[LightBug1]

I submit that the human brain isn't equipped to handle control of multi-hundreds of billions of dollars cap and the working lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals. Particularly if you're morally suspect to begin with.

This is just one of countless obvious examples.

[ceejayoz]

Especially once you start icing out people who push back.

[smt88]

FDR is a very interesting case study. He had the country in the palm of his hand and could have cemented his (or his party’s) power permanently, but instead he left the republic intact.

[yard2010]

As The President told FDR in Rick and Morty: "Try having an historical administration after Facebook goes online, you old-timey bitch!"

[djeastm]

Hmm... Didn't he try to pack the Supreme Court?

[hyhatqtv]

He and the congress (and probably most of the country would have supported it) . There is an argument to be made that the Supreme Court was at least partially usurping the powers of the legislative and executive branches to impose its political policies.

[hedora]

At the time, the court was nearly as bad as currently.

In other news, Alito is claiming the Comstock Act is in full force, not the narrowed enforcement we’ve seen for the last, what 100 years?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_Act_of_1873

According to that theory, they can censor mail and any other common carrier (objects and information) on moral grounds. They want to apply it to abortion pills first, but the statements made by the court imply they’ll be clamping down on “obscenities”, sex ed, political speech etc.

Note that this court already overturned the right to privacy (and the 4th amendment) when they overturned Roe v Wade.

That, plus mandatory age checks, porn bans, vpn bans, etc are already happening in blue and red states throughout the US.

By the time 2028 rolls around, if we don’t elect a president willing to charge the current clown show with treason, we will not have a democracy in the US. Court packing would be a tragic under-reaction.

[Uhhrrr]

Before the court packing threat, they were limiting the federal government's power to regulate commerce within states. Which is a power it doesn't actually have.

[pdonis]

And then they reversed course with Wickard v. Filburn and said it was perfectly OK for Congress to regulate, not just commerce within a single state, but farmers growing their own food on their own land for their own use. So FDR ended up getting what he wanted anyway.

[jfengel]

They have whatever power the Supreme Court decides they have. The Supreme Court decided that was their job, and thus far everyone has accepted it. The Court interprets the Constitution, which is vague enough to mean whatever a bare majority wishes it to mean.

[danny_codes]

> and thus far everyone has accepted it

For now. SC is becoming more partisan, which causes SC's credibility to decline. I assume there's a point where SC loses too much credibility and the existing system of balancing power breaks down.

[lokar]

That’s not what the right thinks. They are obsessed with him and rolling back the new deal.

[hyhatqtv]

The New Deal was mostly rolled back a while ago. After all corporatism did generally fall out of fashion for after WW2 (and of course there was quite a bit of opposition of state planning due to geopolitical reasons in the 50s and later)

[lokar]

Social security? And the follow-up, Medicare?

[hedora]

Those are both being actively dismantled.

[myroon5]

Social Security and Medicare are ~26% and ~16.5% of the federal budget (excluding the 15% of the budget that's just financing previous years' budgets):

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

[kmeisthax]

FDR actually kinda did do that. He broke the Washington precedent and ran for President four times, he scared the Supreme Court shitless to the point where they signed off on blatantly unconstitutional land grabs against Japanese emigrants, and the Democratic Party was able to ride high on the fumes of the Progressive movement for decades afterward.

We don't think of him as a dictator, because a lot of what he did was ultimately reforms necessary to maintain America as a republic. The alternative would have been Nazi America. But he was still exercising dictatorial power, and he was responsible for massively increasing the power of the Presidency as a result. Hell, part of the reason why Trump is so dangerous is specifically because of the damage FDR did to the checks and balances on the Executive Branch.

[zhoBEENG]

Thank you for this; you are completely correct but this is not the narrative on the streets. He was a tyrant (in the original sense) and dictator who believed in absolute power of the executive, which paved the way for Trump. His federalization program wiped out the America that existed before. Like Trump, he ruled via mob passion. He was America’s Marius.

[hyhatqtv]

Well actual dictators generally do those things because they need to subvert the constitutional to stay in power. Roosevelt didn’t need any of that in order to make sure he remained president for the remainder of his lifetime.

After all there was a constitutional amendment pass soon after to stop any president from doing what FDR did.

[wat10000]

Money is power. Power corrupts.

[yard2010]

It might be the other way around. There are powerful people with money that simply behave. A few assholes turn things into shit for everyone, when they also have money it just becomes worse.

[smt88]

I wonder if power actually corrupts, or if it’s really that attaining power requires pretending to be a good person, and the mask can fall off after the power is attained.

[raverbashing]

I don't think it's fair to blame money in this case