1. Actually....ice water.
Awakened by a bucket of ice water!
Well....An analogy...not an actual ice water bath.....but far worse.
The sudden realization that he had been betrayed by his long time love....Joseph Stalin.
But first.....
Let's go waaayyyy back....to prior to 1933, before his election to the presidency. The only explanation for Franklin Roosevelt's bizarre behavior involves both the personal, and the geopolitical.
2. Long before his presidency, and also before the economic downturn engineered by Hoover.....FDR hated capitalists. A personal hatred....petulance....and not based on ideology!
Franklin Roosevelt had a visceral animosity toward businessmen, entrepreneurs, successful capitalists. And he had a way with words, in describing them. "unscrupulous money changers..." the greed and shortsightedness of bankers and businessmen," "..rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence" "we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." "there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing."
Why?
They hurt his feelings.
a. Not the only rejection, but a significant one, was his attempt to join Porcellian, the oldest and most elite social club at Harvard. Theodore Roosevelt and other members of the Roosevelt family belonged to the club, but Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president of the Harvard Crimson, never managed to be elected a member.
At some time, in his late thirties, he told his relative Sheffield Cowles that this had been "the greatest disappointment in his life".
Frances Richardson Keller, Fictions of U. S. History : A Theory & Four Illustrations, p. 116.
Porcellian members were future entrepreneurs, businessmen, bankers, and corporate lawyers.
And they had rejected Franklin Roosevelt.
Roosevelt seemed to have a desire to punish the ones who rejected him, who could succeed where he failed. As a powerful politician, he could do just that.
b. Brilliant?
Only a 'C to C+' student; not much for homework, study, or research....but he focused on social-political clubs, debates and journalism.
Oliver Wendell Holmes observed that Roosevelt had "a second class intellect. But a first-class temperament!"
It was all about smiles, handshakes, and speeches!
Sound like a certain contemporary politician? And FDR was without a teleprompter, no less!
And so...his personal failures and shortcomings fueled his future policies.
But...we've only covered a portion of the motivations of Franklin Roosevelt.
Next...how he saw himself in the geopolitical realm, and how it determined his anti-American agenda.
Awakened by a bucket of ice water!
Well....An analogy...not an actual ice water bath.....but far worse.
The sudden realization that he had been betrayed by his long time love....Joseph Stalin.
But first.....
Let's go waaayyyy back....to prior to 1933, before his election to the presidency. The only explanation for Franklin Roosevelt's bizarre behavior involves both the personal, and the geopolitical.
2. Long before his presidency, and also before the economic downturn engineered by Hoover.....FDR hated capitalists. A personal hatred....petulance....and not based on ideology!
Franklin Roosevelt had a visceral animosity toward businessmen, entrepreneurs, successful capitalists. And he had a way with words, in describing them. "unscrupulous money changers..." the greed and shortsightedness of bankers and businessmen," "..rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence" "we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." "there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing."
Why?
They hurt his feelings.
a. Not the only rejection, but a significant one, was his attempt to join Porcellian, the oldest and most elite social club at Harvard. Theodore Roosevelt and other members of the Roosevelt family belonged to the club, but Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was president of the Harvard Crimson, never managed to be elected a member.
At some time, in his late thirties, he told his relative Sheffield Cowles that this had been "the greatest disappointment in his life".
Frances Richardson Keller, Fictions of U. S. History : A Theory & Four Illustrations, p. 116.
Porcellian members were future entrepreneurs, businessmen, bankers, and corporate lawyers.
And they had rejected Franklin Roosevelt.
Roosevelt seemed to have a desire to punish the ones who rejected him, who could succeed where he failed. As a powerful politician, he could do just that.
b. Brilliant?
Only a 'C to C+' student; not much for homework, study, or research....but he focused on social-political clubs, debates and journalism.
Oliver Wendell Holmes observed that Roosevelt had "a second class intellect. But a first-class temperament!"
It was all about smiles, handshakes, and speeches!
Sound like a certain contemporary politician? And FDR was without a teleprompter, no less!
And so...his personal failures and shortcomings fueled his future policies.
But...we've only covered a portion of the motivations of Franklin Roosevelt.
Next...how he saw himself in the geopolitical realm, and how it determined his anti-American agenda.
