What would Roosevelt Do?
Dealing with Malefactors of Great Wealth, Ecocide, and other Existential Crises of Late Capitalism
If a great leader from our American past were able to see the current state of the nation, and give advice, what would they say? Someone like Lincoln or FDR or JFK?
Could they even adapt that advice to the unprecedented situation we are dealing with now? Not just the technology but more importantly the nature of our ills. The long constitutional crisis. Climate disruption. The wealth disparity. Corporate dominance. The stultifying air of late capitalism. Nuclear proliferation.
The question is, overlooking both technology and novel problems, are there universal human questions here that a leader of any era could comprehend and weigh in on.
Things like greed, hubris, betrayal, cowardice. It seems to me we are witnessing a tragedy, in the Greek meaning of the word. They did not call the affairs of our small lives tragedies, even the very sad things. Tragedies were the things of kings and gods. Entities of great power.
What is being acted out in the body politic in real time is the stuff of tragedy in that classical sense, and I do think that people from any era would grasp that. It is archetypal.
If we take the modern gadgets out of it and the postmodern angst, you are left with the bare moral bones. We live in a world where a terrible love of war in some quarters made the existence of one nuclear weapon acceptable, and mounted no effective challenge when this turned into arsenals big enough to destroy all of creation 10 times over.
And, simultaneously, the terrible love of profit and power led to the damaging of the systems that make life on earth possible. And to the homeostasis needed for a functioning biosphere. While the bomb COULD destroy all life, the predation of today's capitalists is actually doing it.
This goes beyond the most obvious manifestation, climate disruption. It includes ecosystem degradation and destruction, the proliferation of plastic, and everything connected with the petroleum industry, from extraction to use, to name just a few. These activities bring a level of wealth that not many of us can even comprehend, to a very few individuals and families.
Most importantly, it is the same people causing both of these disastrous conditions. They are what Teddy Roosevelt termed "malefactors of great wealth". And now, having corrupted our economic system so completely that profit is the only acceptable reason for anything, and having beggared the rest of humanity in service to that profit, they are now causing the largest extinction in 65 million years. And we could be next.
This is a level of evil that puts it on a biblical scale. The end of this story is not written yet. We still outnumber them by orders of magnitude. But, can we stop them? What would Lincoln say or FDR? Can we learn from the past? Time is running out.
What would Roosevelt Do?
Sad, but true. It's overwhelming. My heart is very sad.
Annabel - I just subscribed as I read your FB post yesterday & today. I'm a like minded writer etc. who already follows Thom Hartmann, Robert Reich, etc. Here's what I put at the top of my FB share of this article (BEFORE I subscribed/read the article/was able to see you were talking about Teddy, not FDR): "EXACTLY what I commented on a prior post yesterday (Sat. 1-14-23) We NEED another F.D.R. to come into office as President of the USA & KICK ASS & TAKE NAMES EXACTLY LIKE F.D.R. DID!! THAT'S EXACTLY WHY the OLIGARCHS have taken control of the GOP, SCOTUS, CONGRESS, & MEDIA!! So what do we do?? ACTIVATE! >ORGANIZE>PUBLICIZE> GET "UP IN ARMS" (Figuratively, NOT armed revolution) & DO IT OURSELVES!! With the rigged system we have in the USA IT MAY NOT BE POSSIBLE, BUT WE HAVE TO TRY!!! Damned if I'll go to my grave knowing I didn't give it my best shot!! Peace & Love. "Nuff Said" (to quote Stan Lee of Marvel Comics) RIP Stan" .....Mike