John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY THOMAS DOHERTY IN CONSORTIUM NEWS
“FDR’s Polio Crusade & Leadership Amid Crisis”
A reminder of the [now] lesser-known battle that FDR waged, in public and in private
FDR was a great president, America’s greatest, likely, only Lincoln offering serious competition.
His inspiring voice, his attention to many important details not concerning just the great affairs of state, his often brilliant appointments, plus our awareness that all of his efforts were those of a severely disabled man, something not known to his contemporaries - all argue for him to be considered as the country's greatest leader in a crisis.
Two crises, actually - a great economic depression, with America’s agricultural Dustbowl thrown in, and a vast world war.
And that war wasn’t against enemies generated by fevered ideology and resentment, it was against some of the most frightful monsters in history.
What a contrast to Trump, a man literally obsessed with himself, a man incapable of an inspiring thought or act, a man of no generosity of spirit, a man whose workaday language is from the gutter, and a man many of whose appointments are among the nastiest and most contemptible in memory.
The two, side by side, almost perfectly summarize what has happened to the heart and soul of the country over the era of the American empire, from the end of WWII when it arose from the ashes of war, generating myths about its remarkable efforts, until now, a time when many astute observers see it as corrupt and arrogant and in unavoidable relative decline with its leaders desperately flailing in all directions.
From a time when much of the world actually welcomed America’s leadership with smiles until now when much of the world’s people would like America to go home, stop terrorizing people, and mind its own business – those kinds of things being said by both competitors and allies.
The view of FDR as a great figure over the years since his death has only grown with even many Republicans – who, at the time, despised him – embracing it. Otherwise, there would be no Roosevelt Memorial in Washington. The view of Donald Trump has gone in just a couple of years from a few modest hopes for change from a man never regarded as admirable to widespread acceptance of his incompetence and corruption.
In that period of empire, we’ve gone from a genuine sense of a moral and ethical purpose about America to an overwhelming sense of its selfishness and arrogance and corruption. It is a very long journey completed in only about eighty years.
From "The Four Freedoms” and inspiring “Fireside Chats,” to “America First” and “full spectrum dominance” with television performances worthy of some boisterous crowd waiting in a car at a McDonald’s Drive-through. From “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” to not a word of empathy, stealing other people’s medical supplies, and an unprecedented campaign of hate-speech against another great country and its people.
FDR literally embodied hopes and dreams for a great many people in the world. The dreams represented by Trump are the ugly ones, anxiety dreams and nightmares. He represents hate and envy and suspicion, not hopes or principles, and he has worked tirelessly to increase the world’s stock of human misery and oppression.
