Why Should I Vote For Hillary?

[TheLastOne36]

Damn, partisan politics is dumb!

Heh, and I was thinking Canadian politics were getting rough in these upcoming elections.

Forgot how bad you guys have it, a real stuck between a rock and a hard place situation.

 

[Arachnofiend]

Obama already learned plenty about getting around Congrss from Bush, I'm not sure what FDR could teach him other than trying to pack the courts and creating internment camps(it's weird how people always gloss over that part of FDR).

Well without the internment camps you have Japanese-Americans (and everyone else who looks vaguely Asian) being murdered in the streets by angry white people

A guy who was in one of those camps (he was a German but yeah) visited my high school senior year and talked about it. According to him the camp itself wasn't a particularly awful experience, his treatment before and after the camp was far worse.

...Not to say the internment camps were a good thing. Or that the people rounding up the suspected terrorists had good intentions in mind. But hey, this is Civ we're talking about, a little whitewashing is in the spirit of the game.

 

[Antilogic]

Fat jokes really? When we have so many Sopranos jokes we could use instead?

whynotboth.jpg?

 

[Dachs]

Fat jokes really? When we have so many Sopranos jokes we could use instead?

i'm not sure what the sopranos have to do with "gravitational pull" and presidential contention

and by "not sure" i mean "they have absolutely nothing to do with either thing"

Obama already learned plenty about getting around Congrss from Bush, I'm not sure what FDR could teach him other than trying to pack the courts and creating internment camps(it's weird how people always gloss over that part of FDR).

which people in particular were you thinking of?

 

[Formaldehyde]

Well without the internment camps you have Japanese-Americans (and everyone else who looks vaguely Asian) being murdered in the streets by angry white people

A guy who was in one of those camps (he was a German but yeah) visited my high school senior year and talked about it. According to him the camp itself wasn't a particularly awful experience, his treatment before and after the camp was far worse.

So internment camps supposedly protected Japanese-Americans? But they didn't do so for German-Americans, except for 15,000 who were suspected of being Nazi collaborators and potential saboteurs?

 

[Gucumatz]

Or the internment camps for Aleutian Natives - Many who were forced into near slavery, threatened to have their children murdered, removed from their ancestral homes like other natives had been done to for centuries, and camps that had death rates comparable (or in some cases higher) than Soviet POW camps? Those camps too?

 

[Light Cleric]

Well without the internment camps you have Japanese-Americans (and everyone else who looks vaguely Asian) being murdered in the streets by angry white people

A guy who was in one of those camps (he was a German but yeah) visited my high school senior year and talked about it. According to him the camp itself wasn't a particularly awful experience, his treatment before and after the camp was far worse.

...Not to say the internment camps were a good thing. Or that the people rounding up the suspected terrorists had good intentions in mind. But hey, this is Civ we're talking about, a little whitewashing is in the spirit of the game.

His administration ran vile, racist propoganda and did everything it could to gin up hatred against that ethnic group. If anything, he shares responsibility for the violence they were being "protected" from.

which people in particular were you thinking of?

Pretty much anyone who ranks FDR as the #1 present in our history.

 

[Gucumatz]

Who do you rank as #1? Pretty much every president has severe flaws from Washington to Jefferson to FDR to Eisenhower, etc. [or any historical character of importance]. I think its better to rank presidents in importance/influence if you rank them at all, rather than something as charged as "best".

 

[Light Cleric]

I actually don't care for "rankings" myself, either, but a lot of people and historians do.

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't think Light Cleric's wrong. A lot of progressives build FDR up as a heroic figure, both progressive and patriot, as an almost proto-social democratic reformer and as the leader in a great "war for freedom". The internment camps do not fit well into that narrative, so they are glossed over, usually with the sort blithe comment that "racism was normal in those days" or "it was actually for their own good" which they would never accept from conservatives. Not historians, I don't think, I'm not sure where he's getting that one, but certainly a lot of non-academics.

Trick is, mind, that conservatives similarly gloss over the preceding three centuries of white supremacy- lots of talk about "Puritan valeus", not so much about the Great Swamp Massacre, plenty of blather about rugged frontier capitalism, less about Wounded Knee- so it's a bit of a "people in glass houses" situation. Taking the long view, FDR was simply the latest in a long line of white people doing awful things to non-white people.

