The current freak-out by Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, and other right-wingers about democratic socialism is quite rational. In socialism, they see a formidable foe.
Call it whatever label you want.
I would prefer OUR TAX DOLLARS to be spent on:
- Universal Healthcare for ALL, Seriously ALL. Single payer, no insurance industry, just go to Dr. Taxes pay bill, go home.
- Infrastructure. Internet, rail, mass transit, roads, solar, wind, whatever. Make life better.
- Education. Pay all teachers a fair salary. They shouldn’t have to buy their own supplies either, that’s just insulting.
- Housing. We have plenty of room to share. Homelessness is a choice, sure, but it’s by society, not the person without the house. We can easily subsidize basic housing for anyone at any time.
- UBI. We could all have basic needs paid for, easily. And work is what you do to grow beyond that basic food/house system. Want a hobby? Get a job. Wanna travel? Job. Wanna have fancy stuff? Job. If you just want to exist, fine, basic UBI. No prob. I’d rather have that than a dozen assholes having all our wealth pooled into their pockets while we all fight over crumbs.
- Bomb orphanages. This one’s easy, bomb kids. Ok I’m not serious, I wanted to see if you were still reading this far. Fuck anyone who bombs kids. Why does that have to be explicitly stated now?
- Other Social Services. We have roads, fire departments, libraries, parks, why stop there? Add more things that make ALL OUR LIVES BETTER!!!
If you want to label all these things “WooooOOOOO wooo Evil Scary Socialism”, then sure, fine, I’m a Socialist. All I’m saying is we should spend our tax money (THAT WE ALREADY PAID) on things to benefit us all, not to give to the lazy billionaires that “run” 7 different companies as CEO all at the same time. I can’t work 7 jobs at the same time? How do you think they are?
Not all heroes wear capes o7
They hate Americans and anything that benefits them.
My 27 year old son was 17, and just becoming aware of politics when Trump first took office. His entire political awareness of “Democracy” and “Freedom” has been under the perverse MAGA era. Is it any wonder that young Americans have such a negative view of our current governmental system?
I explained to my son that things weren’t always like this, that our government was relatively sane before Trump, and he countered with the absolutely true statement that we didn’t have Medicare 4 All, free college, free day care, etc., all the things that EVERY other civilized nation provides to their citizens, so it doesn’t seem like American Democracy has EVER been a decent system.
And you know what? He’s absolutely correct. Things weren’t better before Trump, we were just a lot more polite about getting fucked over. The Democrats entire existence has been to convince us to accept everything the Republicans were steadily taking from us.
So from the perspective of young people, whose entire view of American Democracy has been Donald Trump’s perverse vision of it, something like Socialism, or even Communism doesn’t sound so bad. After all, countries like Scandinavia, China, and others are among the most successful governments on the planet by EVERY metric, but we’re supposed to be happier with being the biggest terrorist nation on Earth?
After all, we can kill thousands of people with the press of a button! Isn’t that wicked cool enough? You want food, too?
After all, we can kill thousands of people with the press of a button! Isn’t that wicked cool enough? You want food, too?
China does the exact same thing and the people in general are worse off. But you go queen.
How do you figure that Chinese people are worse off than Americans? In what regard?
China has had serious problems in the past, but they systematically addressed them, and now they are poised to have an amazing future.
OTH, it’s hard to imagine America having a decent future, without a similar commitment to systematic change, and other than the Progressives, NOBODY is willing to make that commitment.
We need to stop finding excuses why we shouldn’t emulate countries that are demonstrating proven success with their policies, and start borrowing ideas, and do it for the next quarter century.
But that will never happen as long as MAGA and their Democratic Quislings keep blocking any sort of progress on behalf of the Sociopathic Oligarchs.
These numbers are just for provocation.
They might have asked 10 people snd 6 of them said socialism and 3 communism. But this doesn’t mean the whole generations idea. Also what’s the fucking point of giving these numbers? Get people mad?
If the next idea going to be socialism, we need to be careful to step the fuck away when millenials are old so as genz etc etc. we’re all knee deep shit because of greedy fucking boomers and pathetic bootlicker Gen X don’t wanna leave their power seats.
I mean it’s a Fox News screen grab posted to social media, of course it’s just to rage bait people. You can do the same thing with a Shit Sandwich and a Douchebag, and you’d still get people picking one or the other, because there isn’t another choice.
Vance just had a kid. For free. Free healthcare. Salary from your tax dollars.
Yeah socialism is working just fine for the people who have the benefits.
Ask Vance on camera how much his bill was for the birth and if he’s paid it already.
Just find the model of the couch and where he bought it from and you can probably call them for a quick estimate.
Well that, and it’s yet another distraction from Epstein.
They aren’t trying to “distract” from Epstein. This implies there is some form of justice that would come if they didn’t successfully keep “distracting”.
That justice does not exist in the systems of power we have. Obama didn’t put Bush in chains. On the contrary, he continued commiting the same war crimes and didn’t even shut down the very torture camp he ran on closing. Because every politician is just a subject to the ruling Epstein capitalist class.
