Tag: Franklin Roosevelt

American Regicide

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

Heneage Finch, Earl of Nottingham, An Exact and Most Impartial Account of the Indictment. of 29 Regicides. (London: Andrew Crook, 1660)Donald Trump is going down. His house of cards will collapse at some point. The leaks will keep flowing and eventually his position will become untenable. Conflicts of interest. Connections to Russia. All of it will become too great a weight to carry, especially since The Donald has very few genuine allies in Washington.

The Democrats want him gone. So too do most of the Republicans. Hell, they never wanted him to begin with. The GOP did everything it could to derail his candidacy, and only climbed aboard after Trump's runaway train was the last red line careening towards the White House. So for now they're playing nice with the former Democrat who eschews Conservative dogma in a variety of ways and is loyal to absolutely no one save himself. But when the moment comes, they'll gladly trade Trump in for Mike Pence, a Conservative's wet dream.

For all these reasons, Trump may not make it to the finish line. But there's one more factor to consider: the precedent of regicide. And to understand that, we should begin by briefly recounting of the demise of the Ottoman sultan Osman II.

Young Osman II ascended the Ottoman throne in 1618 at the tender age of 14. Wishing to assert himself, in 1621 he personally led an invasion of Poland, which ended with a failed siege of Chota (aka Khotyn, now in western Ukraine). In a rather unwise move, Osman blamed the defeat on his elite fighting force, the Janissaries. Afterwards, he ordered the shuttering of Janissary coffee shops, which he saw as a hotbed of conspiracies against him. The Janissaries responded with a palace uprising. In 1622 they imprisoned the 17 year old monarch and soon after killed him. Because it was strictly forbidden to spill royal blood, they strangled him to death.

I first learned about the rise and fall of Osman II in 1992 while taking a graduate course on Ottoman history. "Something happens," our professor warned us in a foreboding tone, "the first time an empire commits regicide."

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Monday, December 12, 2016

The Counter Revolution

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

FDRThe United States boasts a deeply conservative economic tradition. From its origins as a colonial, agricultural society, it quickly emerged as a slave holding republic built on the ethnic cleansing and occasional genocide of Indigenous peoples. After the Civil War (1861-65), it reshaped itself in the crucible of unfettered laissez-faire capitalism straight through to the Roaring ‘20s. A post-Depression Keynesian consensus led U.S. leaders to reign in the most conservative impulses during the mid-20th century, but the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s set the stage for the current neo-liberal moment.

Consequently, ever since the industrial revolution, the United States has typically trailed other developed nations in establishing a basic social welfare system. It has never fielded a competitive socialist or labor party. It was the last major nation to implement an old age pension. More recently, ObamaCare made it the last major nation to mandate that all of its citizens receive some sort of healthcare coverage, even if it's quite wanting in many cases.

Amid its overriding conservativism, the United States has had only three presidents with any real socialist tendencies: Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933-45), Harry S. Truman (1945-53), and most recently Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose presidency (1963-69) ended before half of current Americans were born (median age 37.9).

The election of Donald Trump as president and, just as important, the impending Republican dominance of Congress, make certain that the United States will not correct its social welfare shortcomings anytime soon. Indeed, the nation may take significant steps backwards.

However, a quick review of America's stunted progressive history suggests that the opportunity for a progressive counter-revolution may be closer than it appears at this dark moment.

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Monday, May 6, 2013

The United States: A Premature Postpartum in Four Parts

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire, which emerged during the beginning of the 14th century, reached its zenith some 250 years later under its 10th Sultan, Suleiman the Law Giver. By that point, the empire held sway over more than 2 million square miles spread across parts of three continents, from Hungary in the west to Persia in the east, from the north shore of the Black Sea to the southern tip of the Red Sea.

And then began the long, slow slog towards oblivion. Osmanli imperial decline unfolded over the course of three and a half centuries. There was no shortage of ups and downs along the way, but of course there were more of the latter than the former. The empire teetered into the 20th century, and by the start of World War I, had lost almost all of its holdings in Europe and north Africa. As with the Hapsburgs and czarist Russia, the war itself proved to be the coup de grace, signaling an end to the era of classic empires. Ottoman forces achieved mixed results during the actual fighting, but by the time the war was over, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was leading a successful revolt from within. The sultanate was abolished in 1922, and the empire's Anatolian rump reformed as the modern nation of Turkey the following year. After more than six centuries of rise and fall, the empire was done.

It had taken 350 years for the Ottoman empire to slip from apogee to dissolution; just its decline alone had lasted longer than many political entities exist in toto. Indeed, the United States first gained first independence “only” 230 years ago, which means it needs well over four and a half more centuries to match the staying power of the Ottomans.

As a Historian, I know better than most how useless it is to predict the future. I will not even hazzard a guess as to when the United States will finally dissolve or how it will occur: through bloody war, contentious rebellion, or quiet disintegration.

But it will happen eventually. Nothing lasts forever. Nothing.

And whenever it does happen, future historians might possibly look back to the mid-20th century as the U.S. imperial acme in much the same way they now look back to the mid-16th century as the peak of Ottoman glory.

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Monday, December 19, 2011

Occupy and History: Are We Near the End and What Will it Mean?

Posted on by Akim Reinhardt

by Akim Reinhardt

Bonus Army encampmentWe may now be gazing upon the fading days of the Occupy movement as an actual episode in which numerous, large scale occupations are taking place and having immediate impact. Then again, maybe not. But if so, it is perhaps time to begin reflecting upon the movement and how we might measure it.

Elsewhere I have written about Occupy within the contest of two earlier American social protest movements against poverty: Coxey’s Army of unemployed men looking for work in 1894, and the Bonus Marchers of impoverished World War I veterans in 1932.

During the depression of 1893-98, the second worst in U.S. history, many Americans began to agitate for a federally-funded public works project to build and improve roads across the country. In addition to building up the infrastructure, such projects could also put men to work during an era when unemployment was in the teens and there was no goverment welfare safety net to speak of. Coxey's Army, led by an Ohio millionaire named Jacob Coxey, was the largest of many protest movements advocating this approach. Thousands of men marched to the nation's capital in support of the plan.

Later on, the Bonus Marchers were a collection of homeless and unemployed World War I veterans who sought government action during the darkest depths of the Great Depression. During the roaring `20s the government had promised to award them a one time bonus of $1,000 in gratitude for their wartime service, payable in 1945. However, unemployed vets, many of them homeless, sought early payment of the bonus in 1932. They too crossed the country in caravans, arriving in the nation's capital.

Despite their numbers, organization, and commitment, neither group was able to achieve its immediate goal. Congress did not create a public works job program as Coxey requested, nor did it award early payment of the cash bonus promised to war veterans as the Bonus Marchers requested. In both cases, the press and political opponents smeared peaceful and patriotic protestors as criminals and revolutionaries. And after arriving in Washington, D.C., both groups suffered state violence from police and even the military. Indeed, in 1932 one of America's lowest moments came when future WWII heroes Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, and George Patton all played a direct role in leading military forces against their former fellow servicemen, who had assembled peaceably

As we now witness what may very well be the decline of the Occupy movement, in the face of similar smears and violence, it is worth considering the following questions:

How do Historians look back upon Coxey’s Army and the Bonus Marchers; how do they measure their political significance; and what might that portend for the way history comes to view the Occupy movement should it soon fade from the scene as did its predecessors?

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