Why is anyone taking these people seriously?
Socialism in the United States is nothing new. For as long as it’s existed, there have been people in this country who wanted it. Like I said, nothing new.
But throughout most of my lifetime, socialists got shunted to the side in serious politics because their ideas were absolutely retarded. It was, to put it as generously as I can, communism lite. All of the same economics, but with slightly better packaging.
Democratic socialism, as personified by people like Bernie Sanders, takes the packaging of a turd and adds sprinkles to it.
And yet, Democratic Socialists have won some important victories so far. Assuming they hold onto blue seats where they won the primaries, we’re likely to see them in Congress, as well as in a few state houses along the way.
What baffles me is that people take this crap and these people seriously.
My friend Brad Polumbo took a gander at what the Democratic Socialists of America actually want and, honestly, it’s nuts.
I just read through the DSA’s new platform.
It is the most utopian/dystopian, bat-sh*t insane thing I have ever read.
It includes:
1. No more bills for anyone
2. Government-run food, housing, medicine, transportation, and nationalizing all other large corporations and essential industries
3. The drafting of a “new constitution”
4. Defunding the Department of War
5. Slavery reparations
6. Unlimited free abortion and “gender-affirming care” for all, including minors
7. Have taxpayers pay off everyone’s entire student debt & fund unlimited “free” higher education for all
8. Taking “steps toward fully abolishing the police and prison system”
9. Ending ALL deportations, providing amnesty for ALL illegal immigrants, and allowing unlimited migration to America
10. Abolish the Presidency, Supreme Court, and Senate
Other than that, their plans seem super realistic, practical, and not at all naive, revolutionary, or dystopian.
That’s definitely pie-in-the-sky BS, to say the least, but that’s only part of it.
Over at Reason, Robby Soave goes on to note:
The DSA goes on to say that in its socialist utopia, you'd be free to spend your day however you want, and you'd never have to work if you don't feel like it. But that obviously doesn't make any sense. Somebody has to work to provide all those supposedly free things: grow the food, drive the transportation, build the power plants, offer the medical services. Under capitalism, you perform those tasks in exchange for money that you use to buy what you need. But under every actually existing socialist government in history, including Soviet Russia and Maoist China, the government ends up having to force people to work, since they don't have profits to motivate them, and you end up with both shortages and repression.
In other words, no one has to do anything, and their needs will all be met, but somehow, there will be people who work in order to fill those needs, without any mechanism requiring work.
Let that sink in for a bit.
This is why the Utopian nonsense peddled by socialists always betrays such people as absolute idiots. Hypothetically, in a post-scarcity system with ridiculously high levels of automation, you could possibly live a life of leisure, doing whatever you wanted to, while having all of your needs met, because some computer or robot would meet them.
No one would need to grow the food or manufacture the things because robots would do all of that labor. They’d make everything you need, bring it right to you, and even put it away for you. You wouldn’t have to do anything.
If people have no need to work, most of them will opt not to work. That’s especially true if there aren’t any bills that need to be paid. Some will do some kind of task because they enjoy that particular bit of work, maybe, but not as a means of paying the bills.
After all, there aren’t any bills. You can just do whatever you want, and everything will magically take care of itself.
This is the kind of society that would be built by a well-meaning but ignorant toddler; someone who can easily be forgiven for not understanding how the world works. For supposed adults, though, it’s pathetically retarded.
Especially when the only way I can imagine it being remotely feasible would require the kind of innovation that socialism of any kind, by its very nature, discourages.
How are these people winning elections?
The answer is pretty simple. Academia has infected the college-educated, which includes teachers, and they’re infecting those who don’t go to college with the idea that they deserve something for nothing.
If this is where our society is heading, and the fact that the left has embraced Hasan Piker so completely suggests that at least part of it wants to head that way, then we are well and truly screwed.
Of course, this hinges on whether actual socialism is what people want. Right now, the candidates are talking a big game, but they’re doing it to Democratic primary voters, who are far from representative of the whole. A lot of middle-of-the-road voters aren’t interested in the least.
Plus, while polls suggest that socialism is gaining support, one has to wonder how those are being defined.
After all, Bernie tried to say that Democratic Socialism is really just what the Scandinavian countries have, though they say they’re capitalist countries with a particularly strong social welfare system—and they’re right, by the way, and it’s paid for by ridiculously high taxes as well as oil wealth. That might look attractive to many, while outright socialism, as the DSA wants above, is far beyond anything they’d vote for.
Still, the fact that there’s any support for this is troubling. Socialism is the dress that communism wears when it wants to appear approachable. It’s a disguise meant to lull us into the disasters of the 20th-century communist experiments. It doesn’t matter if the flavor is Leninist or Maoist. What matters is that starvation and hardship are all that it will bring.
Declaring yourself a socialist should carry the exact same stigma that declaring yourself a Nazi does.
Then again, DSA liked Graham Platner, so I guess it does.
https://tomknighton.substack.com/p/why-is-anyone-taking-these-people
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