Who was the better president: Franklin Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan?

[KaiserDave]

This conversation is going to give me a massive aneurysm.

[junior chįmp]

FDR....Reagan was a clown

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

Somebody with your policy orientation might not approve of this, but the vast majority of Americans see victory in World War II as both much more significant historically and much more imperative morally than victory in World War I.

[Vosem]

Roosevelt was an awful President who grew the power of the state and used it to send racial minorities to concentration camps, so I'd have to go with Reagan here. Victory in WWII is an important achievement but I'm not sure it's easily ascribable to the President, particularly since unlike in the Civil War or Cold War there weren't really any important domestic constituencies who supported surrender, such that good leadership was necessary for the country to remain in the fight.

Reagan has his drawbacks (and much of what he's popularly credited with, like FDR, wasn't really his doing), but they seem much less severe. On the other hand, even though Reagan's Presidency is now 40 years ago, it still feels like there is an element of recentism/"too soon to say" to it; some public figures from that era are still around and while many of the threads of that era seem to be heading towards resolution -- a defeat for the War on Drugs, a total victory for neoliberalism -- they haven't quite made it there yet.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

particularly since unlike in the Civil War or Cold War there weren't really any important domestic constituencies who supported surrender,

lol

a total victory for neoliberalism

lol

[John Dule]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

The circumstances of our entry into those two wars were completely different. Not to mention the fact that Wilson butchered any chance of a decent peace (Roosevelt died, of course, so perhaps that isn't a fair comparison).

[KaiserDave]

Aside from my pithy comment, the answer is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is like comparing a glorious Norwegian salmon dinner to a plate of moldy cheese.

[TheReckoning]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

Somebody with your policy orientation might not approve of this, but the vast majority of Americans see victory in World War II as both much more significant historically and much more imperative morally than victory in World War I.

It’s only more significant historically because of their hasn’t been another world War since. World War 2 has become to be seen as, to refer to a term used for the First World War, the “war to end all wars.”

And while World War II was arguably a more significant war to win, let’s not act like the Central Powers winning the 1st World War was even close to being neutral on its effect in the world, instead of decidedly worse.

[KaiserDave]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

Somebody with your policy orientation might not approve of this, but the vast majority of Americans see victory in World War II as both much more significant historically and much more imperative morally than victory in World War I.

It’s only more significant historically because of their hasn’t been another world War since. World War 2 has become to be seen as, to refer to a term used for the First World War, the “war to end all wars.”

And while World War II was arguably a more significant war to win, let’s not act like the Central Powers winning the 1st World War was even close to being neutral on its effect in the world, instead of decidedly worse.

The Central Powers were reactionary and highly militarist, but at no point did they attempt a war of racial extermination (Generalplan Ost, Drang nach Osten, etc. etc.). They are not comparable.

[TheReckoning]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

Somebody with your policy orientation might not approve of this, but the vast majority of Americans see victory in World War II as both much more significant historically and much more imperative morally than victory in World War I.

It’s only more significant historically because of their hasn’t been another world War since. World War 2 has become to be seen as, to refer to a term used for the First World War, the “war to end all wars.”

And while World War II was arguably a more significant war to win, let’s not act like the Central Powers winning the 1st World War was even close to being neutral on its effect in the world, instead of decidedly worse.

The Central Powers were reactionary and highly militarist, but at no point did they attempt a war of racial extermination (Generalplan Ost, Drang nach Osten, etc. etc.). They are not comparable.

Armenian Genocide?

Keep in mind I did say that World War wasn’t as significant to win as WW2- who knows how many the Nazis would’ve killed had the conquered the East- but to say it was insignificant is also foolish from a historical perspective. Therefore, if one is going to credit FDR with the win in WW2, they might as well credit Wilson with the win in WW1 (although it wouldn’t be as influential on his ranking for reasons already stated). Not to mention the Central Powers would’ve absolutely won decisively without the USA substantially helping the Entente.

[KaiserDave]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

Somebody with your policy orientation might not approve of this, but the vast majority of Americans see victory in World War II as both much more significant historically and much more imperative morally than victory in World War I.

It’s only more significant historically because of their hasn’t been another world War since. World War 2 has become to be seen as, to refer to a term used for the First World War, the “war to end all wars.”

