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Quote of the Day: Socialists
“Those who proclaim themselves “socialists” are usually depressing, have no sense of humor & attended an expensive college. Fate loves irony.” – Elon Musk
Seems about right to me. As the meme goes:
In England between the World Wars, many young members of the upper crust attended the big two universities, Oxford and Cambridge. They were naturally turned off by carnage of WWI and turned to socialism, with some becoming spies for the Soviets. There were some socialists imbedded in the US government before WWII, but most kept quiet until the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, these socialist/communists taught the baby boomers their nonsense, and we pay for that today..
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I don’t disagree with this, I will add that the neocon military/industrial complex militancy has produced the same horrors and added to the movement in our modern era.
Then why are all of the loudest and most-strident leftist groups made up of people with zero military experience, who have never seen war outside of a video game?
Not to mention that the most vocal anti-communists are usually the ones who actually went overseas to fight?
Nothing in my comment indicated any of those I was describing were among those who were actually engaged in the military action. I am referring to those who profit from the military actions.
History did that for you – the anti-Vietnam movement was fueled by people who were being drafted and sent to Vietnam. The people who were protesting WERE the people who had to face the horrors of war. Throughout the whole last century, that’s been the core of ALL anti-war movements.
Until now, that is. The people who are most worked up about “the horrors” are the people who are most insulated from them, and are only posting about it because it makes good Twitter and Instagram fodder.
As Orwell noted, they don’t love the poor, they simply hate the rich.
Let’s keep in mind that the education-industrial complex and the healthcare-industrial complex are worse.
The power of the phrase “military-industrial complex” is largely based in the fact that we know “military” to refer to a government function. But, these days, so do “healthcare” and “education.”
Constitutionally speaking, at the federal government level there is a difference in that the feds have an exclusive on the military feature and questionable reasons for significant participation in health and education. I’m not disagreeing with where we are.
Oh, yes. No one’s saying education or healthcare are legitimate federal government functions.
Good point. The military, budgetary excess aside, still performs its intended task. Although I suppose my inner cynic would say the purpose of the healthcare-industrial complex is no more “healing” than the purpose education-industrial complex is “teaching”.
You might want to add that the alleged purpose that the military-industrial complex is for ‘national defense’ is a sham and a pretext for ‘profiteering’.
Citation needed.
I’m really beginning to like Elon Musk.
And female socialists have hairy legs and armpits.
The real irony is the source of the quote: a crony capitalist huckster.
I know – but let’s face it, he is enough of a capitalist that if the government offers him money, he is going to take it. Remember what Thomas Sowell said about capitalists and Adam Smith? Sowell said he would give students in his economics classes an “A” if they could bring in a quote from Smith showing that Smith liked capitalists. Smith loved capitalism, but he disliked capitalists.
Right on.
One of the basic points here is that it’s a system that turns evil to good. Socialism turns evil worse.
Seriously, how do you not know this about the Vietnam War?
I mean, I was actually alive then, and knew people who protested, were drafted, and went to Vietnam. I was too young to go by a few years, but I had relatives in the military, and went to college, where I met even MORE people who went.
What do YOU think happened then?
I think it was led by people who *didn’t want* to be drafted and sent off to Viet Nam.
There’s a reason the protests ended when the draft did.
You missed the “who were being drafted” part of my comment.
That includes people who didn’t want to be drafted.
But it was in the context of this (below), which maybe wasn’t your intent but certainly implies that the people leading the anti-war protests were people who had *already* seen “the horrors of war”, and not the people who were trying to avoid those horrors in the first place: