations’ interests are lower wages and higher prices, worker’s interests are higher wages and lower prices. The only way to then increase wages is to force companies to do so, either through job disloyalty, strikes, regulations, or etc. Don’t see how lower taxes will make them pay more.

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  Also you could get student loans discharged in bankruptcy and Iraq was a functional country.

                  You neoliberals fixed that.

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            Imagine supporting an ideology that has been nothing but demonstrably harmful to most people except for a tiny handful.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              They not only are against student loan forgiveness they also support Tony Blair. Yes that one, the war criminal who helped hand over prisoners to be waterboarded.

              Don’t believe me? Go visit any of the websites that they infest.

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            While I am by no means a Clinton fan, a huge part of the student loan hellscape is less Clinton active malice/stupidity and more Gingrich and company leverage - AKA the usual right-wing obstructionist bullshit that people gave them the numbers to force through. It wasn’t helped by Clinton’s need to cave due to getting sloppy toppies in the Oval Office and the huge stink Newt and Starr raised to get their way…or the Perot school of ‘fuck you I got mine’ Libertarians who apparently needed placating to keep the Dems in office.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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              Yes because they held a gun to his head and ordered him to not veto it.

              Neoliberals don’t like student loan forgiveness, they like Clinton who made it very hard to get it forgiven.

              • MrCrankyBastard@lemmy.world
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                No gun is required when so-called self-interests are threatened. He shouldn’t have caved, but then he also shouldn’t have given credence to the welfare and social safety net talking points from the Reich wing. And the CBC damned well shouldn’t have gone along with bullshit ‘tough on crime’ narratives.

                • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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                  He didn’t veto it and no one forced him. There really is nothing else to say. The neoliberals knew full well the disaster that would follow but not only ignored it they also actively encouraged it.

                  Anyone with brains could see that if tuition is rising faster than income and you make student loans inescapable you would end up with mountains of debt. The only two options I can see

                  1. They couldn’t see the obvious in which case they should have zero power.

                  2. They knew this would happen and wanted it.

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            Student loan debt balooning is caused by too easy access to loans coupled with too little state funding

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              And of course you are not supportive of forgiveness for it. Evidently you are going to continue to evade this issue.

              • SCB@lemmy.world
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                I support forgiveness for student loans based roughly on income level, sure. I don’t think we should be subsidizing wealthy kids more than we already do.

                It should go, basically in order:

                • college dropouts
                • government employees (teachers, social workers etc)
                • others with similar income level and undergrad degrees

                Then finally, mostly unforgiven

                • post-grad degrees
                • wealthy families

                I’m very much in favor of progressive tax and social benefits.

                I’m sorry, are you under the opinion that Democrats don’t push for student loan forgiveness? Biden literally took it to the Supreme Court lmao.

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        I can only assume that is what Hunter has in spades, or else Republicans wouldn’t have been making it into such a big deal.

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    Did not Trump cause currently 25% of our national debt with his tax cuts? How the hell do they say this shit with a straight face

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      because they know people will believe their bullshit. Afterall, them gas prices were so high 🙄.

  • Cryptic Fawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    Biden wishes he was FDR.

    But I’ll give him a cookie for trying to cancel student debt, and then refusing to give up when SCOTUS decided to fuck us over.

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      fuck us over

      You fucked yourself over by not showing up at the polls 6 years ago at the numbers needed to keep Trump out of office.

      Voting (and not voting) has consequences. You fucked around, then you found out.

      (to be clear, I am using the generic “you” here, not trying to beat up on OP)

      • NutWrench@lemmy.world
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        Yup. When your choice is between boring, middle-of-the-road corporatist and 100% concentrated evil, you must choose the less-destructive candidate for the good of the nation, even if they don’t “do it” for you.

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        Trump won because people fell asleep, didn’t care and Hilary was unlikable. Let’s just hope that next year they keep that in mind when the polls open.

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          They thought Hillary was unlikable, so instead let’s let a corrupt fascist win… brilliant!1!!

          I’d like to think the American people have learned their lesson, but let’s be honest, we never learn.

          Through recession and boom, war and peace, pandemic and climate change, there is one constant in this modern world… Americans will never learn from their past.

          • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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            Hilary was unlikable, but I think to many people so was Trump. The difference was that in 2016 Hilary was associated with old school, status quo politics. Her campaign didn’t really understand that there was (and still is) a large part of the voting population that wanted/wants change. Trump just happen to pick up on that sentiment which helped him pull people off the couch to vote.

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        This isn’t strictly true. People did show up to vote for Hillary, but not in electorally advantageous locations. Let’s not forget that she won the popular vote, it just wasn’t enough.

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          she won the popular vote

          That’s like saying a team shot the most free-throws in a sport like basketball where the winner is the one who scored the most points. Or in football, having the most minutes of possession, but not scoring enough points.

          The metric to winning is rather clear. Whether it is football, basketball or winning the White House.

          You don’t get enough people out there across the country to win the EC and you lose. Period. So yeah, it is indeed strictly true.

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      Seems a lot like he gave up. What we got instead can’t be called half measures. Hell, they can’t even be called quarter measures.

      Oh, you made it so for 6 months, non-payments don’t hit your credit? What happens after those 6 months? And interest continues to accrue during that time so you’ll find yourself more underwater than before.

      Oh, you reduced the percent of income that is to be spent on paying off the debt? Did you adjust the interest rates too? No? So you’re extending people’s length of debt. Cool.

      This isn’t even tossing a bandaid at the problem. It’s handing someone a self-help book while they’re on the ground bleeding out.

  • Odusei@lemmy.worldOP
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    The Republicans are such good hype men for Joe Biden, he might as well pay them.

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    Honestly, at this point, I don’t think it matters what they say; as long as they say it with a sneer, and pepper in words like “socialist,” their base will foam at the mouth.

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    She’s only spouting self-goals to ensure everyone’s attention is on her all the time. The irate reaction from Dems when she goes all racist+fascist grows her Republican base.

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    If only! Biden is maybe 5% of a Johnson at best.

    …and there’s no way he compares at all to Roosevelt. That’s actually pretty insulting to FDR’s legacy.

    • bestnerd@lemmy.world
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      Eh Johnson was ok, but he also fully engaged Vietnam. When told to back down he started bombing runs in the north. Not a great legacy to have as it still has repercussions and veterans suffering from it like my dad and uncles. Not a great legacy to have to your name.

      But agree on FDR, what a champion. We need fighters like him back in politics.

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        Yeah, and of course handling of the Gulf of Tonkin incident leading up to Vietnam with Johnson, not a great legacy in some regards.

        But as you pointed out with Roosevelt, Johnson was also willing to roll up his sleeves and use the bully pulpit properly to get meaningful legislation passed - laws which materially benefited the lives of regular working class Americans. Consider how he absolutely steamrolled the Dixiecrats on the way to passing the civil rights act.

        We haven’t seen Dems fight like that for us for a long time. Biden and Manchin are basically blowing kisses at each other during press conferences while ramming through the Mountain Valley Pipeline at a time when climate change is undeniably reaching critical mass. It’s such a disheartening reality.

        I think the vast majority of Americans would rally behind someone who truly fought for us, for progress. Polling agrees if you look at the data. But how can we get them onto the national stage when the corporate mainstream media is poised to absolutely assassinate their character, image, and even their livelihoods, on the way up?

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          That’s the biggest issue is getting them In mainstream. It’s decided the candidates they want to show us. They’ll take anyone who fights and label them as crazy and unhinged or outright unable to get things done. They want moderates or people like rfk jr who are actually batshit. So we get one extreme and one middle ground.

          The dems know this as well, while the right can pick the absolute worst and extreme candidate and gain support. Like wtf

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      Honestly, I’ll take a small percentage of Roosevelt than nothing. So, Biden gets my vote next year.

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    Like him or hate him FDR was a great man. LBJ… Not so much.

    Edit: u ppl dont understand the term ‘great’ in reference to historical figures. Got ppl whining about FDR and gooberment bad below. Great does not mean good or their actions were good.

    • mycroft@lemmy.world
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      https://www.ushistory.org/documents/economic_bill_of_rights.htm

      FDR was an anti-semite, a bigot, and a racist. It doesn’t change the great things he did, but he wasn’t a great man. Our leaders are human, and in the 1940s that was the consensus of the ruling. The complete isolation and 2 class system he helped create by only granting whites GI loans and grants for education… He’s responsible for the internment, coercion, and legal framework for stealing the property of over 200,000 Americans who looked like a reminder of our enemies… Completely snubbing our olympic medal winners, by ignoring Jesse Owens amazing wins and inviting white athletes to the white house instead… Not to mention perpetuating military unit segregation etc.

      He was not a great man, but we were lucky he was able to make the changes Hoover had proposed. and to their conclusion in FDRs New Deal. Then the war breaking out meant he could turn the screws up and war production was able to finish the job even with scarcity et al, the production meant a better quality of life for americans.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        FDR was an anti-semite, a bigot, and a racist.

        Serious question. I’m not trying to be sarcastic or trolling. Are you judging him based on 2023 standards or the 1930s? Because it’s almost like comparing apples to oranges – it was almost 100 years ago, and things that are considered blatantly racist by today’s standards were often considered progressive by many at the time.

        You also have to consider the fact that any kind of race relations, for lack of a better term, would not have been anywhere near as acceptable as it is today. Had he invited Owens to the WH or granted scholarships to black people, it could easily have caused a scandal that could have brought an end to his career. I’m not trying to justify it; I’m just saying that this is the reality of our society back in the 30s. Acceptance of minorities as equals in everyday life simply wasn’t a thing back then.

        A lot of people look back at history through a modern lens and act as if “they should have known better”, without a full understanding that progress is incrimental and takes time. They also don’t understand that even if people from back in that time wanted to do what we would consider today as the right thing, the reality of society at the time very likely would have prevented them from doing so.

        • Mayoman68@lemmy.world
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          One thing I also wonder is, does it matter? Things have definitely improved for marginalized groups over time, but I can probably find texts from 2000 years ago that talk about discrimination over immutable traits being wrong. Discriminating as a head of state with presumably good access to information is equally wrong at any point in time.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          It’s always tricky isn’t it? There’s some beliefs that even as a product of the times you’d reject. The founding fathers who wanted to maintain slavery can be abhorred for it even today. At the same time you have someone like Lincoln, who said at one point that freed slaves should be sent to Liberia. We would certainly call that racist today.

          I don’t think there’s a perfect, universal way to look at this, but it’s helpful to look at other contemporary beliefs. You had anti slavery advocates at the founding of the country, so it wasn’t impossible. This is difficult to do though when you have something like the New Deal that disproportionately helped white people, and no alternative to compare against.

          What we can say with certainty is that interning Japanese Americans was wrong, and FDR had strong worker policies in spite of not being racially equitable.

        • mycroft@lemmy.world
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          The thing about discrimination is it isn’t a passive act. You don’t write a law that only applies to white people without explicitly excluding others. Hitler shook Owen’s hand… HITLER for fucks sake. That guy that utterly hated jews and deplored non-aryans. FDR could have at least invited him in for a coffee.

          Everything will be with the benefit of hindsight but the idea that turning away hundreds of thousands of Jews while you KNEW (had multiple intelligence reports and American news reporting the fact that jews were being put into concentration camps and murdered being reported for over 2 years by 1941.). He blocked jewish refugees from immigrating actively.

          Segregation in the military was so insidious black servicemembers were pushed aside for NAZI POWs …

          Nazi POWs got to ride in first class in the front of the train. Nazis were getting treated better than Black veterans who had put their lives on the line. So that kind of pissed my dad off.

          This sort of thing was not the output of a great man by todays standards, nor of someone who honors those who served and put their lives on the line. His discriminating behavior was continuous and not representative of what I would call a great man. If he had had a deathbed lament of his behavior maybe I’d reconsider, but he died knowing he was a great man, and that includes that behavior.

          • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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            The thing about discrimination is it isn’t a passive act. You don’t write a law that only applies to white people without explicitly excluding others.

            Good thing he didn’t do that then. Even in the darkest times of our country, this wasn’t how it worked. The laws themselves applied to everybody. The application and enforcement of those laws were discriminatory. And yes, this includes his own discrimination as well. I fully acknowledge that he did some things that would be unacceptable at the very least today. But he did those things during a time when they were considered progressive by then-modern society.

            Hitler shook Owen’s hand… HITLER for fucks sake. That guy that utterly hated jews and deplored non-aryans. FDR could have at least invited him in for a coffee.

            Dude, seriously. There’s never a reason to bring up Hitler. Doesn’t matter what side of a discussion you’re on.

            Everything will be with the benefit of hindsight but the idea that turning away hundreds of thousands of Jews while you KNEW (had multiple intelligence reports and American news reporting the fact that jews were being put into concentration camps and murdered being reported for over 2 years by 1941.). He blocked jewish refugees from immigrating actively.

