The following commentary by Justin Fox was posted on the Bloomberg View website February 7, 2018, and published in the StarTribune February 11, 2018:
The 19th century provided fertile ground for racists and elites while American immigrants and workers suffered.
In an impromptu speech to a crowd that gathered outside the White House on George Washington’s birthday in 1866, President Andrew Johnson rambled on for more than an hour, referred to himself 210 times (a rate of about three times per minute), and said Republican lawmakers Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens were at least as treasonous as the leaders of the just-defeated Confederacy.
A few days earlier, when a delegation of black leaders led by Frederick Douglass came to visit, Johnson had told them that poor whites, not blacks, had been the real victims of slavery in the South. After Douglass left, Johnson launched into an off-color, racist tirade about him to an aide.
Does any of this sound at least an eensy-weensy bit reminiscent of some recent presidential statements? Continue reading “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like the Gilded Age”