No, for the most part they were honest with themselves and the public about the privilege they had been born into (back before privilege was a four letter word). Funny ya left off Teddy tho, who very much did play up his rough riding everyman persona (tho to be fair, he actually was bout that life… just VERY wealthy while bein bouttit).
Thing is, before Reagan, it was considered uncouth, if not patently gauche to be so blatantly, visibly self-serving as a blue blood. Funny enough, Trump was pretty much the poster boy of the decadent 80’s nouveau riche. Inna way, his presidency is the ultimate culmination of the mindset… poetic… and tragic… poegic.
TR and FDR both got to see, hear and smell real poverty, up close. They knew that Americans should never have to live that way and were determined to use their wealth and status to make a difference.
People called FDR both a fascist and a communist (!) and called both of them "traitors to their class"
Prescott Bush (HW’s pops/Dubya’s gramps) was VERY vocally opposed to FDR, and might’ve even played a role in The Business Plot, a foiled military coup to oust him. At the very least, he was a Nazi sympathizer and generally uncool cat.
Yeah I remember hearing that as well. As popular as FDR was in hindsight, a lot of people don't realize that he was also very very veryveryvery controversial.
O, you still run into folks that hate him, waaay more often in the last decade. Arguably the most popular president of all time, four successful elections, most landslides (obviously that can’t be repeated barring an amendment or repeal of the 22nd). That said, far from perfect, Japanese internment camps being the one everybody loves to bring up (and usually by people that would’ve LOVED Japanese internment camps if they lived back when).
Personally don’t see how you keep him out of the top three with Lincoln and Washington (tho the whole owning humans as property thing is kinda hard to get over with Washington). Dealt with The Great Depression, instrumental in the Allied victory in WWII, oversaw the creation of the modern American welfare state leading to the biggest explosion of the middle class ever seen on earth (this is a good thing), basically created global American hegemony (this is a debatable thing hah).
Landscape entirely different these days tho, and I mainly blame the media being captured and conglomerated by the aforementioned new breed of nouveau riche. AM radio, Fox News, totally uncurated but targeted social media algorithms… blatant editorialism if not outright bullshit masquerading as journalism. Know it gets harped on incessantly, but the downfall of professional journalism and how it’s delivered to people has been catastrophic. Led to the erosion of trust in many of our institutions, academia, science, and the arts specifically.
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u/FeralTames 16d ago edited 16d ago
No, for the most part they were honest with themselves and the public about the privilege they had been born into (back before privilege was a four letter word). Funny ya left off Teddy tho, who very much did play up his rough riding everyman persona (tho to be fair, he actually was bout that life… just VERY wealthy while bein bouttit).
Thing is, before Reagan, it was considered uncouth, if not patently gauche to be so blatantly, visibly self-serving as a blue blood. Funny enough, Trump was pretty much the poster boy of the decadent 80’s nouveau riche. Inna way, his presidency is the ultimate culmination of the mindset… poetic… and tragic… poegic.