 

[ParkCungHee]

FDR was simply the latest in a long line of white people doing awful things to non-white people.

FDR was doing awful things to all kinds of people.

My favorite is that the one thing he's usually credited for still is Social Security, and he didn't even want that. He just had the political sense not to be the man that vetoed social security.

 

[Hygro]

But he was the only president to encourage such a shift toward increased government thinking to shore the economy in the face of a near-consensus that the best thing for the depression was to let it reach its conclusion. That would have been worse for everyone, and yet it was holding a lot of sway.

 

[Gucumatz]

To be fair, FDR was actually in the Hoover/traditional camp of Economics and even in the early lead up of the depression his ideas weren't all that different from Hoovers. The President's inner advisers shifted economic views as Keynes's theories grew in prominence eventually shifting FDR's ideas as well.

 

[Cutlass]

FDR's favorable reputation isn't really about what he accomplished himself, but rather that he kept trying, when many others would have just abandoned people to their fate. And while he was by no means perfect, and has some terrible things on his record, well that's true of every leader the US has ever had. I don't recall anyone ever saying FDR was the best president the US ever had, that is almost always either Washington or Lincoln, but he certainly rates highly up there. If for no other reason than that the competition for that prize is such a low bar.

Essentially, there have been 3 presidents who were truly pivotable for what the US has become. Washington, then Lincoln, and then FDR. All the other presidents, some were better than others, but none made a mark on the nation which is at all comparable to the marks made by those 3. And of the others who made notable marks, it is usually negative marks rather than positive ones, like Buchanan and Nixon. So as flawed as he is, FDR is an American hero. And all Americans owe him a debt, even if FDR wasn't actually the motive force behind all of what the New Deal accomplished, the New Deal only existed, and accomplished anything at all, because of what FDR did.

 

[Light Cleric]

I don't think Light Cleric's wrong. A lot of progressives build FDR up as a heroic figure, both progressive and patriot, as an almost proto-social democratic reformer and as the leader in a great "war for freedom". The internment camps do not fit well into that narrative, so they are glossed over, usually with the sort blithe comment that "racism was normal in those days" or "it was actually for their own good" which they would never accept from conservatives. Not historians, I don't think, I'm not sure where he's getting that one, but certainly a lot of non-academics.

There have been surveys and studies of and by historians/scholars where FDR is ranked as the greatest or second greatest President, often better than Washington and/or Lincoln.

C-Span
Sienna College

Nate Silver actually linked to the Wikipedia article himself in reference to an analysis he did of some of the poll results. There were more from a long list that were put into a table. No, I'm not citing Wikipedia, I'm citing the sources compiled there.

Again, it's important to note these are surveys of historians, not surveys of Joe Blow. And yes they of course have flaws and biases, but that's kinda the point I was making. I suppose it's inherently difficult to aggregate their opinions on this type of thing because it's not like they go to a ballot box all at once or something, but I'm giving the best representation I can. Just want to make it clear I wasn't talking out of my ass(more than usual).

Trick is, mind, that conservatives similarly gloss over the preceding three centuries of white supremacy- lots of talk about "Puritan valeus", not so much about the Great Swamp Massacre, plenty of blather about rugged frontier capitalism, less about Wounded Knee- so it's a bit of a "people in glass houses" situation. Taking the long view, FDR was simply the latest in a long line of white people doing awful things to non-white people.

I do not see the point in trying to whitewash of "soften" the bad parts of our history or our leader's legacies. I don't mean that this should completely diminish someone's accomplishments, there's just no point in trying to make horrible things look better than they were. I've seen people try to "defend" things as bad as slavery because it they were "sheltered/fed" etc. Big bleeping whoop, so is my dog; my dog's not a human being. What's the point of trying to make these things worse than they are? It's both better and easier to admit we screwed up. it doesn't mean we have to drag our feet and hang our heads for the rest of our collective lives over things that occurred long before we were born, either, just that we should acknowledge they happened.