            We also know that North Korea keeps hundreds of thousands of political prisoners in concentration camps too. China is also known to not exactly be accomodating to ethnic minorities. Russia is currently trying to eradicate Ukraine.

            There are probably hundreds of examples of other countries committing atrocities around the world. We still have diplomatic relations with them (Well, not North Korea, but you get the idea.). We still have economic relations with them. Some are even our military allies. What is happening in these countries is wrong. It was as wrong then as it is now. But this is the geopolitical reality of the world we live in; the fact that these countries may be committing atrocities within their borders has never shaped our foreign or immigration policies.

            Segregation in the military was so insidious black servicemembers were pushed aside for NAZI POWs …

            Again, this was the 1930s. Segregation was considered progressive back then, and was pretty much everywhere, so it shouldn’t be a surprise we see it there too. But like I said, progress is incremental and takes time. And while we look back on segregation negatively today, it’s still at least ahead of when they were only considered 3/5th of a person.

            Assuming climate change doesn’t kill us all first, I’m sure that people discussing this subject 100 years from now will consider some of the policies we espouse today as barbaric as well.

            Nazi POWs got to ride in first class in the front of the train. Nazis were getting treated better than Black veterans who had put their lives on the line. So that kind of pissed my dad off.

            First, I’d be willing to bet that FDR didn’t make that decision himself. Second, this is what I’m talking about: The application of the law is where the problem is, not the law itself. While this is only my own guess, I’d be willing to bet that the official instructions were that the veterans and POWs all took the same train, and whoever was in charge of seating or whatever decided that “the n*****s can sit in the back just like they’re used to doing at home.”

            This sort of thing was not the output of a great man by todays standards, nor of someone who honors those who served and put their lives on the line. His discriminating behavior was continuous and not representative of what I would call a great man. If he had had a deathbed lament of his behavior maybe I’d reconsider, but he died knowing he was a great man, and that includes that behavior.

            But again, you are judging a man who lived in the 1930s by 2023 standards. Many of the decisions that would be considered egregious examples of racism by today’s standards were either considered minor transgressions at worst or the actually accepted practice of the time, even by some progressive (at the time) standards.

            • mycroft@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Churchill, FDR, Stalin and Hitler were contemporaries, we’re talking about history and ideology. It is perfectly reasonable to speak to an example scenario where his contemporary whom he tried to draw stark contrast in public media did the opposite of him.

              I would say that the writers of FDRs biographies have definitely biased his historiography to the point where he’s a “Great Man.”

              I would say they underappreciate the capitulation he was forced into with regards to the New Deal, and how he essentially appointed socialists to his cabinet to stop what he perceived was a potential Bolshevik style revolution. The same thing is essentially what happened with the FEPC where he made an agency specifically to “eliminate discrimination in the defense industry” he perceived a very real threat of black men marching on the capital in protest if they weren’t provided equal protections and it would affect the war effort.

              When asked about the “jewish problem” his plan to “spreading the jews thinly” across the world was arguably advocating for cultural genocide.

              You could really look at most of what he did and see it does increase the non-segregated races average income, and thinks like infant mortality… these were all great, and things he wouldn’t have even considered if he didn’t think they would starve out the oncoming violence.

              You can look right at one of the first things he did during his administration for this pattern of capitulating to what he perceived as dangerous political movements:

              The first people to hear about the announced CCC jobs and available positions were the Bonus Army camp in Washington, D.C. It worked so well it basically ended the entire movement. Congress later (3 years) did it anyways, despite him vetoing it, but it’s pretty clear he didn’t consider their request. It’s basically the very essence of the current Conservative “work for food” mentality with welfare programs.

              So While I see that some of the historiography likes to paint him as a Great Man for some of the things he did, I would say he was a Great Politician, and a very average upper-class rich man for his time.

        • yesman@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Are you judging him based on 2023 standards or the 1930s?

          People in 1930 understood that racism and antisemitism was wrong. This “judge them by the standards of the day” is just an excuse.

      • fidelacchius@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You don’t understand the word ‘great’ referring to historical figures.

        G. Washington was a ‘great’ man.
        Stalin was a ‘great’ man.
        Hitler was a ‘great’ man.
        Voldemort was a ‘great’ man.
        Jesus was a ‘great’ man.
        Lincoln was a ‘great’ man.
        Genghis Khan was a ‘great’ man.