ER, I have studied these kinds of things for thirty years, based partly on the work of people who have examined the history of these things in far more detail than I ever could, but based on my own researches of original material as well. I'm not a professional, but I am as thorough as an amateur can manage.

It is apparently impossible for you to accept that I might have more information about this particular area than you do, and even worse, have used it to draw different conclusions than you have. I don't know why this is the case. If I went out on a boat with you, and I told you "who the hell are you to tell me about sailing?," you and everyone here would think I was nuts.

So now we just stipulate that knowledge of the subject is inherently impossible, that facts and history mean nothing, and that we can easily put the subject on the same level as conspiracy theories?

What you or I believe has no relevance to the actual recorded actions of Hoover and FDR, or anyone else. Nobody's idiotic enough to wonder if Smoot-Hawley really existed or not. There are details lost to history, but not all of them by any means.

When you have to run from evidence, or worse, from the very concept of evidence itself, you just might be on the wrong side of an issue.

I guess that's where we leave it.