The Best of Mariah Carey: WE COULD HAVE BECOME FASCISTS IN THE 30’S

BUT SOME VERY PROGRESSIVE AND PATRIOTIC AMERICANS PREVENTED IT

They were visionaries and progressive thinkers; they were ahead of their time and prevented our country from becoming just another FASCIST nation. The signs were there and so were the proponents of Fascism. But ahead of the pack opposing the trend to go fascist was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

I think that FDR singlehandedly prevented what at the time of the Great Depression seemed inevitable: a sharp turn to the right and to a FASCIST society. Europe and Japan were going at it and implementing the most pervasive and thorough fascism and prospered…well they did so in relative terms.

FDR had more than his share of critics but not as extensive and as divisive as we have today against President Obama. FDR had Father Charles Coughlin taking jabs constantly against FDR; much in the same manner that Rush Limbaugh is doing with Obama.

There are sharp similarities then and now between FDR and Barack Obama. There are also sharp differences that make President Obama more vulnerable and our America a good candidate for a FASCIST type metamorphosis.

Whenever a country is immersed in an economic crisis, the general public is subjected to discomfort and misery. Unemployment and poverty, homelessness and lack of health care are but a few of the manifestations of an economic failure. In the 30’s it was well into the Hoover presidency that all these calamities took place and by the time Roosevelt ran for President the country was ready for change.

Arguably Roosevelt brought back the country from ruin into more prosperous times although even today there are critics on the far right that claim that FDR’s NEW DEAL was a failure…like Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume who joined the ranks of conservative media figures attacking President Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression as a failure that worsened the economic crisis of the 1930s, asserting on the January 7 edition of Fox News' Your World that "the New Deal -- everybody agrees, I think, on both sides of the spectrum now, that the New Deal failed. The debate is over why it failed." He later asserted that "President Roosevelt waged what could only be called a jihad against private enterprise.*

Of course, there is a lot of disagreement with that misrepresentation of the facts. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, for example, has said that Roosevelt did not go far enough to end the crisis and that his attempts to balance the budget hindered recovery.

In a November 10, 2008, New York Times column, Krugman wrote that Roosevelt's policies included "long-run achievements" that "remain the bedrock of our nation's economic stability" and that Roosevelt's short-term successes were constrained because "his economic policies were too cautious."

Krugman further wrote:

“Now, there's a whole intellectual industry, mainly operating out of right-wing think tanks, devoted to propagating the idea that F.D.R. actually made the Depression worse. So it's important to know that most of what you hear along those lines is based on deliberate misrepresentation of the facts. The New Deal brought real relief to most Americans.”

The major differences I am afraid will hurt America and will hinder President Obama from preventing a FASCIST–OLIGARCHY-THEOCRATIC take over; because President Obama took office just as the crisis was starting, the American people did not suffer some of the more severe miseries and discomfort that the people felt during the 1930’s. Yes, there is unemployment (about half of what it was back then) and home foreclosures, as well as two unnecessary wars that have cost the United States dearly in terms of life and treasure.

But back then the special interests were not as deeply entrenched nor did they have the influence and power that they have today. It is very easy for the Koch brothers, United Health Care, Exxon or Goldman Sachs to influence the political arena by dumping great sums of money into political campaigns, lobbying efforts and even think tanks that eventually succeed in organizing fake grass roots movements to benefit their agenda.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that President Obama is a black man and there are an awful lot of racist folks out there in America today.

That is why I think that we may very well be on our way to a FASCIST paradise if these elections don’t show a total repudiation of the Teahadists and their odious ideology.