I have been mystified by the numbers game as played by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I mean, we all know the jobs report is bogus and played for politics. Still we are expected to believe it all, and it continues, like so much else in this Progressive media society, without question or critical thinking.

The real numbers, the raw and unadjusted ones, are what they are: this economy is being slowly strangled by the weight of an oppressive, regulatory State. We are actually in an environment where the true unemployment rate is over ten percent, and nearly a quarter of working citizens are either unemployed or underemployed, or just depressed out of the work force altogether.

I find myself- along with many others- like one of those ancient and apoplectic haters of FDR. What the man did was wrong then and it should have been obvious at the time to the most casual observer. Instead, the media of the day, Mr. H.L. Menken and Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune notwithstanding, played along as if he was the savior of the American people.

Mr. Obama is the recipient of this same unquestioning fealty by the media today. The latest whim of the President- to extend unemployment benefits for another year at a cost of $25 Billion- just slid right by. Like his “tweaking” of the implementation of other Laws of the Land.

We have become inured to these raids on the public purse. I mean, if the Fed is permitted to print $85 billion a month in the Unicorn Bucks, what is another $25?

John T. Flynn analyzed the Roosevelt Myth in a book of the same name in 1948. It has recently been updated and reissued, and I find some cold comfort in knowing that everything in the accepted narrative about our Sainted four-term President is wrong.

Still, criticism of FDR now constitutes nothing less than sacrilege against the civic religion of the United States, just as skepticism of the catastrophic nature of Global Warming (it is under a degree Celsius since 1840, so the panic is about what again?)

A realistic look at the narrative produces a different result. Roosevelt can be viewed only as a near total disaster. The “Roosevelt-haters” of the 1930s and 1940s, have been vindicated, not that anyone who is reporting on the current cast of amateurs in the Executive Branch.

The central issue regarding Mr. Roosevelt is the same as that we confront with Mr. Obama: how can such a vain, intellectually shallow person be so attractive in his delusions? Since his priority is not the economic health of the United States but the desire to retain at all costs, now that he has obtained that goal, can he really be that dangerous?

Despite Roosevelt’s shallow intellectual basis, his Brain Trust of Socialist theorists came up with schemes to extricate the United States from the Depression were not totally aimless, and have an eerie similarity to those of the Obama Administration. The New Dealers found some of the principles of fascism much to their liking, and Mussolini’s corporative state was the model for Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration. Mussolini now is a cartoon villain. But in 1933 he was a towering figure who was worthy of imitation for efficiency and prosperity.

What they liked particularly was his corporative system…. The NRA provided that in America each industry should be organized into a federally supervised trade association. Anything sound familiar?

Flynn’s book concludes with the argument that an irresponsible and ambitious president unleashed the forces of state planning and militarism in order to keep alive his power. As we all know, FDR’s end is a cautionary one: dying, FDR was unable to think clearly, yet clung to power. In the “interest of the Republic and Victory.” Naturally, he proved no match for Stalin in the conferences at Teheran and Yalta.

Sort of like Mr. Obama’s lame negotiations with the Iranians that seem to have validated their right to enrich uranium to weapons grade.

Perhaps like Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Obama will consider that his personal well-being is actually that of the Republic and decide by decree that he should run for a third term, due to the economic emergency? We have already seen OpEd pieces in the NY Times calling for revocation of the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution. It was, I hasten to add, the first such amendment since the 21st, which repealed Prohibition.

But certainly we could see adjustments in the numbers to justify whatever he wants.

Even if such an apocalyptic scenario does not come to pass, we have three more years of adjustments that promote a slow but steady improvement. And yet it is not. We are contracting in most of the Blue States, and under this strange man with his stranger ideas, we will have to become more and more creative with the numbers.

Thanks for this one. I would have been a “Roosevelt Hater” back in the day. For Mr. Obama, I can only dredge up contempt. And suspicion. I am minded of the tome penned by former Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan: “Hope is Not a Method.”

I hope Mr. Obama’s lack of intellectual curiosity and interest in governing will permit him to exit the stage without further catastrophe, but as I said, there is plenty of time for mischief.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
WWW.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303