I mean, to a small extent, there is a little bit of sense in the "context of the times" argument behind certain sentiments, given that racism was ingrained in many many generations of people from a young age, But it's one thing to justify someone using the words "colored" or "negro" 100 years ago when their parents, grandparents, and probably their whole family used it and taught them it was acceptable; defending horrible things like internment camps and the hate-inciting propaganda is very, very different. I don't know that I'd even be allowed to post an example of some of the garbage that was run back then.

 

[Dachs]

To be fair, FDR was actually in the Hoover/traditional camp of Economics and even in the early lead up of the depression his ideas weren't all that different from Hoovers. The President's inner advisers shifted economic views as Keynes's theories grew in prominence eventually shifting FDR's ideas as well.

Neither were his policies. In his last year, Hoover implemented a fair number of things that might have been ripped from the New Deal playbook.

 

[ParkCungHee]

So as flawed as he is, FDR is an American hero. And all Americans owe him a debt, even if FDR wasn't actually the motive force behind all of what the New Deal accomplished, the New Deal only existed, and accomplished anything at all, because of what FDR did.

Failed to make it as bad as he wanted to?

 

[Cutlass]

Failed to make it as bad as he wanted to?

What does that even mean?

 

[ParkCungHee]

I stated in this thread. FDR tried to nix Social Security, which is probably the best thing you can point to out of the "New Deal." When his attempts to stifle it from going to a vote failed, he signed off on it rather then face to political consequences for vetoing it.

So yeah, he put politics above principle to avoid getting in the way. That certainly makes up for the concentration camps and anti-semitic policies.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I don't think Light Cleric's wrong. A lot of progressives build FDR up as a heroic figure, both progressive and patriot, as an almost proto-social democratic reformer and as the leader in a great "war for freedom". The internment camps do not fit well into that narrative, so they are glossed over, usually with the sort blithe comment that "racism was normal in those days" or "it was actually for their own good" which they would never accept from conservatives. Not historians, I don't think, I'm not sure where he's getting that one, but certainly a lot of non-academics.

Trick is, mind, that conservatives similarly gloss over the preceding three centuries of white supremacy- lots of talk about "Puritan valeus", not so much about the Great Swamp Massacre, plenty of blather about rugged frontier capitalism, less about Wounded Knee- so it's a bit of a "people in glass houses" situation. Taking the long view, FDR was simply the latest in a long line of white people doing awful things to non-white people.

You make it sound like it was his idea:

FDR Library: FDR and the Japanese American Internment

Today, the decision to intern Japanese Americans is widely viewed by historians and legal scholars as a blemish on Roosevelt’s wartime record.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI arrested over 1200 Japanese aliens throughout the United States. Over the next several weeks, President Roosevelt received contradictory advice about further action.

FDR’s military advisers recommended the exclusion of persons of foreign descent, including American citizens, from sensitive areas of the country as a safeguard against espionage and sabotage. The Justice Department initially resisted any relocation order, questioning both its military necessity and its constitutionality.

But the shock of Pearl Harbor and of Japanese atrocities in the Philippines fueled already tense race relations on America’s West Coast. In the face of political, military, and public pressure, Roosevelt accepted the relocation proposal. The Attorney General acquiesced after the War Department relieved the Justice Department of any responsibility for implementation.

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 granting the War Department broad powers to create military exclusion areas. Although the order did not identify any particular group, in practice it was used almost exclusively to intern Americans of Japanese descent. By 1943, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans had been forced from their homes and moved to camps in remote
inland areas of the United States.

Granted, it was a very dark page in American history. I think there is no doubt that FDR should have done far more to resist the movement to intern Japanese-Americans in particular on such a massive scale. But blaming Roosevelt merely because he was president at the time is much like blaming him for WWII or the Great Depression.

I stated in this thread. FDR tried to nix Social Security, which is probably the best thing you can point to out of the "New Deal." When his attempts to stifle it from going to a vote failed, he signed off on it rather then face to political consequences for vetoing it.

Is that right?

Today a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.

This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.

I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts in behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.

If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.

So yeah, he put politics above principle to avoid getting in the way. That certainly makes up for the concentration camps and anti-semitic policies.

So when exactly do a few remarks which could be taken to be anti-Semitic become the "policy" of the US government? Source, please.