And while World War II was arguably a more significant war to win, let’s not act like the Central Powers winning the 1st World War was even close to being neutral on its effect in the world, instead of decidedly worse.

The Central Powers were reactionary and highly militarist, but at no point did they attempt a war of racial extermination (Generalplan Ost, Drang nach Osten, etc. etc.). They are not comparable.

Armenian Genocide?

I'll admit I was thinking of Austria-Hungary and Germany (and should have specified Germany in WWI vs Germany in WWII), so fair point, but it is still not remotely comparable. Are you seriously going to claim the consequences German victory in World War One would be on par with one in World War Two?

[TheReckoning]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

Somebody with your policy orientation might not approve of this, but the vast majority of Americans see victory in World War II as both much more significant historically and much more imperative morally than victory in World War I.

It’s only more significant historically because of their hasn’t been another world War since. World War 2 has become to be seen as, to refer to a term used for the First World War, the “war to end all wars.”

And while World War II was arguably a more significant war to win, let’s not act like the Central Powers winning the 1st World War was even close to being neutral on its effect in the world, instead of decidedly worse.

The Central Powers were reactionary and highly militarist, but at no point did they attempt a war of racial extermination (Generalplan Ost, Drang nach Osten, etc. etc.). They are not comparable.

Armenian Genocide?

I'll admit I was thinking of Austria-Hungary and Germany (and should have specified Germany in WWI vs Germany in WWII), so fair point, but it is still not remotely comparable. Are you seriously going to claim the consequences German victory in World War One would be on par with one in World War Two?

No, but what I am saying is that is FDR’s win in WW2 is enough to make him a top 3 president (I know other accomplishments are listed, but this is the 1st or 2nd most significant one listed) then it’s not inconceivable that Wilson’s win in WW1 could make him a top 20 president (along with other accomplishments).

[KaiserDave]

What I find ironic about this whole situation is that scholarly opinion Reagan’s job as president has risen considerably since his term ended, while opinion among the general left has declined. Probably due to considerable frustration and hatred towards the right from the modern left, and they ascribed Reagan as being the father of the modern right.

The "scholars" also think Woodrow Wilson was a top-ten president. I have learned to not pay attention to a single thing they say.

Don’t let your superiority complex get too ahead of you, John.

I don’t think they rank Wilson in the top 10, but upper half, yeah. Although if you’re just gonna say FDR won us WW2, you might as well say Wilson won us WW1, so.

Somebody with your policy orientation might not approve of this, but the vast majority of Americans see victory in World War II as both much more significant historically and much more imperative morally than victory in World War I.

It’s only more significant historically because of their hasn’t been another world War since. World War 2 has become to be seen as, to refer to a term used for the First World War, the “war to end all wars.”

And while World War II was arguably a more significant war to win, let’s not act like the Central Powers winning the 1st World War was even close to being neutral on its effect in the world, instead of decidedly worse.

The Central Powers were reactionary and highly militarist, but at no point did they attempt a war of racial extermination (Generalplan Ost, Drang nach Osten, etc. etc.). They are not comparable.

Armenian Genocide?

I'll admit I was thinking of Austria-Hungary and Germany (and should have specified Germany in WWI vs Germany in WWII), so fair point, but it is still not remotely comparable. Are you seriously going to claim the consequences German victory in World War One would be on par with one in World War Two?

No, but what I am saying is that is FDR’s win in WW2 is enough to make him a top 3 president (I know other accomplishments are listed, but this is the 1st or 2nd most significant one listed) then it’s not inconceivable that Wilson’s win in WW1 could make him a top 20 president (along with other accomplishments).

Well I'm not sure what you're saying at all. Because the consequences of a German victory on continental Europe in World War One is not remotely in the same stratosphere as a German victory on continental Europe in World War Two.

[Vosem]

particularly since unlike in the Civil War or Cold War there weren't really any important domestic constituencies who supported surrender,

lol

Completely seriously, who? The US entered the war with one pacifist opposed in the whole Congress, and I don't think there was ever any movement like the Copperheads or anti-Vietnam activists, who could routinely win elections in many parts of the country, even if they were minorities nationally, during those conflicts.

a total victory for neoliberalism

lol

This is one where there can be more discussion just because 'neoliberalism' has so many distinct meanings and connotations, but 40 years on it seems clear that all attempts at moving past essentially early-1980s fiscal policies have met with defeat, and they are adopted by more countries than reject them.

