[Peace-discuss] The Day They Arrested President Roosevelt

[C. G. Estabrook]

That we drive gas-guzzling automobiles is not a justification for the murderous
policies of our government.  That we drive gas-guzzling automobiles (instead of
using, say, ecologically sound mass transit) is itself the result of policies
that serve the interests of the few, not the many.

For example, the suburbanization of US society after WWII depended on the forms
of work made available and the separation of work and housing. And that of
course depended on production's being organized for profit, not for use.

The US courts found that there was a national conspiracy to destroy mass transit
in the US in the first half of the 20th century. General Motors, Firestone
Rubber, and Standard Oil of California bought up and destroyed efficient
electric transportation systems in Los Angeles and dozens of other cities. (See 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal>; I've
attached a remarkable picture from that article of Pacific Electric Railway 
streetcars stacked at a junkyard in 1956.)

Then the federal government then took over. (There's not much distinction in
reality between the political and the economic.)  It relocated infrastructure
and capital stock to suburban areas and also created a huge interstate highway
system under the usual pretext of defense. Railroads were displaced by
government-financed motor and air transport.  To see the effect, compare trains
in Europe and Japan with those in this country.

And traditional uses of the terms -- as opposed to the ways that were twisted by
20th-c. power structures -- mean that socialism and dictatorship are
contradictories, just as capitalism and democracy are.


John W. wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Jenifer Cartwright <jencart13 at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:jencart13 at yahoo.com>> wrote:
> 
> WHY am I putting my 2c midway into one of the many threads going on this
> topic??
> 
> Can't argue w/ this posting from John W, tho' re the last sentence, feel the
> need to clarify and remind folks (probably preaching to the choir here) that
> there IS a HUGE distinction between political and economic systems: e g,
> democracy vs dictatorship as prime examples for the first; and e g socialism
> vs capitalism as examples for the second. --Jenifer
> 
> 
> And again, that's the point.  Bob Naiman started this thread, innocently 
> enough, by mentioning several ECONOMIC gains for ALL Americans that might
> never have been achieved if FDR had been forcefully removed from office, as
> the Honduran President recently was.  Carl retorted, predictably, by
> reminding us for the 5,721, 986th time that not only FDR but every President
> since has been a war criminal and should have been arrested.  Ricky chimed in
> that probably every President we've ever had was a war criminal.
> 
> My contribution was to suggest that there is no POLITICAL system on earth
> that does not produce war criminals.  War is a POLITICAL act, but it has
> ECONOMIC justifications and ramifications.  I went on to suggest that not
> only does the POLITICAL act of war not negate the ECONOMIC good that a
> President may do, but more importantly, war is one of the primary engines
> that has actually made it possible for all of us in America to enjoy the
> ECONOMIC privileges which we have enjoyed and still to a large degree enjoy.
> 
> It's not difficult to draw the implication that, unless we are literally 
> willing to "put our money where our mouth is" and renounce our economic 
> privileges - e.g., our gas-guzzling automobiles - we are ALL complicit as war
> criminals, just as Carl wants to hold the average German accountable for
> Hitler's atrocities (and equate me, for rhetorical effect, with the average
> German during World War II).  Most of us are not in a position to totally
> alter our lifestyle, so it seems rather pointless and hyprocritical to me to
> make a list of Presidents who ordered others murdered so that we in America
> could all live better.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- On *Fri, 7/17/09, John W. /<jbw292002 at gmail.com 
> <mailto:jbw292002 at gmail.com>>/* wrote:
> 
> 
> From: John W. <jbw292002 at gmail.com <mailto:jbw292002 at gmail.com>>
> 
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] The Day They Arrested President Roosevelt To:
> "Ricky Baldwin" <baldwinricky at yahoo.com <mailto:baldwinricky at yahoo.com>>
> 
> Cc: "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
> <mailto:peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>> Date: Friday, July 17, 2009, 7:14
> PM
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Jul 17, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Ricky Baldwin <baldwinricky at yahoo.com 
> <http://us.mc449.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=baldwinricky@yahoo.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> Nice list (if 'nice' is the right word for an accounting of such heinous
> crimes).
> 
> We could go back further, of course - right to Washington, if I'm not
> mistaken.  Pretty close, anyway.
> 
> Ricky
> 
> "Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn
> 
> 
> 
> To the point where it's utterly moronic to make such a list. What's the
> point, if every President we've ever had made decisions that led, directly or
> indirectly, to the instigation or escalation of some war?  Wars are
> instigated by virtually every other nation and tribe and culture and people
> on earth as well.  The human race is insufferably brutal and selfish, and 
> humans kill fellow humans every day to get what they want.  You yourself,
> gentle and precious reader, may not kill directly, but you very definitely
> consume the things and enjoy the lifestyle that war and brutality make
> possible, just like everyone else. Wake me up the day one of you figures out
> how to eliminate human aggression and self-centeredness.  Until then, wake me
> up when one of you figures out a better system of government, in terms of
> your ONE stupid binary criterion of war/not war.
> 
> John Wason
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --- On *Fri, 7/17/09, C. G. Estabrook /<galliher at illinois.edu 
> <http://us.mc449.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=galliher@illinois.edu>>/* 
> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu 
> <http://us.mc449.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=galliher@illinois.edu>> 
> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] The Day They Arrested President Roosevelt To:
> naiman.uiuc at gmail.com 
> <http://us.mc449.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=naiman.uiuc@gmail.com> Cc:
> "Peace-discuss List" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net 
> <http://us.mc449.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net>>
>  Date: Friday, July 17, 2009, 2:33 PM
> 
> 
> Of course, it might have been a good idea to arrest
> 
> --Truman before he bombed Japan; --Eisenhower before he overthrew the
> governments of Iran and Guatemala; --Kennedy before he invaded Cuba and South
> Vietnam; --Johnson before he attacked North Vietnam and the Dominican
> Republic; --Nixon before he attacked Cambodia and domestic dissidents (e.g.,
> Fred Hampton, not G. McGovern); --Ford before he allowed the attack on  E.
> Timor; --Carter before he increased military aid to near-genocidal Indonesia;
>  --Reagan before he killed tens of thousands in LA and Lebanon; --Bush before
> he launched wars in Panama and the Gulf; --Clinton before he attacked Iraq
> and Serbia; --Bush jr. before he invaded Iraq --Obama before he devastated
> AfPak...
> 
> and perhaps even Roosevelt in 1937, before he manipulated an anti-war
> populace into war with Japan.
> 
> We might also have noticed that the Constitution nowhere gives the Supreme
> Court the right to overrule an act of Congress.
> 
> 
> Robert Naiman wrote:
>> 
>> What a dark day for American democracy it was -
> February 5, 1937, the day the
>> crisis over President Roosevelt's struggle with the
> Supreme Court's blocking
>> of the New Deal was "resolved" when Roosevelt was
> deported to Canada. How
>> might America be different today, if minimum wages,
> the National Labor
>> Relations Act, and Social Security had not been
> overturned by the Supreme
>> Court? Maybe 60% of our fellow citizens wouldn't
> still be living in poverty.
>> 
>> 
> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/the-day-they-arrested-pre_b_237678.html
> 
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/7/17/112828/523
>> 
>> http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/265
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