Why Should I Vote For Hillary?

[Antilogic]

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.



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

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.

To be quite frank, I was surprised to see so many surveys of historians rate FDR as #1--it appears WW2 dominates the subconscious of even the experts in the field.

But by and large, I agree with TF here.

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.

From today's perspective it is easy to point to SS as the crowning achievement of the New Deal. However, the WPA, rural electrification, and other such programs were strongly supported by FDR and were integral components to the New Deal at the time.

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

Even civil libertarian extraordinaire Earl "Effing" Warren supported the Japanese internment. It's a real black mark on our history.

 

[Formaldehyde]

There are many such black marks. I can't think of a single president where something didn't occur which reflected negatively on his administration.

But I agree this was one of the big ones. It is much like the way Muslims have been vilified and discriminated against since 9/11, or Jews and even Catholics until the past 50 years or so.

 

[Hygro]

I think you can blame him for internment a lot more easily than you can blame him for the Great Depression or even American WW2 involvement....

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

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.

Well, as far as The New Deal goes, I think the "best" part was unabashedly putting lots of people back to work on essential infrastructure by using government money. SS is great and all that, but it didn't even start paying out until many years after it was passed, so it wasn't really useful during the Depression itself. The fact that most of it got destroyed by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, and thus didn't produce much material benefit for the country, is more an indictment of the USSC and the Constitution than it is of New Deal programs themselves. Social Security, on the other hand, has had decades of utility, which is why it gets the fame.

 

[ParkCungHee]

From today's perspective it is easy to point to SS as the crowning achievement of the New Deal. However, the WPA, rural electrification, and other such programs were strongly supported by FDR and were integral components to the New Deal at the time.

Yes, but those programs have a much more patchy record. When most people bang on about the legacy FDR left us, it's mostly stuff he didn't want, and got past without his approval. It's important to remember that the majority of FDR's opposition didn't come from the right, but from the left within his own party.

Well, as far as The New Deal goes, I think the "best" part was unabashedly putting lots of people back to work on essential infrastructure by using government money. SS is great and all that, but it didn't even start paying out until many years after it was passed, so it wasn't really useful during the Depression itself.

I'd agree with this some key caveats:

1) Social Security was different in that it did something to improve the dignity of the working class. The infrastructure work, while improving the immediate poverty of the people involved, was still your fairly run of the mill wage exploitation. I'm not a big fan of applauding capitalists for giving people jobs when they claim to be in the "private sector" and I don't see how it's all that much better doing the same thing with the public sector.

2) To place the credit of these programs on FDR seems to suggest that he championed their expansion, when he was, again relatively moderate and conservative on a program largely accepted by the political class at the time.

3) The programs themselves being a product of congress, we should look at how generously and benignly FDR operated the system. And here, we see it was frequently abused and used as both a carrot and a cudgel to score political points. So again, I have trouble with this idea that because FDR was willing to let some workers have a job, so long as it was politically advantageous, somehow balances out the internment camps, the racial demagoguery, the incompetent foreign policy, ordering U.S. troops to enforce the Nuremberg Laws, and using his veto to prevent ordinary people from receiving economic relief.

 

[Traitorfish]

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.

It's impressive how seamlessly you shift from "most important" to "most heroic". As if the two had anything much to do with each other.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

To a nationalist they are the same thing.

 

[Gucumatz]

Oh please and to a communist they aren't?

 

[Traitorfish]

Not really. If anything, we're the sort of pessimists who assume that anybody important is up to no good.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I'd agree with this some key caveats:

1) Social Security was different in that it did something to improve the dignity of the working class. The infrastructure work, while improving the immediate poverty of the people involved, was still your fairly run of the mill wage exploitation. I'm not a big fan of applauding capitalists for giving people jobs when they claim to be in the "private sector" and I don't see how it's all that much better doing the same thing with the public sector.

2) To place the credit of these programs on FDR seems to suggest that he championed their expansion, when he was, again relatively moderate and conservative on a program largely accepted by the political class at the time.