But again it's difficult to say how much of this (although it is one of his signature accomplishments!) Reagan should actually be credited with -- much of what he did had already been started by Carter. Similarly, although Reagan is often credited on the modern right with a genius foreign policy, it seems to me like the USSR and Eastern Bloc may well have never collapsed if not for Gorbachev's particular idiosyncratic personality, and Reagan's military spending programs were not necessarily decisive.

A president who actually halted the growth of the welfare state and fatally wounded global leftism would be among the all-time greats, of course, but it's not clear to me this can be ascribed to Reagan the man, or even that these accomplishments have stood the test of time. I think I'll have clearer thoughts here in 20 years, once it's truly the case that all the statesmen and leaders from that era are dead.

[TheTide]

Reagan was a failure on his own terms, Cold War aside.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

particularly since unlike in the Civil War or Cold War there weren't really any important domestic constituencies who supported surrender,

lol

Completely seriously, who? The US entered the war with one pacifist opposed in the whole Congress, and I don't think there was ever any movement like the Copperheads or anti-Vietnam activists, who could routinely win elections in many parts of the country, even if they were minorities nationally, during those conflicts.

You're right, but what makes this so disingenuous as an attempt to downplay FDR's role in World War II is that there were powerful constituencies opposing rearmament and aid to the Allies BEFORE Pearl Harbor. The idea of ignoring this entirely in favor of focusing on the relative lack of domestic opposition from December 1941 onwards is, in fact, very funny to me.

a total victory for neoliberalism

lol

This is one where there can be more discussion just because 'neoliberalism' has so many distinct meanings and connotations, but 40 years on it seems clear that all attempts at moving past essentially early-1980s fiscal policies have met with defeat, and they are adopted by more countries than reject them.

This depends on what you mean by "moving past" and "essentially". Obviously we're not going to completely restore a pre-1980 approach to fiscal policy, because the material conditions of the 1970s no longer exist and are unlikely ever to exist again. But key elements of what we think of as "Reaganite" economic orthodoxy, like cutting social spending for the sake of cutting social spending and treating free trade as such an obvious good that one would almost literally have to be insane to oppose it, are more contested--verging on discredited--now than they have been in a generation. So your argument here feels a little like saying that the mid-twentieth century involved a total victory for Keynesian interventionism, because what came after 1980 did not look much like what came before 1930. Of course it didn't. Why would it have?

A president who actually halted the growth of the welfare state and fatally wounded global leftism would be among the all-time greats, of course,

lol

[Vosem]

particularly since unlike in the Civil War or Cold War there weren't really any important domestic constituencies who supported surrender,

lol

Completely seriously, who? The US entered the war with one pacifist opposed in the whole Congress, and I don't think there was ever any movement like the Copperheads or anti-Vietnam activists, who could routinely win elections in many parts of the country, even if they were minorities nationally, during those conflicts.

You're right, but what makes this so disingenuous as an attempt to downplay FDR's role in World War II is that there were powerful constituencies opposing rearmament and aid to the Allies BEFORE Pearl Harbor. The idea of ignoring this entirely in favor of focusing on the relative lack of domestic opposition from December 1941 onwards is, in fact, very funny to me.

Sure, but this seems like a bizarre thing to focus on: any war generates nonideological resistance to participation before it starts, and WW2 stands out in American war history precisely for the lack of resistance to the war's progress during its course. (And aid to the Allies wasn't particularly controversial before the war started, either: it doesn't seem like the Icelandic occupation was particularly controversial, and both parties nominated pro-aid candidates in 1940, even if there was a difference in degree).

Pearl Harbor is critical here -- it swung American public opinion massively and FDR had basically nothing to do with it, unless you want to subscribe to the conspiracy that he knew about it beforehand.

a total victory for neoliberalism

lol

This is one where there can be more discussion just because 'neoliberalism' has so many distinct meanings and connotations, but 40 years on it seems clear that all attempts at moving past essentially early-1980s fiscal policies have met with defeat, and they are adopted by more countries than reject them.

