The New Deal in Reverse: How the Obama Administration Ended Up Where Franklin Roosevelt Began

[Karmadillo]

Excellent, excellent article. Explains in detail why Obama is "an unfolding disappointment." If you want to hear an excellent interview with the author on Tomdispatch, click here. He notes that the drift of events aren't encouraging, but it's still early in the Obama administration and he can recapture the momentum and move to the progressive left if he wants to. He could go down the road of public works and industrial recovery. It's an unfinished story.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/11-6

Published on Thursday, February 11, 2010 by TomDispatch.com
The New Deal in Reverse
How the Obama Administration Ended Up Where Franklin Roosevelt Began
by Steve Fraser

On March 4, 1933, the day he took office, Franklin Roosevelt excoriated the "money changers" who "have fled from their high seats in the temples of our civilization they know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision and where there is no vision, the people perish."

Rhetoric, however, is only rhetoric. According to one skeptical congressional observer of FDR's first inaugural address, "The President drove the money-changers out of the Capitol on March 4th -- and they were all back on the 9th."

That was essentially true. It was what happened after that, in the midst of the Great Depression, which set the New Deal on a course that is the mirror image of the direction in which the Obama administration seems headed.

Buoyed by great expectations when he assumed office, Barack Obama has so far revealed himself to be an unfolding disappointment. On arrival, expectations were far lower for FDR, who was not considered extraordinary at all -- until he actually did something extraordinary.

The great expectations of 2009 are, only a year later, beginning to smell like a pile of dead fish with new rhetoric -- including populist-style attacks on villainous bankers that sound fake (or cynically pandering) when uttered by Obama's brainiacs -- layered on top of the pile like deodorant. Meanwhile, the country is suffering through a recovery that isn't a recovery unless you happen to be a banker, and the administration stands by, too politically or intellectually inhibited or incapacitated to do much of anything about it. A year into "change we can believe in" and the new regime, once so flush with power and the promise of big doings, seems exhausted, vulnerable, and afraid. A year into the New Deal -- indeed a mere 100 days into Roosevelt's era -- change, whether you believed in it or not, clearly had the wind at its back.

lots more...

[asdjrocky]

1. The election and the year since has taught me one thing for sure-

The fix is in.

[tom_paine]

9. I didn't want to believe it Rocky - I still don't, but the evidence is overwhelming.

Is Obama fully in on it, or just another gutless Democratic "Leader" in a long line of 'em?

It doesn't really matter whether or Obama's bought-and-paid for or not, because even if he isn't, he's acting just like he is.

A horrifying realization, but better to know now than later, eh?

[asdjrocky]

10. Yeah.

It's killing me, but I'd have to be a fool by now not to see it, and I refuse to be a fool. (Lol, not any more anyway!)

[tom_paine]

11. The worst and perhaps scariest part is, to 99.5% of the American Subject Populace, WE are the fools.

I have often said that our nation is very much in a similar position to 1933 Germany, psychologically, politically, etc. Many, and perhaps you would agree,e believe this to be hyperbole, BUT...

Our National Dialog is as corrupted and upside-down as 1933 Germany, lies are seen as true and the truth can't even be heard above the cacophonous carnival of nonsense that passes for "news".

At least 1/3rd of our populace is as steeped in absolutism, illogic, misinformation and disinformation as 1933 Germans were. The rest just go along to get along and believe what comes out of their TVs.

The Nazis would have just been another crackpot fringe group, until Fritz Thyssen and the German Industrialists backed them. A similar effect can be seen in the mainstreaming of KKK-speech and "conventional wisdom".

Just like in 1933 with the German Social Democrats, our Democrats are either clueless, bullied or bought-off, maybe some combination of the three. As I mentioned above, the whys don't matter, only what IS.

There's more, much more, but you get my drift. This nation is a VERY dangerous place for freedom-loving people just as 1933 Germany was.

Because a nation who's mind and soul is so thoroughly corrupted with absurdities, to paraphrase Voltaire, is capable of committing the most monstrous atrocities imaginable.

I suppose we can be thankful the Nazis spoiled the "concentration camp the liberals" brand-name and it has taken the Bushies so long to make an end-run around it with regard to remarketing and rebranding some very discredited ideas.

But our future, clearly (long, long VERY LONG odds that it will not come to pass within this century, and perhaps much sooner) is something horrific, brewing in our National Mind and Soul right now.

We already resemble in many ways a 1950s dystopian sci-fi novel. (Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, many others, take your pick)

And we don't have so far to fall anymore. We don't have a whole lot further to transition into whatever nightmare our "American Industrialists" have in store for us their Final Solution.

Larger and larger portions of our nation are now fully psychologically prepared to murder millions of their fellow-citizens, so long as the marketing is right and the government is behind them.

May God Help us all, but most of all those poor young people right now who will have to live in the dystopian future that has already got it's tendrils sunk deep into our nation.

[RevCheesehead]

2. You're right - this IS an excellent article!

I am indebted to FDR for employing, through the CCC, both of my grandfathers, who lived in poverty. Because my dad's father could go to work, my dad could go to college and become a teacher. Then his salary helped pay the family morgage, and so on...

Where are the creative minds in this administration? Bailing the banks won't work if they won't lend.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

5. Three of my grandparents --

were employed through the WPA -- a damned fine program that I still see the benefits of today. SF has an incredibly collection of WPA art, architecture, and infrastructure.

[dgibby]

6. CCC is the gift that keeps on giving.

They built Douthat State Park, near my hometown in Va. I worked there as a teenager, saving up enough money to supplement my Pell Grant for nursing school! We were borderline lower middle class/poor, and without that money, I could never have gotten an education beyond high school.

[xchrom]

3. Recmmend

[G_j]

4. good read

thanks! K&R

[Overseas]

7. K&R. I wanted frank talk about The Bush Crash and The Bush Bailout

right off the bat.

I wanted Democrats to seize their branding and stand together for the strongest public option because the public was desperate for relief after the Bush Crash and the Bush Bailout. It was the perfect opportunity to band together for some very basic compassion-- freedom from medical terror.

Could have done the bipartisan thing as a teaching moment-- The Republicans have strayed from their ideals. They were once in favor of fiscal responsibility, but ran up deficits in the trillions. They were once in favor of a strong national defense but they pushed a war of choice on false pretenses that has been riddled with war profiteering and trashed the Geneva Conventions very boldly and openly, even though we executed others who had done those things.

But our Democratic leaders and president chose instead to pretend the Republican party still had those attributes which they had given away long ago. Our president and his 2009 advisors chose instead to pretend that singling out the Bush Crash and Bush Bailout would be "Looking Backward" and we wanted to "Look Forward." But he won so many votes because many of us across party lines understood that the New Republicans had driven our country off economic and ethical cliffs and we wanted significant change.

We Look Forward to an age in which our government cannot be hijacked by war profiteers and privatizers who are determined to win and retain power at all costs, indifferent to human suffering and the long term health of our country and planet.

[Vidar]

8. K&R.

[MisterP]

12. "obstructionism" and the "Bush crash" are to blame, of course--but only up to a point

since Obama HIRED the people behind the Bush crash! therefore, it's a Bush-Obama crash; any rhetoric not acknowledging this is mere grandstanding and pro wrestling

oh, and we haven't had a left wing in mainstream American political discourse since McCarthy utterly purged the New Dealers and Commies--with the legitimizing help of ADA and the NAACP (then again, Britain has Marxists and a neoliberal Labour)