this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2025
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He built the regulatory state, which was unquestionably good. Capital had become so concentrated and the government so thoroughly captured that it was in dire need of reform. Through his outsized personality and blue blood background Teddy Roosevelt was in a unique position to break the logjam and put badly needed constraints on capital in a government that was otherwise ossified.
He was also a genocidal freak. So in that sense he appeals to many different sensibilities.
Honestly we could use a second coming of the first half of Teddy right about now, the situation is set up very similarly. Minus the genocidal part ofc but then whether you can have one without the other is a meaningful point of debate. Imagine Trump but instead of concentrating power further in capital he flows it in the other direction, back to the state. Trump has the rizz but his policies are just the total opposite of what we need, so he's like the anti teddy Roosevelt, just careening us off a cliff at full speed in a way few other politicians would be able to accomplish. Hence the JDPON DON memes lol.
There are moments in us history when individuals are able to subsume competing factions through sheer force of personality to effect transformative change. Teddy Roosevelt was one such figure, as was Washington, Jackson, FDR, Lincoln. Most of these guys are just riding along on the current but a few of them embody the moment.
Highly recommend hell of presidents btw.
Listening to hell of presidents and recognizing that need for the charismatic figure to break the regulatory capture is one of the things that is so disturbing about the current moment-- if you look at the Dems there is nobody even remotely close to this, unless they can pull a trump and pull someone out of the celebrity pile.
This is the tragedy of Obama in my view-- he was such a figure, but in his cowardice rather than leaning in to his base of popular support and applying pressure he kowtowed to capital and pissed the opportunity away. It's the people who are able to combine the policies that are needed in the moment with the personalities to bring them to life that end up on the currency
Stephen A Smith will break the wheel of neoliberalism