Some Notes: Ways of Thinking

Currently in Salon is a long and intriguing article detailing the bitter rivalry between Hoover and Roosevelt, and consequently between Hooverites and Rooseveltians for the "soul" of America -- well, at least the economic part -- which, as we know, the Hooverites are winning hands down.

I recommend reading it because it helps to challenge conventional wisdom and thinking about the differences between the Hooverite and Rooseveltian viewpoints, and it helps to understand that neither president was quite what their caricatures would have use believe.

For example, I've long felt that something "changed" Hoover from the radical activist who had literally saved Belgium and then Europe and then even the newly hatched Soviet Union from starvation during and after WWI, who would let nothing stand in the way of his mission -- to feed the starving masses -- and who was able to act quite forcefully over agricultural policy in the United States during the War, into someone who was indifferent to the plight of the masses during the Great Depression and who insisted it was neither desirable nor possible for him to act on their behalf. What changed him? The article doesn't really say, but it notes the stark difference in his approach to crisis abroad as opposed to his apparent indifference to suffering at home.



And then there is a long and really quite stunning article in Truthout, translated from the French, that essentially re-envisions the world as it ought to be -- or at least could be if we and our leadership and governments had the vision to go forth.

By all means, sit with them, read, review the past, contemplate A Better Future.

We've been in a downward spiral for many a long year, and the Rightists sense the Bottom is near for them too. Their predatory and destructive natures are ruling the roost so to speak. The way forward is not with them -- it never was -- but finding the alternative path is still a work in progress to say the least.

Whatever it turns out to be, it cannot be based entirely on preserving scraps of the status quo.