This depends on what you mean by "moving past" and "essentially". Obviously we're not going to completely restore a pre-1980 approach to fiscal policy, because the material conditions of the 1970s no longer exist and are unlikely ever to exist again. But key elements of what we think of as "Reaganite" economic orthodoxy, like cutting social spending for the sake of cutting social spending and treating free trade as such an obvious good that one would almost literally have to be insane to oppose it, are more contested--verging on discredited--now than they have been in a generation.

You hear this often but considering polling of public opinion showing ever-increasing panic about inflation, which was already present before inflation started rising, and particularly results of referendums (where raising taxes on the wealthy is less popular than ever, with progressive taxation in IL/carbon taxation in WA failing), this is pretty unlikely to actually be the case. Today's left-wing movements focus far more on identity issues rather than class than the left of 10 years ago did, and it seems like the most parsimonious way to explain this is by the general lack of interest in those ideas in society.

So your argument here feels a little like saying that the mid-twentieth century involved a total victory for Keynesian interventionism, because what came after 1980 did not look much like what came before 1930. Of course it didn't. Why would it have?

This might've been a fair thing to say in the 1960s, I think; of course the future is unknowable in lots of ways, but it seems very far-fetched to say that society is moving towards greater acceptance of the welfare state or towards less esteem for the very rich. The youth revolt movements over the past few years that have received the most attention among normies are, what, cryptocurrency investment and #gamestonk? Literally grassroots movements calling for less securities regulation.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I'm not sure what I have a harder time taking seriously, the assertion that opposition to involvement in World War II was "nonideological" in nature or the idea that when the average person thinks youth political movements they think of crypto bros. The average person in your circles, maybe, but the average person in my circles is a lesbian Catholic with socioeconomic views similar to those of early-period Fidel Castro and I would never claim that that's representative of the wider world.

That leaves the observation that current leftist movements are more focused on identity issues than on class these days; this is true, but the key point is that the exact same thing has happened on the right. Do you honestly think there's any appetite any more for the Tea Party style of astroturfed pro-austerity Randian #populism that drove right-wing politics in the first half of the 2010s?

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Reagan had Iran Contra and started Fracking, Teddy Kennedy should of been Prez had he beaten Carter

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

What about Iran Contra he sold weapons to our enemies in this era he would have been impeached

I hate Ronald Reagan so much it's unreal.

Reagan is obviously the more libertarian of these two presidents

Even when accounting for inflation, Reagan grew the debt by more in terms of raw dollars than FDR did. Oh, and he was only in office for ~2/3rds the amount of time. FDR had a multiple-front war to fight and a depression to dig us out of. What's Ronnie's excuse for the big price tag?

The debt grew by 1048% under FDR vs  186% under Reagan

https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296

Ronnie also had to rebuild our military after the disastrous post Vietnam cuts and the one sided nature of post Vietnam detente.

I said in raw dollars. FDR grew the debt by $236 billion, equivalent to $1.08 trillion in 1980 dollars. Reagan grew it by $1.86 trillion-- almost $800 billion more than Roosevelt. Focusing on the percentage-of-debt figure is unfair because Roosevelt's spending at the time was without precedent. But that makes sense given the circumstances he found himself in. Again: What is Reagan's excuse?

Uh Reagan also had a major economic crises to deal with even if it wasn’t as big as FDR’s and his policies did get us out of that mess and started arguably the best 15 year economic period in our history .

Also like I said Reagan also had to deal with the fact that post Vietnam detente had left our military weaker and allowed the communists to make un checked gaisn in nearly every region of the planet . Most of the Reagan’s deficits were from fixing that mess as well

I don't think Carter left the military in such bad shape. Of course some capabilities were lost in the 1970s because they were no longer needed after the Vietnam War ended.

I know that Reagan's massive increases in defense spening are often credited for bringing down the USSR, but that's pretty much a myth in my opinion. The USSR collapsed for domestic reasons primarily and the West just played a moderate role (the biggest issue here being the lack of economic cooperation for the Soviets).

Reagan increased the deficit so much because he cut taxes too much while increasing defense spending. While it had an economic impact, the boom of the Clinton years and even during and after Obama's second term lasted longer. To his credit, Bush senior realized he needed to agree to tax increases in 1990, laying the groundwork for the successful Clinton years.

I do think the west did play a huge part in winning the cold war as the cold war did put pressure on the Soviets and forced them to spend a lot of money their economic system couldn't handle. The problem with post-Vietnam Detente is that we kinda let the Communists make gains in every region of the world without much pushback .

