The two sort of conventional “unconventional claims” on the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt are either contradictory, or weirdly compatible.

I am not speaking of the anti-Roosevelt faction meted out in the occasional George Will column — the conservative actions against Big Government — which lines up to “The New Deal didn’t get us out of the Great Depression”.  I tack to a couple of positions that could be described “progressive”, perhaps a progressivism measured out with conspiranoia, but it aligns itself there nonetheless.

The BBC has recently aired a program, I believe because a new book has just been published (as well the old book has recently been republished) — on “The Fascist Plot to Sieze the White House“.   The key name that has been dropped into this fracas, which was not mentioned in any mention of Smedley Butler’s claims between the 1930s and through — probably until today, but certainly through the 1970s — Prescott Bush.

And thus FDR is the bulwark against Mussolini’s mode of Fascism, as represented by the Bushes — who weaved themselves through the Republican Party and through the Government Apparatus — and which shows itself in the current administration.  Who were, at the time, deafly afraid of the courageous reforms and changes he was bringing to bear on the established order.
If you must.  Everything stems from the question “If they attempted it rather crudely with Smedley Butler, who’s to say they didn’t just keep on going with more sophisticated tactics.”

Any number of CIA experiments come to mind.

Or else you may go to, say, Walter Karp and his book Indispensable Enemies.   FDR kept the old order going, serving as a bulwark against the angry masses — handing “Big Business” every single thing they wanted, beyond even what Herbert Hoover dared grant these Special Interests — all the while making sure to let the Republican Party off the hook and back into the Political Game.  Then he started preaching warfare in 1937, and ended whatever goodness emenated from “The New Deal”.

At a more conspiratorial angle than Walter Karp dares offer, this has FDR looking the other way to, well, in the current political climatology we end up focusing in on Prescott Bush.  But the names have to be rather temporal — even if they are part of the same basket from 1933– based on who on that ledger is up or down.

There’s a bit of “I Want to Believe” in these crevices of the mind.  But the secret sometimes stares a bit closer and clearer in one’s face.
So what was Roosevelt?  Both and neither, I suppose.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 12:02 am and is filed under Conspiranoia, History Regurgitates Forward, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.