FDR, Lincoln ... And A Disturbing Supposition Regarding Barack Obama

Here's a new dominant social theme: US presidents are good and they ought to be in movies.

Of course, it helps if you are a socialist leader and make maximum use of the awesome power of Leviathan. The two presidents currently being lionized – surprise, surprise – areFranklin Delano Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Roosevelt presided over the initial, massive expansion of the welfare state – the same one that has brought the US some US$200 trillion in payables and will eventually spell the end of the US as a going concern. Lincoln paved the way for the activist leader Roosevelt by insisting that the Union was indivisible and doing his part to murder or otherwise maim about a million people to prove it.

The movies that portray these leaders don't provide us with this stark – if historically realistic – point of view, of course. The bloody-minded decisions and subsequent ramifications are presented as historical necessity.

These are sympathetic portrayals and it is hard not to come to the conclusion that once again Hollywood is sending us a message about the Way the World Works, and US power politics especially. More on that in a moment.

Presumably, we are to walk away from these movies believing US presidents are bold visionaries who are willing to move their often warlike policies forward for the "greater good." And there is certainly an audience for this sort of perspective. Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" was just released and has already taken in more than US$13 million.

There is another movie out there on Lincoln that attracted a good deal of attention, as it featured Lincoln as a vampire killer. This isn't strictly speaking a biopic but it is surely a kind of hagiography.
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