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I agree with the view that in the "unique juncture" at the end of WWII, the US, under Truman, embarked on a course that in many ways guaranteed that we'd wind up exactly where we've wound up. Along with giving birth to the CIA, the Cold War was launched, placing the US economy on a permanent war footing. The sickness of this development simply cannot be overemphasized. It made the military-industrial domination of society and politics unavoidable.
Another aspect was what we call "McCarthyism" -- which is usually dismissed as a small but unpleasant & somewhat shameful chapter in American History. In reality, it was nothing less than a purge -- very much like Stalin's Moscow Show Trials of the '30's. After the purge, the entire American political left was destroyed. It's easy to see the consequences of that, in the comatose condition of today's "liberalism."
Re: the specific personal question you raise, about whether it would have been different had FDR lived longer: First of all, I think this is a less juicy question than simply appreciating how crucial the Truman years were, & how the course that was embarked upon really guaranteed disaster in the long run (even though it took decades for this to become truly apparent, & most people still don't see it).
But my guess about FDR is that he would not have been able to resist the forces that converted the US to an economy wholly dependent on military spending & anticommunist ideology. It's just hard for me to imagine it, because he tired badly in his latest years, & for him to have resisted those formidable forces would be to demand of him that he behave with all the vigor of 1935, at a time when he was half dead.
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