233
quote unquote
(thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2026
233 points (92.4% liked)
Political Cartoons
381 readers
504 users here now
Celebrating the centuries old craft of political cartoons.
Linking and crediting the original artist is encouraged if possible, but not enforced.
Rules
- Don't remove the artist watermark if present
- Zero tolerance policy for AI "art"
- No right wing BS. This includes zionism
For memes and other formats please keep to other comms, like:
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
Wasn't Roosevelt seen as a good president?
FDR was a moderate, organized labor forced him to make concessions to the working class. FDR got credit for 40 years of labor organizing. Everybody knows about the new deal in 1935, nobody knows about the 1934 nationwide strike wave.
Granted, was he terrible? In some ways yes. Japanese internment was a particularly egregious example. Tbf, Abraham Lincoln was also a moderate re: slavery until historic conditions forced the issue of emancipation. A bad president would have held the line against objective historical conditions and deepened the crisis. This is what Trump does. FDR wasn't a bad president like Trump, but IMO he was more like a guy who did the minimum when wealth inequality and crisis was not just the worst, but when the organized workers demanded change and were able to fairly quickly take over whole cities and industries in order to force our demands.
FDR also inadvertently created the concept of tying healthcare to employment. He wouldn't let employers offer higher pay during the labor crunch in the war to avoid fears of inflation. Employers then got creative by offering benefits like healthcare and the rest is history. Despite the bad shit he was till arguably one of the best presidents in the country because we can't have morally uncompromised leaders apparently.
Yeah I'm fine with treating him with an even hand. I'm not sure how useful it is to just paint every president with the same black mark. Pre ww2 was pre USA core imperialism, the rules were a little different. We got the new deal, Germany got Hitler. Understanding why the ascent of the international working class after ww1 led to the defeat of the international working class after ww2, and how the project played out differently in different places at like exactly the same time is the real practical insight afforded by class-based historical analysis IMO. And practical understanding requires understanding the actual history, not just some leftist caricature of it.
I think the model for this is like Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B DuBois. Just straght, unvarnished facts about every aspect of the period, particularly how national and international causes affected individuals on the basis of class antagonisms (and vice versa.) Gramsci talks about Piedmont Savoy empire understanding their historic role in the risorgimento, contrasted with the more progressive Action Party, and how that developed the next 100 years of Italian politics. And how knowing our "historic role" requires knowing the real opportunities and limitations afforded by history, and not what we think they "should be" as historic subjects.
As someone fairly historically ignorant thank you for explaining! ☺️
I see