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Silence8 -> RE: Democrats express safety concerns after protests (3/24/2010 8:25:01 PM)
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So, Elisabella, I usually agree with you, but... not today.
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ORIGINAL: Elisabella
You know I was thinking...on most of these issues the Republicans are 'correct' - Obama is socialist. Not "a socialist" as in a member of the political party, but he's pushing the country in the direction of the state of socialized democracy most of the Western world is in. This healthcare bill is a mixture of socialism (telling businesses what they can and can't do) and capitalism (still relying on private insurance rather than making a public plan) and if conservatives would drop that pesky article "a" they'd be totally right. Obama is socialist.
This misses the bigger point: capitalism as it really exists is and has always been all about political (control) economy, such that the question shouldn't be 'Socialism or Capitalism?' (your standard 'American' false choice) but rather 'Socialism for whom?'. Obama continues Bush's policies of socialism for the top 1%, something, by the way, that our founding fathers were also involved in. This even includes banking scams.
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It also goes against the foundations of what the US is supposed to stand for - capitalism, free enterprise, a 'fend for yourself' mentality...going back and looking at the history of Medicare, Social Security, labor unions, minimum wage, etc. there was always a group that stood up and said "This is not American" and they were right...but each time it's been shown that taking a more moderate stance between socialism and capitalism has benefitted the nation, but also made it less uniquely "American."
I think your read of American history (and the American people) is a little shallow here. People aren't actually as stupid as the television (and textbooks in Texas) says they are.
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The US is in a rough spot, it holds most of the military burden of the Western world - and honestly, anyone who says "just lower military spending, no other country has a huge army that gets involved in everything" really needs to STFU and realize that the reason no other country has to, is because we're doing it for them. Without any military threat from the west, just imagine what would happen between Israel and its neighbors. Pakistan and India. We're not "like other countries" in that we don't have the luxury of focusing solely on our domestic problems and letting someone else take care of the nasty bits, and the push to make the US identical to those countries in many ways is destroying what makes it unique.
This is completely absolutely bullshit. It's fine, though -- everyone shits.
We're not 'taking care of' anything. The matter is precisely the opposite. The military policies of the U.S. manufacture the fundamentalism that we ostensibly are attacking. And Israel is an exaggerated 'special case', not good as an example that is supposed to be generally representative.
Not to mention that with war spending there is no turnover or 'multiplier effect', so we don't even have good economic sense.
War, by the way, is a perverted form of socialism...
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Personally, I believe healthcare is a right, and I think we need to find a way to make it work. But anyone who says it's easy because other countries are able to do it really needs to do a bit of comparison regarding size, population, demographics, military responsibility, and sociology - we're not a unified nation and those things that do make us "uniquely American" as opposed to a landmass of people sharing citizenship ARE being changed. Even basic constitutional rights - the right to hold a gun for example - are being challenged, and while we still have the legal right to free speech, we no longer have the social right.
Oh c'mon. You're lying to yourself if you want to play the size, demographics, population game.
The relevant point, that you don't mention, is that we actually already have two systems, one for profit and one not (i.e., medicare). Crucially, then, recognize that hardly anyone complains about Medicare! (at the very least relative to insurance companies!)
I will admit, though, that gun control largely represents what I like to call 'symbiotic liberalism', this phony type of liberalism that consciously plays off the other's fantasy of what a liberal should be.
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So yeah, I feel a bit of sympathy for tea partiers, and I really get where they're coming from. I think they're wrong in their knee-jerk reaction toward socialism, I don't think they'd be willing to give up most socialist policies we have (which, for the record, would include public, taxpayer funded schools) and I think it's a fair sign of indoctrination that the word 'socialism' alone can stir up such strong reactions.
Find the underlying drives.
They'd probably laugh at you for taking them (and their corporate funding) at face value!
So, to return to an early one-word post I made: hoodwinked.
They even got Elisabella!
(Have you ever seen the old 'Attack of the Body Snatchers'? Same idea.)
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