Reagan when he became President implemented a policy which not only ended detente but brought back a policy that we more or less hadnt done since the 1950s which is instead of just defending the noncommunist world from the communists, we actively tried to roll back communism where it existed. Doing so forced the Soviets to spend money to actually defend their territory and that exposed problems in their economic system as well

[Vosem]

I'm not sure what I have a harder time taking seriously, the assertion that opposition to involvement in World War II was "nonideological" in nature or the idea that when the average person thinks youth political movements they think of crypto bros. The average person in your circles, maybe, but the average person in my circles is a lesbian Catholic with socioeconomic views similar to those of early-period Fidel Castro and I would never claim that that's representative of the wider world.

I guess nothing is 'nonideological', but it seems like the most important ideological strain was pacifism/noninterventionism, with some sort of vague German- or Italian-American pride distant seconds based on 1936/1940 swings? Sympathy for fascist dictatorships in the US seems by all accounts to have been incredibly marginal by the mid-1930s, though before the Abyssinian war there was a decent amount of support for Mussolini.  

I don't think Catholic lesbians are unimportant or anything, but I think polling shows something like 40% of young men either having bought cryptocurrency or intending to? (Something like 25% of young women, I think; massive age gap). Doing this only really makes sense if you subscribe on some level to a fairly ultra-libertarian view of the world in which the government's authority to have a monetary policy at all needs to be abolished. Not that 40% of people would agree with every corollary of this, but that they're willing to act on the recommendations of this sort of thought is eyebrow-raising. At this point you're doing better than typical midterm turnout.

That leaves the observation that current leftist movements are more focused on identity issues than on class these days; this is true, but the key point is that the exact same thing has happened on the right. Do you honestly think there's any appetite any more for the Tea Party style of astroturfed pro-austerity Randian #populism that drove right-wing politics in the first half of the 2010s?

Yes, absolutely, have you stopped to consider the rhetoric that someone like Boebert or MTG used in their primaries? (Or anyone really successful at small-dollar donations on the right, who is almost always Paulist or Paulist-adjacent.) In GOP primaries the people with the fewest ties to national machines are the people most committed to spending cuts at all costs and privatization of Social Security. I don't think the original Tea Party movement was remotely astroturfed, and the main astroturf on the right comes from national media promotion of 'identity'-based movements like Spencer's: authentic expressions of right-wing sentiment in the US are almost invariably focused on cutting government size.

By contrast on the left the focus on identity seems to encounter much less resistance.

The entire rhetoric of the party at present is focused on how the present inflation/economic troubles is caused by the Democratic government's spending bills, and the entire rhetoric last year was about the inevitable economic troubles that would be caused by a Democratic government's spending.

[CumbrianLefty]

Gratifyingly lopsided poll

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I guess nothing is 'nonideological', but it seems like the most important ideological strain was pacifism/noninterventionism, with some sort of vague German- or Italian-American pride distant seconds based on 1936/1940 swings? Sympathy for fascist dictatorships in the US seems by all accounts to have been incredibly marginal by the mid-1930s, though before the Abyssinian war there was a decent amount of support for Mussolini.

Outright sympathy for fascism was on the downswing by 1936ish, sure, but there was still a ton of anti-British and antisemitic sentiment among communities like (for example) Irish Catholics; plus pacifism and noninterventionism are themselves ideological positions, just not of the kind that people usually accuse others of when they discuss this subject.

I don't think Catholic lesbians are unimportant or anything,

Neither do I; otherwise I wouldn't be friends with so many. Nevertheless, their numbers are small and they are not representative of either Catholics or lesbians, demographically or ideologically.

but I think polling shows something like 40% of young men either having bought cryptocurrency or intending to? (Something like 25% of young women, I think; massive age gap). Doing this only really makes sense if you subscribe on some level to a fairly ultra-libertarian view of the world in which the government's authority to have a monetary policy at all needs to be abolished. Not that 40% of people would agree with every corollary of this, but that they're willing to act on the recommendations of this sort of thought is eyebrow-raising. At this point you're doing better than typical midterm turnout.

