• Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Thankfully we got the greatest president the country has ever seen instead.

    I hope not. FDR did a lot of great things, but he was also a racist who didn’t give the same benefits to non-white people as white people and, of course, was responsible for the shameful Japanese-American concentration camps.

    If that’s the greatest president, we have never had any hope.

    • Astroturfed@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Objectively, almost every president is a piece of shit and you need to judge them by the merits of their time. Almost every white dude alive in America was a racist shit bag by today’s standards. FDR accomplished a ton, and it was all for the common man. Please, tell me who you think was a better president?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        I don’t know, any number of the ones who didn’t commit genocide? Or do I need to ignore that because of the antiquated time period of… *checks notes* 80 years ago?

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          2 years ago

          FDR didn’t commit genocide. The Japanese internments were a national shame but were not genocidal in nature.

          He is only guilty of it you count segregation itself, which he didn’t start and couldn’t stop, though the New Deal coalition he assembled would evolve and become key to the growing Civil Rights movement even if the New Deal itself wasn’t as fair to black people as it should have been, like everything else in America.

          I personally would choose Lincoln as number one but FDR is definitely a contender for best. Certainly better than you should have expected from a segregation-era liberal.

            • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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              2 years ago

              Not that either. A grave injustice that could very easily have become such, one that corrupt local officials certainly abused, but there were no death marches, no mass executions, and no cultural extermination.

              Misuse of the term genocide dilutes the impact of the accusation, and you should just be generally careful of trying to tear down one of the few presidents who tried to make things better for… Well, anyone. We haven’t really had one since before Reagan that did more than talk a good game and then stab labor in the back.

                • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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                  2 years ago

                  When they say “with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous” they do that by actually removing the people from the region instead of forcing them into camps in the region and then letting them out again.

                  That and, you know, mass murder.

                  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                    2 years ago

                    Ah right, they totally planned to let them out again. They never bothered to tell them that, but…

        • hypelightfly@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          They asked for a specific example and you failed to provide one. You had 45 choices and couldn’t even pick one?

        • Astroturfed@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          So, you think be cause 80 years doesn’t sound like long enough people weren’t that bad? That’s a really silly argument. 80 years ago they strung black people up from trees for looking at a white woman too long in half the country. This kind of mentality is why we gloss over the huge portion of the country that is still seriously racist. There’s plenty of people alive TODAY that protested integration.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      That. And when he caught fascists scheming in the Republican party. Instead of investigating and rooting them out. He merely threatened to do it if they blocked his legislation. So in the short term he got his legislation through. And in the long term got it gutted and neutered, saddling us with a now fully fascist Republican party. Thanks FDR.

      He did some short sighted good. But that posturing and playing fast and loose screwed us all over.