FDR

When we did have a Democratic Socialist, he was voted to be our President four times. The oligarchs were so afraid of people like him getting into office again that they implemented term limits. Of course, FDR brought us out of the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl and virtually all of World War II. He did it with style, compassion and in many ways more honor and respect than we have seemingly been able to muster for any President since. Many parks and libraries, infrastructure and aspects of our society that make life better to this day were funded unde the alphabet soup of agencies that he helped to create. If you are unfamiliar, it is worth going back to the speeches he gave to Congress, not telling them what to do, but what our nation needed and the elected officials got to work in order to make it so.
The Dust Bowl that blew away the single greatest resource our nation had, the very soil itself was stopped by planting over 3.5 billion trees. Under his Administration he also built over 3,000 fire towers to look after our forests. Not because he was a draconian and power hungry leader who thought it was a good idea, but because We The People banded together with common purpose and said with one voice, this is where we put our foot down, here this will end, and together, we made something that seemed impossible not only possibly but real. We rebuilt and refurbished water supply systems, modernized roads and bridges, expanded the links between and among our great cities and beat back the rising tide of poverty that threatened to mire our nation for decades. our future is still made possible by programs he signed off on. Social Security, perhaps the greatest humanitarian program ever conceived was signed into law under his term in th ehighest office in our nation. He was beloved and today, many of us still celebrate his life. Of course he was limited by the times he was living in and there were a few things he did that were not the best, but at least he had the guts to strike out, creating the CCC (Civilian conservation Corps) which paid unemployed people to improve and protect our soils, the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and the REA (Rural Electrification Act)to bring the majority of U.S. households into the Twentieth Century. Hundreds of programs that led to increased quality of life came about bnecause of his leadership and the drive which he exhibited and was able to get the people of our nation to get excited abotu as well. It is interesting that we don't have a holiday to celebrate the birth of this great leader. He was born, January 30, 1882 and sadly passed away while still serving as President April 12, 1945. Less than four months later, his successor Harry Truman ended WWII by dropping bombs, developed under the Presidency of FDR, on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima, August 6th and Nagasaki, August 9th of that same year, killing between 130,000 and 230,000 innocents. There is no doubt that he had saved more than that many lives in this nation during the course of his three full terms in office and the American People were so greatful that they rewarded him with an unprescedented fourth term. now, when a political figure tries to make sweeping changest that improve the lives of the entire nation's citizens, he is called names. Socialist has come to mean something unrecognizeable. terms like bleeding heart and dso-gooder are thrown at him almost as if the ultra-rich are spitting in the face of decent leaders. their right to serve in office is questioned, or their transgressions are magnified as if that makes their decent and logical policies suspect. The fact is that ownership of nearly all of our media has been transferred to the very oligarchs FDR taxed to pay fo rthe improvement of the lives of all our citizens. At this point, those ultra-wealthy folks have had fifty years of fighting in court, being allowed to buy candidatres who know better than to bite the hand of those who feed them and to consolidate their positions and offshore their obscene wealth.
Americans for Tax Fairness points out that: The number of Billionaires has increased more than nine fold during the three decades between 1990 and 2020. Increasing from just 66 individuals to over 615. This unfathomable amount of money had to come from somewhare and it is directly seen in th eerosion of our middle class and th ecomplete collapse of our social safety net. We need anothe rleader like FDR to put this nation back on course.

this image is just one of thousands of park shelters in use today that were built with labor provided under one of th emany programs FDR signed off on. I'm sure there are places in your town that have the hand of his Presidency upon them and we are all better off because of the sacrifices made by people who were actively participating in making our country better for generations they knew that they would never see.