Sure, but is this kind of technoanarchism really "neoliberalism" in the sense that this conversation began as a discussion of? Certainly the crypto thing is clearly being advanced primarily by the political right (not surprising since what motivates the whole enterprise basically the classic hard-right terror of fiat money taken to such an extreme that even CO2 emissions are perceived as a preferable backing for currency to sovereign debt!), but the #gamestonks thing is much harder to pin down. It's only self-evidently right-wing if you adopt the MUH SIZE OF GUMMIT framing where whom fiscal policy is intended to benefit and why is unimportant and all that matters is a one-dimensional line with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler both on the left and Friedrich Hayek and Murray Bookchin both on the right.

Also, your initial claim wasn't "a significant minority of young people are interested in crypto, whereas almost no old people are", it was "when the average person thinks 'young people politics', they think crypto". The latter claim is much further out on a significantly weaker limb than is the former.

Yes, absolutely, have you stopped to consider the rhetoric that someone like Boebert or MTG used in their primaries? (Or anyone really successful at small-dollar donations on the right, who is almost always Paulist or Paulist-adjacent.) In GOP primaries the people with the fewest ties to national machines are the people most committed to spending cuts at all costs and privatization of Social Security. I don't think the original Tea Party movement was remotely astroturfed, and the main astroturf on the right comes from national media promotion of 'identity'-based movements like Spencer's: authentic expressions of right-wing sentiment in the US are almost invariably focused on cutting government size.

By contrast on the left the focus on identity seems to encounter much less resistance.

The entire rhetoric of the party at present is focused on how the present inflation/economic troubles is caused by the Democratic government's spending bills, and the entire rhetoric last year was about the inevitable economic troubles that would be caused by a Democratic government's spending.

A great deal of this I think depends on one's preexisting perspective. (Which is to say: of course you, a Republican base voter motivated by economic ultra-dryism, perceive economic ultra-dryism as very appealing to Republican base voters!) I can assure you that people outside the Republican base do not interpret Boebert and MTG's prominence as a vindication of the same tendencies in conservative politics that you're saying people within the base interpret it to vindicate. I also don't know where in the world you're getting this idea that the Republican Party's messaging last year revolved around low spending; the then-incumbent Republican President signed trillions and trillions of dollars of classic Keynesian emergency deficit spending, send out UBI-inspired low-four-digit checks with his own signature on them to try and capitalize politically on having done so, and ran against a definition of "socialism" that was basically a slightly more sophisticated variant of the "socialism is when video games have lesbian characters; the more lesbian characters they have, the lesbianer it is" definition. This was a President who first came to power by running a buzzsaw through the more conventional slash-and-burn fusionist campaigns everyone else ran in the 2016 primaries, instead focusing on Perot-derived heterodox messaging on trade! I guess if you focus less on the Trump campaign than on the campaigns downballot Republicans ran then your interpretation makes a bit more sense, especially since the "wokism" on the other side was mostly limited to downballot campaigns too and yet has come to dominate perceptions of where the Democratic Party is going, but you still seem to be seriously underestimating the degree to which protagonism around Trump has dominated your party over the past five years.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

FDR, of course.

Social Security was great but his best move was the FDIC, which I think is a the embodiment of how government should work (knee off the backs of business but prevent greed from causing long-term economic ruin).

His WW2 management (minus the Japanese thing) was good as well.

Reagan had tax cuts but he also had the war on drugs.

[Vosem]

I guess nothing is 'nonideological', but it seems like the most important ideological strain was pacifism/noninterventionism, with some sort of vague German- or Italian-American pride distant seconds based on 1936/1940 swings? Sympathy for fascist dictatorships in the US seems by all accounts to have been incredibly marginal by the mid-1930s, though before the Abyssinian war there was a decent amount of support for Mussolini.

Outright sympathy for fascism was on the downswing by 1936ish, sure, but there was still a ton of anti-British and antisemitic sentiment among communities like (for example) Irish Catholics; plus pacifism and noninterventionism are themselves ideological positions, just not of the kind that people usually accuse others of when they discuss this subject.

Well, yes, but I thought this discussion was about the importance of fascist sympathizers in US politics during the 1930s. I think the answer is that sympathy for Mussolini existed before 1935 or so but afterwards became marginal, and by the time Hitler had been in power for several years virtually no one really saw him favorably. 'Pacifism' and 'noninterventionism' are indeed ideological positions, but they're ones I'd imagine you'd have a great deal of sympathy for, and I think they're necessary in every society to some degree, even if 1941 is a great testament against their absolute versions.