3) The programs themselves being a product of congress, we should look at how generously and benignly FDR operated the system. And here, we see it was frequently abused and used as both a carrot and a cudgel to score political points.

I'm not that familiar with the internal politics of the New Deal, just with the programs that came out of it and their fate. I am aware that it's been molded into some great plan which FDR had from the start, which got him into office in the first place, I just don't know how true that is (you suggest it isn't, which I'm quite inclined to believe). However, I think that, for a capitalist, the New Deal was very bold in its addressment of the unemployment problem - a radical solution no doubt influenced by the contrast with the industrial boom going on in the Soviet Union at that time, where state-directed industrialization had eliminated unemployment and was moving the country forward economically. I'm sure FDR was thinking, among other things, that this contrast might be an encouragement to labor to radicalize more militantly, and that from this grew both the employment campaigns as well as that labor bribery that we call the Wagner Act - something which Congress was careful to restrain and then hamstring as soon as the economy was doing better.

So my political perspective here should perhaps be slightly misanthropic, in that I wish things had stayed worse for longer, as this might have finally pushed the American workers over the edge. At the same time, it's difficult for me to actively wish that people be voluntarily allowed to starve and suffer (and make no mistake, it was voluntary that it was ever allowed to happen) for any end if any other path is possible, because my mind quite simply rebels at such malice. I know I wouldn't want to be one of the millions who was left without a job in a capitalist society where one is required, whether its in the service of business which must be allowed to pull the economy up "naturally," or in order to radicalize others who just don't get it yet. But then there are some times that an individual's lot just doesn't matter much, as there are larger things afoot.

So again, I have trouble with this idea that because FDR was willing to let some workers have a job, so long as it was politically advantageous, somehow balances out the internment camps, the racial demagoguery, the incompetent foreign policy, ordering U.S. troops to enforce the Nuremberg Laws, and using his veto to prevent ordinary people from receiving economic relief.

It doesn't. I'm sorry if you felt I was saying that.

 

[Traitorfish]

I think he was addressing that towards Cutlass, rather than towards you.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

He put my name in the quote tags.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I think you can blame him for internment a lot more easily than you can blame him for the Great Depression or even American WW2 involvement....

On what basis? That FDR reluctantly signed the executive order due to public sentiment and the advice of his military leaders?

The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 led military and political leaders to suspect that Imperial Japan was preparing a full-scale attack on the West Coast of the United States. Japan's rapid military conquest of a large portion of Asia and the Pacific between 1936 and 1942 made its military forces seem unstoppable to some Americans.

American public opinion initially stood by the large population of Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast, with the Los Angeles Times characterizing them as "good Americans, born and educated as such." Many Americans believed that their loyalty to the United States was unquestionable.[16]

However, six weeks after the attack, public opinion turned against Japanese Americans living in on the West Coast, as the press and other Americans became nervous about the potential for fifth column activity. Though the administration (including the President Franklin D. Roosevelt and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover) dismissed all rumors of Japanese-American espionage on behalf of the Japanese War effort, pressure mounted upon the Administration as the tide of public opinion turned against Japanese-Americans. Civilian and military officials had serious concerns about the loyalty of the ethnic Japanese after the Niihau Incident which immediately followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, when a civilian Japanese national and two Hawaiian-born ethnic Japanese on the island of Ni'ihau violently freed a downed and captured Japanese naval airman, attacking their fellow Ni'ihau islanders in the process.[17]

Several concerns over the loyalty of ethnic Japanese seemed to stem from racial prejudice rather than evidence of actual malfeasance. Major Karl Bendetsen and Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Command, each questioned Japanese American loyalty. DeWitt, who administered the internment program, repeatedly told newspapers that "A Jap's a Jap" and testified to Congress,

I don't want any of them [persons of Japanese ancestry] here. They are a dangerous element. There is no way to determine their loyalty... It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen, he is still a Japanese. American citizenship does not necessarily determine loyalty... But we must worry about the Japanese all the time until he is wiped off the map.[18][19]

That he was a major advocate of providing aid to the allies long before the US became involved?

