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#  The Prescient President: Franklin Delano Roosevelt

February 05 2026

Written by Liz Amsden.

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ACCORDING TO LIZ - In the world of Harry Potter, evil can always be defeated even, or especially, by the humblest and most unexpected of heroes.

Today, Americans are fighting an existential danger...

Their own president, an executive focused on destroying anyone who challenges him, tearing down the success of others, creating chaos, and de-friending countries that have had America’s back for generations.

We need to build the optimism that we as individuals can overcome him and his cabal of evil oppressors. We can do that by attacking the roots of their power.

To do that, take a look at what another former, but far more illustrious, president said. One who pulled the United States out of the Great Depression and shepherded it through the Second World War.

Read how progressive his campaign language is almost a hundred years later, how strikingly close his concerns parallel those Americans are experiencing today.

Spoken not towards the end of his life when he had already built his legacy but at the beginning. When the great expansion of wealth in the wake of the First World War had crumbled and crashed, leaving the county, indeed all the world, adrift and in economic despair.

He did not whine about how unfair life was but, in September of 1932 while running for his first term as president, aimed a spotlight directly at what he saw as the root causes of the financial crisis that had shaken the nation in an address to San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club, the country’s oldest and largest public affairs forum.

“Our system of constantly rising tariffs has at last reacted against us to the point of closing our Canadian frontier on the north, our European markets on the east, many of our Latin-American markets to the south, and a goodly proportion of our Pacific markets on the west, through the retaliatory tariffs of those countries. It has forced many of our great industrial institutions which exported their surplus production to such countries, to establish plants in such countries, within the tariff walls. This has resulted in the reduction of the operation of their American plants, and opportunity for employment.

“Recently a careful study was made of the concentration of business in the United States. It showed that our economic life was dominated by some six hundred odd corporations who controlled two-thirds of American industry. Ten million small business men divided the other third. More striking still, it appeared that if the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations, and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.

“...all this calls for a re-appraisal of values. A mere builder of more industrial plants, a creator of more railroad systems, an organizer of more corporations, is as likely to be a danger as a help. The day of the great promoter or the financial Titan, to whom we granted anything if only he would build, or develop, is over. Our task now is not discovery or exploitation of natural resources, or necessarily producing more goods. It is the soberer, less dramatic business of administering resources and plants already in hand, of seeking to reestablish foreign markets for our surplus production, of meeting the problem of underconsumption, of adjusting production to consumption, of distributing wealth and products more equitably, of adapting existing economic organizations to the service of the people. The day of enlightened administration has come.”

Twelve years later he won an unprecedented fourth term under the slogan: For Lasting Peace \* Security for All.

Through all his years in office, Roosevelt, scion of a wealthy family, fought full tilt for the working man. For peace. For security for every American.

Titan Trump, scion of another wealthy family, has fought solely for the billionaire class and the corporations that support his political plans and assist in his profiting off his position. And, at tax-payer expense, surrounding himself with gross opulence and glittery symbols of his own self-importance.

Ignoring completely what is supposed to be government by the people for the people, and ruling though favoritism and personal ties.

Today, the Toad in the White House may wield power but his faculties are clearly failing. His house of cards is destined to fall so long as the heroes of Hogwarts, epitomized by the common men and women of America fighting for our values in the streets today, fighting for an equitable future in the courts, still stand.

And continue to fight the outpouring of evil from our own Voldemart rending asunder the fabric of the American dream, of the possibility of prosperity and happiness for all.

***(Liz Amsden** is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at **<LizAmsden@hotmail.com>**.)*

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