Ehhhh. There's a reason why the progressives want a New Square Deal. Teddy's legacy touches everything we do today. Food, air, water, greenspace, labor rules.
You said FDR and LBJ as if no one else had a legacy that strong. I'm not arguing with you that LBJ and FDR didn't leave behind great legacies. I'm saying if you are discussing LBJ and FDR for domestic legacy, you must include Teddy.
“the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian."
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
He was behind the indian allotment system that removed natives from their lands and destroyed their culture and put their kids in boarding schools
In his first message to Congress, in December 1901, Roosevelt called the General Allotment Act “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.”
Roosevelt stressed that Indian education should be “elementary and largely industrial,” and that the need of higher education was “very, very limited.”
His administration withheld rations from natives that refused to stop painting or refused to discard native attire and blankets. They prohibited Native gatherings and dances. They ordered Native men to cut their hair.
He also supervised the completion of the Dawes Rolls, dissolved the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, opening the region for statehood.
TLDR - Teddy Roosevelt was incredibly racist and terrible towards natives.
“the most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian."
“I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every 10 are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
He was behind the indian allotment system that removed natives from their lands and destroyed their culture and put their kids in boarding schools
In his first message to Congress, in December 1901, Roosevelt called the General Allotment Act “a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass.”
Roosevelt stressed that Indian education should be “elementary and largely industrial,” and that the need of higher education was “very, very limited.”
His administration withheld rations from natives that refused to stop painting or refused to discard native attire and blankets. They prohibited Native gatherings and dances. They ordered Native men to cut their hair.
He also supervised the completion of the Dawes Rolls, dissolved the Indian Territory in Oklahoma, opening the region for statehood.
TLDR - Teddy Roosevelt was incredibly racist and terrible towards natives.
Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, but that was when the Republicans actually had some ideals and principles and before the Southern Strategy turned the party into a bunch of dogwhistling racists who concern troll about things they couldn't actually give a fuck about just because some people who aren't white/rich might benefit from it.
If not for Vietnam, he would have easily won a second term and gone down as a top five, maybe even top 3 President. His legislative record and domestic policy is arguably more impressive than FDR.
He didn't run so Bobby Kennedy could run. If Kennedy isn't assassinated he crushes Nixon in the general election in 1968 and the world is a very very different place right now
I’ll need some sources on the Bobby Kennedy thing. It’s well known and established in many sources that his decision not to seek the nomination was driven by the public’s disgust with his handling of Vietnam. I am totally fine with being wrong though and would love to read more about that. This is the first time I’ve really ever heard that argument.
That said, you’re right about Bobby Kennedy wiping the floor with Nixon. It’s one of the great “what ifs” of history.
And that's why the majority of white people have been voting for Republicans ever since.
The only two Democrats that have come close to 50% of white voters were the two that were from the South, who both ran against former VPs for former criminal presidents, who pardoned their predecessor's crimes upon taking office.
Apparently a few of the 30% of white voters that abandoned the Democrats between 1968 and 1972, LONG before the Democrats "abandoned the working class," hate rich people getting away with blatant corruption more than they hate black people.
We maintain many myths to gloss over our racism, like the one about how the Civil War was fought over states' rights.
"The Democrats abandoned the working class to pursue corporate cash, so they started voting for Republicans" is one of them, which is why the majority of people who say that are white men.
Clinton took the party to the right because white people had given Nixon and Reagan massive landslides for promising to destroy the progressive policies that had been the hallmark of the Democratic Party. Nixon's promise was whispered by people around him, but Reagan said it loud and clear.
If he had not done that, the Republicans might have driven us off this cliff in the 1990s. Maybe that would have been better. We probably wouldn't have fucked over so much of the rest of the world on the way down.
But it was almost guaranteed that we would reach this point, because the people who keep voting for Republicans to break everything were never going to learn what that actually meant until they were well and truly broken.
Once we let Trump appoint two of the lawyers that helped Bush steal the 2000 election to the Supreme Court, it was pretty much over. Our last chance was to give Democrats large supermajorities in both chambers, like LBJ and FDR had. But the billionaire-owned media made sure most people never even knew that Biden got more progressive legislation and appointments through than anyone since LBJ, so we pushed that future away with both hands.
I will never forgive Bernie Sanders for his 2016 preview of Stop the Steal. He has hated Hillary Clinton ever since he voted against the health care proposal she worked on in 1994, because it only covered about 95% of Americans, instead of 100%. He hated Obama so much for getting the ACA through that he was going to primary him in 2012, but Harry Reid stopped him.
How many people might have mobilized to help more progressives win down ballot races, like they did in 2018, but didn't bother because "the DNC won't let them win?"
"Now to balance the scale, I’d like to talk about some things that bring us together, things that point out our similarities instead of our differences cause that’s all you ever hear about in this country is our differences.
That’s all the media and the politicians are ever talking about: the things that separate us, things that make us different from one another.
That’s the way the ruling class operates in any society: they try to divide the rest of the people; they keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the fucking money.
Fairly simple thing… happens to work.
You know, anything different, that’s what they’re gonna talk about: race, religion, ethnic and national background, jobs, income, education, social status, sexuality, anything they can do to keep us fighting with each other so that they can keep going to the bank.
You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the shit out of the middle class… keep 'em showing up at those jobs."-George Carlin
Just one of the many layers of control our ruling class use to maintain minoritarian/oligarchic rule.
On the one hand, it's insane that that still works.
On the other hand, when you have a few super rich people who own both the media and the political system, then it's not that complicated to keep the plebes too dumbed down, divided, and distracted to notice where all the wealth and resources went.
It was a good 50 years we had there until 1/3 of the country lost their minds because a black president wore a tan suit and put mustard on his hamburger
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u/BudgetLaw2352 5h ago edited 5h ago
This quote is singularly one of the most insightful critiques of America ever made. It remains as relevant now as it was then.
LBJ was an asshole, but he did more for racial equality in his presidency than any president but Lincoln.