I don't think Catholic lesbians are unimportant or anything,

Neither do I; otherwise I wouldn't be friends with so many. Nevertheless, their numbers are small and they are not representative of either Catholics or lesbians, demographically or ideologically.

but I think polling shows something like 40% of young men either having bought cryptocurrency or intending to? (Something like 25% of young women, I think; massive age gap). Doing this only really makes sense if you subscribe on some level to a fairly ultra-libertarian view of the world in which the government's authority to have a monetary policy at all needs to be abolished. Not that 40% of people would agree with every corollary of this, but that they're willing to act on the recommendations of this sort of thought is eyebrow-raising. At this point you're doing better than typical midterm turnout.

Sure, but is this kind of technoanarchism really "neoliberalism" in the sense that this conversation began as a discussion of?

I hope the 'Catholic lesbians' comment didn't come off as dismissive -- obviously everyone is strongly shaped by their experiences and the experiences of those close to them! That said, I don't think lesbians are a very large percentage of the population, and religious lesbians are (I'd imagine; happy to be corrected) particularly fringe. 'Investor' is a chosen identity in a way that sexuality and religion are usually not, so the comparison might seem shallow, but 'crypto investor' is an order of magnitude more common.

I think so! Cryptocurrency investment, and the ideology surrounding it, are a particularly strong form of the idea that the road to utopia goes through accurately measuring the value of everything in money, and the idea that the size of government is an impediment to doing this, such that a grassroots solution would be superior. These are very neoliberal ideas (or extensions of neoliberal logic), even if they would've been unfathomable to Reagan. (They're very Friedmanian -- you can find YouTube videos where he describes imaginary future technologies that seem quite a bit like cryptocurrencies).

(I don't want my own ideology here reduced to 'crypto promoter', but I do think the whole thing is a great example of grassroots hard-capitalism).

Certainly the crypto thing is clearly being advanced primarily by the political right (not surprising since what motivates the whole enterprise basically the classic hard-right terror of fiat money taken to such an extreme that even CO2 emissions are perceived as a preferable backing for currency to sovereign debt!), but the #gamestonks thing is much harder to pin down. It's only self-evidently right-wing if you adopt the MUH SIZE OF GUMMIT framing where whom fiscal policy is intended to benefit and why is unimportant and all that matters is a one-dimensional line with Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler both on the left and Friedrich Hayek and Murray Bookchin both on the right.

I think this sort of view is near-universal among the American right and quite common among American voters generally. One interesting pattern is that, while referendums to raise taxes on the wealthy inevitably fail (see progressive taxation in IL, carbon taxation in WA, and so forth) even in quite left-wing areas, and state governments that try to create welfare programs are usually unpopular, once you take away the 'size of government' argument the right inevitably wilts. There has been incredibly little resistance to minimum wage increases from any part of the right-wing coalition, because it doesn't obviously increase the size of government and so there is no argument against it that median (or often even right-wing) voters find compelling.

The #gamestonks thing was an argument that the best way to engage in political activism is to manipulate stock prices! It's directly downstream from the logic of Citizens United, "money is speech", and the general 2009 fiscon anti-establishment.

Also, your initial claim wasn't "a significant minority of young people are interested in crypto, whereas almost no old people are", it was "when the average person thinks 'young people politics', they think crypto". The latter claim is much further out on a significantly weaker limb than is the former.

Yeah, fair enough; probably the actual thing that the average person thinks of with 'young people politics' is various forms of left-wing identitarianism. I think crypto politics is the first right-wing politics that people think of when they think of 'young people politics', and I'd also imagine it's the most popular thing that's thought of, given how unpopular left-wing identitarianism seems to be.

Yes, absolutely, have you stopped to consider the rhetoric that someone like Boebert or MTG used in their primaries? (Or anyone really successful at small-dollar donations on the right, who is almost always Paulist or Paulist-adjacent.) In GOP primaries the people with the fewest ties to national machines are the people most committed to spending cuts at all costs and privatization of Social Security. I don't think the original Tea Party movement was remotely astroturfed, and the main astroturf on the right comes from national media promotion of 'identity'-based movements like Spencer's: authentic expressions of right-wing sentiment in the US are almost invariably focused on cutting government size.

