Those who look to the New Deal as a possible model for Democratic economic policies in this era...

[BainsBane]

63. Too late

Last edited Mon May 1, 2017, 06:08 PM - Edit history (1)

Not buying it. People exposed themselves by resorting to dishonesty in order to justify undermining equal rights for women. Then when you refused to address the evidence presenting showing that your claims were false, it became clear it was not simply an oversight. You chose to reveal yourself.

I also saw someone invoke FDR against Obama in the most bizarre and mendacious manner to claim that their contempt for him was because of opposition to the wealthy elite. Invoking a man born into extreme inherited wealth as a club against the first black president, born to a low-income single mother, who unlike the "progressive" hero FDR has to work for a living. FDR never had to work to support himself, yet despite that he worked as a Wall Street financier and bond trader. Yet he is the hero of those who pretend, completely unconvincingly, that they hold some mantle of opposition against the wealthy elite. They do not. They would not continually and repeatedly invoke an aristocrat if they did. What they resent is that people they think unworthy have money, proven by their continual defenses of far greater wealth held by others.

Throughout the history of this nation, liberty and opportunity for white men always came at the expense of enslavement, subjugation and poverty for the majority. The relationship was not incidental. It was central. Racial slavery enabled white men to have access to land. Jacksonian Democracy--the expansion of the franchise to non-propertied white men, was enabled through the seizure of Indian lands. Jim Crow did not simply exist alongside the New Deal. It was an integral part of it. Economic prosperity in the post-WWII era was paid for by taking women's jobs away, relegating those not attached to middle-class men to poverty.

We have seen history used to deceive far too often. It's one thing to be ignorant of US history. It's another to persist in that ignorance. When people are repeatedly informed that their use of historical mythology is not based in reality, the question arises as to why they persist? Why keep talking about FDR? What possible purpose does it serve, except to communicate a desire to return to that era? You say it's not about Jim Crow. It's not about Japanese American internment camps. It's not about the denial of equal rights for women. Instead, it's about... opposition to the wealthy elite? Opposition to Wall Street? None of that holds up. Or is it the days of 25% unemployment you long to return to, unemployment eased only through US involvement in a World War? Is that what you are so nostalgic for? The only thing that does hold up is a restoration of a government that served the interests of white men to the exclusion of the majority. And after the stunts we saw around abortion rights and Obama's speech, it's becoming difficult to see signs of any other concern.

When people repeatedly refuse to acknowledge they are wrong on key points, ignorance is no longer an excuse. Rather, it becomes a deliberate tactic.

The gas lighting isn't working. I have seen a great deal in the past few weeks, and it can't be unseen.