Epstein was the ruling capitalist class, and the politicians that they own, telling you “we get to do the worst crimes imaginable and there is nothing you will do about it”. They don’t have to pretend anymore. They use to have to pretend “weapons of mass destruction”, “we tortured some folks”, “Rafah is my red line”.
They told you this same thing first when they spent years bombing and mutilating children in Gaza even without the orange man in control.
And they were right. We didn’t do anything.
There is no “distraction”. We give them permission to genocide children every day we keep going to work. We give them permission to keep trafficking children every day we pay our rent. We give them permission to starve children every day we don’t put a fucking [redacted] in their [redacted]'s.
Everytime you hear this same “distraction” comment. I want you to remember that.
didn’t even shut down the very torture camp he ran on closing.
To be fair Obama did try to do it but Congress screwed him.
Not that I’m saying dude was a good guy or anything like that, just that he did everything he could as president to shut down guantanamo. He did successfully drastically reduce the number of prisoners held there but Congress held up funds and approvals for certain prisoner transfers preventing the actual closure.
A Republican president wouldn’t have had a problem shutting it down if they decided they wanted to
To be fair Obama did try to do it but Congress screwed him.
To be fair to Congress, the 90 senators who voted against it in 2009 included Bernie Sanders and other progressives. Obama attempted to fulfill only the letter of the promise of closing Guantanamo, by simply relocating the detainees to American soil. This risked creating a firmer legal precedent that could enable the practices to be expanded across the country.
I’d say it’s because he didn’t have a spine with his own party. He signed an executive order to close it within a year. Which was blocked by his own party members. The Democratic party is a failure for sure. But if the leader of the party can’t get a fundamental thing he ran on passed that’s still something you can blame a politician for. He failed to pass it. Why it didn’t pass is not an excuse for a politician failing. Especially when they hold the highest office in the land.
Obama’s entire presidency is him not acting on popular legislation, attempting to work with Republicans to prevent them from calling him a dictator or terrorist lover, and the Republicans STILL calling him a dictator and terrorist lover anyway.
Edit: downvotes. But everything I said was true. His literally party voted against him closing it. A fundamental part of his campaign. That’s a weak president that can’t even whip his own party. Or he never cared to close it in the first place.
I mean I think he did the best he could with what was in his power to do.
Him getting his hands tied by Congress and the Judiciary is part of living in a functioning democracy. Even if I did want Obama as a dictator that doesn’t really matter nor would it be cool.
I do wish we could have had more impactful legislation passed while he was president but that’s not really part of his job duties.
I’m not trying to whitewash Obama here, plenty of bad shit happened while he was president and some because of him. Nonetheless, I don’t think it’s fair to paint him as a totally useless and bad president that “(didn’t) act on popular legislation” given the action a president has in regards to that are a signature or veto.
A lot of people seem to forget, but prior to Trump, the president wasn’t a dictator
Super majority in the house and Senate. His party voted to block a fundamental promise of his campaign. Presidents aren’t dictators. But they are absolutely dictators of their parties in situations like this.
Ironically, the downvotes I’m getting are a testament to how incredibly liked and popular Obama is with the population.
Obama could have literally built the momentum of the left by pointing to the failures of his own party. Threats to primary Democrats that did not enact the will of the people.
Trump is a dictator because he controlled his party with the popularity he had in elections. Look at Thomas Massey recently. Even with his unpopular national approval he still has so much power in his party.
Obama was significantly stronger than Trump; he could have influenced the primary of any Democrat that betrayed the popular mandate of the people. It’s why even now his party begs him to not endorse candidates unless he needs to come in and save an establishment candidate from a DSA candidate. And even then it is rare because of the influence he has that would just improve turnout and interest (bad for establishment candidates).
He is not powerless. He is/was the most liked and popular president in you and I’s lifetime. And that was only STRONGER when he was first elected. Maybe I’m old. But I think people forget how much people thought Obama was FDR 2.0. He ended up being Clinton 2.0 with some Bush 3.0 on the side.
We can also remember the Epstein Files though.
Happy for you. Or sorry that happened to you.
Yeah, it’s somehow a rarely acknowledged truth than more than one fact can exist.
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I’m not sure how you got that connection in your last sentence couple sentences. It’s not a choice between two evil acts. I’m pointing to it because no one ever talks about a “distraction” from Gaza.
The idea that Epstein needs to be “distracted” from is because it’s something that more Americans know and care about. But, more importantly, it’s something that happened TO AMERICANS. So, Americans believe that there is some justice they are due.
The false belief Americans have is that when children are dying and raped in those “savage” countries by our countries direct or indirect actions are just an unfortunate result of “how the world works”. But, Americans, we are special, we deserve justice.
If someone has this false belief they reach a contradiction when addressed with Epstein. That is, if they acknowledge the crimes of the Epstein class elsewhere. They must address this contradiction. So they continue to believe that the justice is just “on hold”. That when Trump is gone or out of power the system will bring justice. They keep reminding everyone of the crimes because they (rightfully) don’t want them to be forgotten. There must be justice FOR THIS!