By contrast on the left the focus on identity seems to encounter much less resistance.

The entire rhetoric of the party at present is focused on how the present inflation/economic troubles is caused by the Democratic government's spending bills, and the entire rhetoric last year was about the inevitable economic troubles that would be caused by a Democratic government's spending.

A great deal of this I think depends on one's preexisting perspective. (Which is to say: of course you, a Republican base voter motivated by economic ultra-dryism, perceive economic ultra-dryism as very appealing to Republican base voters!) I can assure you that people outside the Republican base do not interpret Boebert and MTG's prominence as a vindication of the same tendencies in conservative politics that you're saying people within the base interpret it to vindicate.

OK, I agree with this. I think many outside of the Republican base find Republican base economic doctrine befuddling and usually try to explain politicians' popularity by resorting to any explanation other than that.

I also don't know where in the world you're getting this idea that the Republican Party's messaging last year revolved around low spending; the then-incumbent Republican President signed trillions and trillions of dollars of classic Keynesian emergency deficit spending, send out UBI-inspired low-four-digit checks with his own signature on them to try and capitalize politically on having done so, and ran against a definition of "socialism" that was basically a slightly more sophisticated variant of the "socialism is when video games have lesbian characters; the more lesbian characters they have, the lesbianer it is" definition.

Trump's campaign ads virtually never made reference to sending out checks and it was generally seen as a sort of embarrassing thing that was done in the heat of the moment. When checks were actually made the key issue in the GA-Sen special elections, the GOP lost (...admittedly), but did no worse than generic ballot polling; recovery in the generic ballot and inflation fears suggest that a Democratic attempt to run on checks (...which I sort of expect for 2022, actually) to be a horrific failure.

The Trump campaign in 2020 was an elaborate exercise in demonizing American politicians who identify as 'socialist' (like Sanders or AOC) and trying to argue that Biden would pursue analogous policies!

This was a President who first came to power by running a buzzsaw through the more conventional slash-and-burn fusionist campaigns everyone else ran in the 2016 primaries, instead focusing on Perot-derived heterodox messaging on trade!

The Trump campaign didn't run a buzzsaw through competition; it was the longest-lasting Republican primary since 1976, and he afterwards unified the party by largely adopting the policy planks of his main rival! (He also never polled more than his combined opponents, not even on the day that he won. But after entering office and making his signature legislative accomplishment a series of tax cuts, yes, he rose to the highest same-party approval in a very long time.) This was in spite of unheard-of advantages, including an estimated billions of dollars in free media coverage during the primary.

His campaign also followed support patterns common to other conservative celebrities (like Schwarzenegger's within-GOP support from 2003), and the pivot away from the ideology was accomplished so smoothly that it doesn't really ever seem to have been about that. At the lower level, similar Republican primary coalitions have been assembled virtually never in spite of a vast number of attempts, particularly in 2018. It could not have happened without a vast and unrepeatable advantage in media coverage (literally unrepeatable because of greater media fracturing since then and the fact that relevant outlets like CNN are now much less watched by conservatives), a turnout pattern that exists for presidential primaries but not for lower-level ones, and an unusually fractious set of opponents.

I guess if you focus less on the Trump campaign than on the campaigns downballot Republicans ran then your interpretation makes a bit more sense, especially since the "wokism" on the other side was mostly limited to downballot campaigns too and yet has come to dominate perceptions of where the Democratic Party is going, but you still seem to be seriously underestimating the degree to which protagonism around Trump has dominated your party over the past five years.

I think protagonism around Trump has been important since about 2018 or thereabouts for the party as a whole (and there was a core of Trump supporters for whom it was always important), but I don't think it was actually all that important in his rise; on Election Day 2016 he had 33% favorability. I have a lot of distaste for Trump-protagonism but he was (...maybe is) a charismatic figure able to drive media coverage to an insane degree, and largely managed to bury previous disagreements (particularly the Tea Party vs. establishment divide of 2009-2015, which still exists in many downballot primaries but has become much less rancorous in the Age of Trump); it makes sense that it would emerge.

I have a great fondness for the Republican Party but that obviously does not mean agreeing with it on every issue or liking every aspect of its internal culture, but I think that the idea that Trump represented some sort of important ideological pivot was plausible in 2015-17 but has clearly proven to be untrue.