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How Can We Teach That the Fire Is Hot?
George Orwell said, “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that the fire is hot.” The realist in me would add that this is why the left-wing control of our educational systems, media, and entertainment industry is so catastrophic. The conspiracy theorist in me would add that this is why the left wing places so much emphasis on controlling our educational systems, media, and entertainment industry.
Regardless, socialism seems to be rapidly gaining popularity here in the US, largely among people who seem to have absolutely no idea that the fire is hot. They appear unaware that the 20th century even happened, much less why. I would argue that this represents clear evidence that our educational systems, media, and entertainment industry are in fine shape – from a left-wing perspective, it’s working. Anyway, this brings up a few questions in my mind:
- How is possible for anyone to have a favorable view of socialism after our experiences over the past 150 years?
- How does one attempt to educate someone capable of such remarkable, apparently willful, blindness?
- Why is this happening now? What happened to make socialism so attractive all of a sudden?
- Can Democrats win American elections while being openly socialist?
- Is our Democrat party engaging in smart politics or self-immolation?
I’ll start by giving you my opinions, although I wrote this post because I want yours. My guesses:
- People can view socialism favorably only if they have no idea what it has done in the past. So the left wing is smart to control our educational systems, etc.
- People who chose to believe in socialism must feel some pain from their choices – they must feel the results of socialism themselves – poverty, tyranny, or something. They need to feel the heat of the fire. You cannot explain it to them; they won’t listen. Even first-hand experience doesn’t seem to work much of the time – the truly poor want more promises of security from their leaders and will tend to vote socialist. This is a serious problem.
- I have no idea why socialism is becoming so popular now. Please help.
- Yes – I believe that socialism is popular enough that Democrats can win as Socialists. Really, they have been doing so for decades, and socialism is only becoming more popular.
- I think this is smart politics by Democrats. I hope I’m wrong. About all this.
So what say you? Why is socialism rapidly becoming more popular, what can be done to change people’s minds, and are the Democrats smart to pursue this path?
Thanks for your input.
Published in General
It’s kind of a stream of consciousness thread where a lot of people hang out. The most recent iteration just crossed 30,000 comments yesterday or today – that’s since the end of March.
Devil’s Advocate: I’d guess that they would say that if the rich were on Medicare then the politicians who serve them would have an incentive to make it better.
The rich are on Medicare at retirement. Even my MD brother-in-law had to give up his career-long group health plan. But, he’s “rich,” so he gets concierge care. Once lefties get wind of that, they’ll outlaw private medicine. It’s the final “solution.”
Sure, if we want to play the left’s game of stretching the term “fascist” to mean “anything we don’t like”. Or do you think Israel is an economically fascist country?
I read a similar quote in an article on Slate recently. What struck me was the quote “we want to replace capitalism” with a glaring omission of what should actually replace it. The working strategy seems to be:
That’s why I’m much less worried about what a few thousand crackpots on the fringe left want than the fact that millions of more moderate Democrat voters now seem open to the notion of publicly-funded universal health care.
“Medicare for All” originally started off as Bernie Sander’s fully-functional plan to replace all US health payments (including Medicare) with single-payer. His plan actually goes much further than current Medicare (for example, by dropping all co-pays) and essentially abandons many if not most of Medicare’s other institutional structures. He simply called it “Medicare for All” to make it sound more palatable (…and as WC points out, only more palatable to those not actually on Medicare).
However, single-payer healthcare has now become such a litmus test for the left that everyone is jumping on board the bandwagon, but many of those are also trying to water down Sander’s proposal while keeping it under the same popular moniker. So there’s now a wave of “MFAINO” recriminations echoing about the left.
It’s not a stretch, nor is he using fascist as a pejorative. A system where industry is nominally privately owned but so heavily regulated that they weren’t really allowed to do anything without the government’s permission (and therefore were compelled to do the government’s bidding) actually was Mussolini’s proposed economic system.
Of course. But the question is about where we draw the boundaries of the term. After all, almost every government of a country with private companies uses regulation to steer their behavior in a preferred direction. Is every country on the planet a fascist country?
In Jonah Goldberg’s book, he cast such a wide net that the answer would be yes – I think he even titled the last chapter “We’re all fascists”. By Jonah’s working definition, even Reagan had fascist tendencies (also Jonah was also a little slippery when it came to the scope of that working definition).
So if we’re going to use fascist in such a broad term, then it has very little utility. My original point was that most “Democratic Socialists” want to turn the US into a European- or Israel-style social democracy. There’s an argument for calling that fascist, but at the price of robbing the term fascist of its meaningfulness.
Um…it has been 15+ years since my annual movie ticket purchases even approached $60.
Socialists slay me by forcing me to buy movie tickets, when what I want is to buy ice cream, and $120 per year is a pittance of an ice cream budget.
Jules, I get so tired of this narrow-minded claptrap you’re spewing.
Look, Hollywood is full of preposterously wealthy artists who think the right things. It’s full of producers and directors and writers who are shaping the culture.
So what exactly is your problem with forcing a middle-aged farmer’s widow in Iowa to pay her fair share to support George Clooney’s lifestyle and political mission, anyway?
You people.
I bet that farmer’s widow would rather support the dairy that sends some of its product to make ice cream.
Look, George Clooney may used to have been dreamy, but unless he and his cronies are going to nationalize ice cream, and Chick-fil-a, I’m not on board with this national movie pass thing.
I think I could get kids to skip movies, if I bought them ice cream with their movie-pass funds.
Bhahaha. Currency.
What the leftists should be saying is “Medicaid for all”, because the cost will make everyone so poor, they would qualify . . .
I got question number three in the bag thanks to Jordan Peterson.
3) After the collapse of the USSR, all the communist thinkers, philosophers and writers, became post-modernists. They taught that there was no Truth, only opinions and that one persons truth was as good as another person’s truth. Then after a sufficient time of trying to destroy Truth, they ditched post-podernmism and went SJW. Rather than defend what is indefensible, they attacked what was good (though imperfect).
Great observation: What is not perfect cannot be good.