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In reply to the discussion: This is what a REAL Democrat sounds like. [View all]MADem
(135,425 posts)They lived off the returns off of their investments in railroads and coal, for starters.
He was a nice corporatist, with some very good "noblesse oblige" ideas, but don't ever get the wrong idea that he'd roll his wheelchair to the ramparts and shake his fist at the "man" for putting "the people" down. He came from a society where there was an "us" and there was a "them." His "us" was rich, his "them" were the poor unwashed for whom he had a measure of sympathy.
He wouldn't even desegregate the military. It took Truman (raised in a very racist environment) to do that.
Ask George Takei how he felt about spending his childhood, as an American citizen, in a "concentration camp" set up by this guy, because of the way he looked.
He was a product of his time. He did some very good things, and he had some blind spots.
Like most humans.
I don't point this out to put him down, I do it so that people don't begin to fashion an unrealistic, idealistic idea about the man--kind of like what people did to poor Obama before he even spent a day in the job as President, having to deal with people who didn't share his vision or goals.