Anonymous asked:
Do you sometimes think that you're too harsh on FDR?
warsofasoiaf answered:
No, not particularly. I think the things I criticize him for are fairly self-evident.
No one denies that the internment of Japanese-Americans was a travesty, but I am annoyed at the historical minimization of FDR’s role in the entire affair. He’s the one who authorized it, and more importantly, he authorized it while having credible intelligence reporting that there was no threat. In historical discussions, FDR is frequently never even mentioned, almost as if paranoia and racism just spontaneously willed EO9066 into existence, as opposed to a document which he knowingly signed.
Similarly, I don’t think it’s contestable that FDR favored Soviet interests over American ones in his approach to Soviet policy. He took repeated efforts to stop counter-intelligence against the Soviet Union; when the Soviets were discovered to be conducting espionage against the US, his response was to inform the Soviets via back-channels rather than arrest or PNG the offenders, to maintain the relationship and avoid political blowback (since his initial recognition of the Soviet Union was contingent on ceasing espionage activity against the US). While presidents and politicians are given great leeway in interpreting what is in American public interest and frequently conflate personal political interest with the American public interest, Obama declassifying intelligence to shore up his re-election in 2012 comes to mind, I don’t think there’s any way to interpret his overly-accommodating attitude toward the Soviets as anything other than counter to American interest. This can’t even be explained as wartime necessity, because FDR had been doing this even before 1941.
Even something as simple as the Air Mail scandal has broader ramifications. You can say that FDR was misled by George Dern who claimed that the Army Air Service pilots could fly the airmail routes, but he threw MG Foulouis under the bus in order to preserve Dern’s and his own political reputation and then gave the airmail contracts to Errett Cord, his campaign contributor. That’s fairly standard corruption, but the Hoover administration’s awarding of the airmail contracts was the reason he rescinded the contracts in the first place! The idea that “it’s okay when I do it,” has been a very pernicious problem when it comes to anti-corruption efforts, and the idea that the politicians will cover up the death of servicemen to save their own careers just rankles me for personal reasons.
You can like him for any number of reasons, I just feel that the historical record largely ignores FDR’s blunders in favor of a purely hagiographic approach.
Thanks for the question, Anon.
SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King
Not to mention that FDR’s admin was rife with Soviet infiltrators that he basically welcomed with open arms.
People have been white-washing FDR for 70 years so it's about time somebody pointed out his wrongs. In addition to his racism and xenophobia that led him to putting citizens in camps and keeping society segregated, he was also antisemitic, to the point where Jewish leaders were begging him to bomb the tracks to the concentration camps and accept ships of refugees and he refused. Prewar, people were boycotting German products and his administration intervened to help companies evade the boycotts with new, misleading labels to keep good relations with Htiler's regime and refused to speak ill of Hitler in order to maintain the German-American relationship. Then there was his admiration of Stalin, amply covered above.
His New Deal didn't do anything to help the Depression but did allow the government to steal people's gold, control what farmers grew to keep the prices of food high, and snatch unprecedented power. When the Supreme Court tried to block his power-grabbing, he tried to pack the Court and remove checks and balances, On the personal side, he was a tyrant who treated his wife like shit.
In an era where we are determined to expose the warts of our past figures, there's no reason for FDR and his bigoted totalitarianism to be exempt.
such-justice-wow