But there will not be. Just as there has been no justice for Gaza. At least not from the systems of power that are controlled by the capitalist Epstein class. The only justice we will find for these crimes will be found outside of those systems of power.
Just as Gaza will not find justice in the American systems; neither will Epstein. They are crimes performed by that very system. The only justice will come when that system loses its power. By destroying those systems of power.
They aren’t “distracting” you from anything. Because they don’t care. If you think they care or think they worry you are confusing their own delusions of their own narratives with worry. Trump denying Epstein connections is not because he’s worried for justice. He’s doing that for his own narcissistic narrative. That’s why they don’t proudly say they are pedophiles (yet). It’s for their narcissism, not for their worry of justice. Like you said, even they know people don’t like pedophiles. They care as much as that narcissism needs them to.
They aren’t worried because they still see the rest of us pointing to their rigged system as a means of future justice. They laugh as you appeal to it as the solution.
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I think you’re the one simplifying it and appealing to existing nation structures to avoid addressing class structures. Which is, ironically, exactly the thing I’m critizing. And also trying to appeal to some “human nature” reason for why Americans ignore other crimes.
A distraction would be a form of entertainment. It’s the “bread and circus” of maintaining control. Rounding up people and putting them in concentration camps is not a “distraction”. Killing people that attempt to stop that, or that run away, is not “a distraction”. It’s the form of control that occurs when the “bread and circuses” are no longer able to be maintained.
If you think fascist physically enforcing their power with violence is “a distraction” I don’t know what to tell you.
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Im sorry if I infered things from what you said. But, I am frustrated with the hoops people jump through to avoid discussing class conflict. You haven’t once responded to the points I’ve made about class conflict and class consciousness. You just said “I’m overcomplicating it” rather than attempt to understand what was being said.
I’m not sure if you’re purposely avoiding it. Or, more likely, you’re just not understanding what is being said and you’re filling it in with your own misunderstanding. But I’m not talking about “the rich” like they need to just pay more taxes and shits good. I’m talking about class not wealth. And more importantly, how that class structure gives only one class access to influence government (power).
I agree, online conversations like this are frustrating. But, you have now multiple times ignored my discussion of class and replaced it with things I didn’t say. Instead you appealed to tribalism, calling people racist, or acting like I’m discussing a conspiracy. Nothing of which I’ve said.
If you want to push back on a perspective someone has, you should probably understand that perspective first. Because it’s entirely based on class conflict. Something you’ve refused to respond to. I would have thought that was obvious from “capitalist Epstein class” that I mentioned in my literal first comment.
He attacks socialism because it decentralizes money and power and control, the exact opposite goal of every corporation and capitalist.
What exactly do you mean by decentralizes in this sentence? Socialism still has a centralized State structure to enforce the rule of the working class. A centralized State is fundamental to protecting the revolution. No, revolution has succeeded that attempted to completely abolish the state. That would be anarchism not socialism.
But maybe you are just referring to a stateless, moneyless, classless society as a goal of the socialist state? Which would be Communism not socialism.
It means dispersion, rather than concentration.
Want? I’d say American desparately NEED it.
Well the Trump administration should keep whining about it. Really they’re just helping to increase its popularity, since they consider their incompetent selves as the alternative to it.
We know for sure that we don’t want the 19th century robber baron capitalism that we currently have.
Yeah, same here honestly. I agree with you on that
We need a new deal 2.0
Holy crap what a ghoulish photo of the moron in chief
Basically a unwarranted Donald Trump jump scare
Lol no shit
At this point they are all ghoulish, they might be worse when he looks happy
Caption: Trump, sitting in the gilded room where supplicants like Tim Apple and Snoop Dog pay tribute, explaining why “you having political power” is bad.
Maybe just maybe the lie of capitalism has worn thin enough for people eager for change to vote differently…
Rapist does rapey things more at 11
I pay enough taxes, I don’t want to pay more
It’s not about paying more or less taxes, it’s about what we spend our taxes on.
While we were spending trillions to lose wars in the middle east, China invested half that much in their own nation, and built an amazing high speed rail system, super upgraded their energy output, and eliminated most poverty.
We spend more than enough on taxes, we don’t have to raise them to get everything we need, we just have to take a defensive military posture, and not an offensive one. We are stronger when we threaten with our military power, and not actually use it to prove how inept our military leadership is.
100% agree, I don’t think there has been a responsible spending regime since Clinton and it irritates the heck out of me all the government waste
Speaking of paying here’s the paywall free version https://www.removepaywall.com/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjacobin.com%2F2026%2F07%2Fsocialism-mamdani-trump-vance-rubio
Full on Dingus.
You have no idea what you actually pay collectively, each year, in direct and indirect costs. You look at your annual tax refund like a scratch off winning ticket.
Actual truth is that you’d spend the same or less for better care (and better care for those around you) if you just got out of your own way and admitted you have no idea what you’re talking about.
