Conrad’s deluge and FDR: Conrad Black says he wrote his huge book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which I look forward to assaulting (as an army does a beach) to reclaim the U.S. president from the left’s “ownership.” He told Robert Fulford of the National Post that FDR “wasn’t on the left. He was a centrist” who realized, in the social tumult of the 1930s, that the United States must redistribute wealth “or face social disaster.” Communist and socialist parties were strong, and the Soviet model seemed an appealing alternative to capitalism. So FDR was “safeguarding” the world of the rich, to which he belonged, along with any nobler motives.

My trouble with this rebuttal to the “left” interpretation of FDR, is that it is the left interpretation of FDR. It’s standard: Of course FDR was out to derail the revolution by throwing a few scraps to the masses, thus undercutting radical alternatives. He saved capitalism — the left has always said. Such gripes were common in 1930s politics. In Canada, the Communists accused the CCF (predecessors to the NDP) of swiping and softening its program so as to weaken the workers’ revolutionary zeal.

The CCF in turn hated Mackenzie King’s Liberals for stealing their social agenda and gliding to power on it. The only Black-like version of FDR I recall, is one of Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd novels in which FDR mouths off to Lanny in the Oval Office about his secret left-wing leanings.

Maybe Conrad Black originally heard this idea from “the left” and then, like lots of bright people who think they’re smarter than everybody else, assumed he must have thought it up himself, since it was so astute. That kind of intellectual arrogance could be a guy’s downfall. It makes me think, for some reason, of the rise of the notion, “corporate governance,” following the Enron debacle. You could apply a “left” interpretation to it as well: The corporate elite were never sincere about reform, they were just out to save their privileges by bringing in a little ethical window-dressing, the way FDR sent forth the New Deal. Yet, seeing through their ploy, and calling it a “fad” (as Conrad Black has done) doesn’t meant the damn thing won’t jump up and bite you in the bum anyway.

The deficit made me: Paul Martin is the first national leader to get there solely on the wings of a balanced budget. Such an unheroic feat. It makes me wonder again: Why did “slaying the deficit” ever become a grand electoral obsession, well before the Martin budgets? I ask because it seems to me that debt itself is not at all terrifying to most people for one reason: mortgages. They don’t freak people out. Prudent debt is a normal, useful fact of adult life. It doesn’t panic people in their own lives; why has it become unspeakable (literally) in the public realm — so that any debt is viewed as intolerable?

I mentioned this to someone at the Liberal convention, in light of the debt we all carry through mortgages or credit cards. Maybe it’s the credit cards, he mused. Now there’s a thought. Credit card debt exploded in the same years that deficit panic took hold. It was explosive, due to the way balances mounted — unlike a mortgage — and usurious rates, which many people only gradually grew aware of. It caused a big spike in personal bankruptcies and, where that did not happen, crippling anxiety and guilt. These feelings had to be held in (privatized), since on a public level, consumer purchases (made by credit card) were hailed as a key to economic growth. Is this the secret well of angst used by right-wing slashers and ideologues, who had their own, quite different motives, as they built their brilliant campaign against all forms of public debt, any time, anywhere, for anything, ever?

Michael Jackson and Michael Moore: I found it hard to watch Wednesday’s press conference from California, where charges were announced against Michael Jackson, without thinking of Michael Moore’s film, Bowling for Columbine. The news media were in full bay: How could you let him out of your sight? How can you leave a child still in his clutches? And it was less the content than the tone: You mean to say . . .

Mass hysteria is a feature of U.S. history — the Salem trials, McCarthyism, the alerts since 9/11. But Michael Moore added a new characterization. He said the U.S. is typified not by violence or righteous crusades against evil. He focused instead on pervasive fear, always seeking an outlet, a target or a justification. I think you could hear it again on Wednesday. (Of course, there are laws against child molestation, which should be enforced; I’m talking about the mass reaction, via the media.) His focus on fear is interesting because it is so unflattering to Americans, unlike a stress on violence or righteousness. What he does not ask about, as far as I can recall, is the source of that debilitating terror.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.