How is this not similar to so many people blaming him for prolonging the depression?

How FDR Made the Depression Worse

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

 

[Gucumatz]

Its one thing to argue economics, but another thing entirely to receive letters from a subjugated population detailing conditions - letters which were sent to FDR. Back to the case of the Aleutian natives FWS internment camps - groups of Aleutian women starving and watching their children die in the near concentration camp like conditions in Alaska and Washington state actually wrote a petition of conditions that they sent to FDR.

What about the native Alaskans? Their loyalty certainly wasn't being questioned by the vast majority of Americans - they were thrown into camps because of strategic interest.

 

[Hygro]

On what basis? That FDR reluctantly signed the executive order due to public sentiment and the advice of his military leaders?

Because in one case he's the commander in chief, a 3 time elected leader with a strong command of the bully pulpit, and in the other case it was a preexisting financial crisis that even with the progressive initiatives he and others promoted, were still taking years to counter act.

Seriously, you are asking us to hold a president equally responsible for his own war commands as his predecessor's inability to handle bank failure waves.

 

[bugwar]

Why vote for Hillary Clinton?
How about why NOT to vote for her?





From the article:

More often, a secretary of state sees the cables that his or her staff pulls out because they are important and should be seen.
Figuring out what the incumbent secretary wants to see, will wish to see, and will be angry for not having seen is very difficult when there’s a new secretary — but what is Hillary Clinton’s excuse on September 11, 2012, after almost four years in office?
There had been three and half years to set up a system, to let the career officers of the Secretariat and the Operations Center know what she wants, and to have her personal staff figure it out too.

That is to say, if she did not see the Benghazi cables in a timely fashion, if she did not see Chris Stephens’s cables describing the deterioration of security, and if she did not see his requests for more security, this was a huge management failure on her part.
It is a poor excuse to say, “Gee, the Department gets lots of cables” — and perhaps even worse then to hide behind an Accountability Review Board that pins responsibility on assistant secretaries and no higher.

Having worked as an assistant secretary of state and a deputy national-security adviser, I can report that even in those posts one is entirely swamped by cable traffic and needs a system to cope with it — to be sure that the really important ones get through.
From all the available evidence, Hillary Clinton failed to establish such a system for herself, and that management failure is a far more important fact about her tenure than being the third woman to hold the post or having flown more miles than Condoleezza Rice.

Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/338607/hillary-clintons-management-failure-elliott-abrams

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

"Shoplifters will be droned." I want a sign of this, plz.

 

[Gucumatz]

Me too I think the entire satire is hysterically Republican, but that sign is amazing

 

[bugwar]

Me too I think the entire satire is hysterically Republican, but that sign is amazing

Well, if you liked that, then how about something from that bastion of the left, "The Washington Post"?

From the article:

All of that is true, as was her inattentiveness to the security of our ambassador, her misleading after-attack statements, her bogus internal review
and her failure to recognize the growing al-Qaeda menace in North Africa before it was too late. Still, this is sort of small potatoes in the field of Hillary debacles.
...
Blindsiding the Israeli prime minister with a public declaration of U.S. policy on “1967 borders”
Backing Hugo Chavez’s candidate in Honduras rather that the middle and business classes’ choice (who was also pro-American)
Relaxation of Cuban sanctions followed by Alan Gross’s imprisonment
...
Embracing Hosni Mubarak (calling him a family friend) just when pressure was needed to prevent what ultimately became
his overthrow
Trying to engage Bashar al-Assad and calling him a reformer
...
In the largest sense, Clinton was handed some national security wins (in Iraq and Afghanistan, in strong relationships with Middle East states)
and frittered them away, failing to construct a sustainable and effective policy architecture for the post-Bush years.
The best and most honest defense is that she wasn’t really in charge of foreign policy; the president was.
That leaves two significant problems:
1) How does she lay claim to a legacy, and
2) If she was so at odds with the president, why didn’t she leave after a couple of years to share her wisdom with the country?

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/12/18/hillary-clintons-record/

 

[Hygro]

Yeah that was hilarious.

x-post