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This is the primary danger. The Republicans have become an extremist group, pulling the entire country into more and more extreme positions, labeling what amoun

by bmitc 4y ago

This is the primary danger. The Republicans have become an extremist group, pulling the entire country into more and more extreme positions, labeling what amounts to middle of the road moderate policies as socialism and communism. And even this idea of the words socialism and communism being bad is a mislabeling they’ve been successful in deploying. It’s as if public school, libraries, roads, etc. are somehow bad.

Wyoming23 4y ago
Of course socialism is bad though. Statements like this seem terrifying to me, what are we teaching in high school history? Soviet union, Mao's socialist China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia. All of these were as horrible to live through as Nazi Germany. Empirically, we as humans have tried socialism in every sort of country and it's always a disaster of extreme poverty for regular people and corruption among rulers. Government run services isn't socialism. Maybe this is like defining "racism" where different people are using wildly different definitions. Free market capitalism provides the bounty of productivity and wealth creation which can then be skimmed off of to provide safety nets, infrastructure, etc. We should be looking to places like Singapore and Switzerland as models of governance.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  That's what I learned in high school history. Then, over the next decade or so, I learned that was indoctrination, and that in reality the US has a brutal history of resisting and toppling socialist regimes and installing capitalist ones. That's before even mentioning the horrible things we've done within our own borders, which rival even Nazi Germany. Did you know the Nazis used our Jim Crow laws as a model for their own? I'm not saying this to minimize the examples you gave — just to show that things are not neatly binary like that. Systems are made up of people. Look around the world and throughout history, and you'll see people abusing their power in all sorts of ways. There's no magic system that can prevent that. It's just us in here.
jaybrendansmith 4y ago
Agree. This extremism has to stop, it's tearing the USA apart. I think I speak for many when I say that capitalism is a wonderful system that is being threatened by corporatist Republicans and moneyed interests who are attempting to turn the USA into a corporate state. This is the new battleground now...do we want a corporate state and an oligarchy? I do not.

by bmitc 4y ago

Wyoming23 4y ago

Of course socialism is bad though. Statements like this seem terrifying to me, what are we teaching in high school history? Soviet union, Mao's socialist China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia. All of these were as horrible to live through as Nazi Germany. Empirically, we as humans have tried socialism in every sort of country and it's always a disaster of extreme poverty for regular people and corruption among rulers. Government run services isn't socialism. Maybe this is like defining "racism" where different people are using wildly different definitions. Free market capitalism provides the bounty of productivity and wealth creation which can then be skimmed off of to provide safety nets, infrastructure, etc. We should be looking to places like Singapore and Switzerland as models of governance.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
That's what I learned in high school history. Then, over the next decade or so, I learned that was indoctrination, and that in reality the US has a brutal history of resisting and toppling socialist regimes and installing capitalist ones. That's before even mentioning the horrible things we've done within our own borders, which rival even Nazi Germany. Did you know the Nazis used our Jim Crow laws as a model for their own? I'm not saying this to minimize the examples you gave — just to show that things are not neatly binary like that. Systems are made up of people. Look around the world and throughout history, and you'll see people abusing their power in all sorts of ways. There's no magic system that can prevent that. It's just us in here.

jaybrendansmith 4y ago

Agree. This extremism has to stop, it's tearing the USA apart. I think I speak for many when I say that capitalism is a wonderful system that is being threatened by corporatist Republicans and moneyed interests who are attempting to turn the USA into a corporate state. This is the new battleground now...do we want a corporate state and an oligarchy? I do not.