Socialize this
by Tom Sullivan
File under: “Can dish it out but cannot take it.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a case of the vapors over being dubbed #MoscowMitch and “a Russian asset” for blocking an election security bill. It’s “modern-day McCarthyism,” the Kentuckian splutters:
“The outrage industrial complex doesn’t let a little thing like reality get in their way,” said McConnell (R-Ky.) in a nearly 30-minute speech on the Senate floor. “They saw the perfect opportunity to distort and tell lies and fuel the flames of partisan hatred, and so they did.”
Why (Miss Scarlett might say), that sort of thing is just not done.
Eric Black of the MinnPost recently started a file on the National Republican Congressional Committee. The NRCC recently blasted as “deranged” 29 different House Democrats in a series of emails sent over 30 minutes. All identical, except for the name of the target.
An audience of idiots
“NRCC uses the word ‘socialist’ in pretty much every press release to describe the particular Dem under attack and generally assigns an unflattering nickname to every Democratic House member or candidate,” Black finds. Just like their liege lord in the White House.
Black continues:
It’s juvenile. Or should one say despicable? Well, it’s at least a parody of an organization that attaches no meaningful meaning to the word “socialism” nor to the concept of credibility or civility in political rhetoric. It’s just sad. Pitiful. Execrable. Its staff can’t be as stupid as they come across, but it’s hard not to assume that they believe they are writing for an audience of idiots.
Let’s just say Inigo Montoya would question if the NRCC even knows the meaning of the S-word it keeps using in its “strategy of red-baiting, bordering on McCarthyism.” They are rather desperate to change the national conversation from racism to socialism. Black’s series on the topic is his way of being helpful.
NRCC chair Tom Emmer of Minnesota defines socialism broadly and loosely by example, “It’s Venezuela. I mean, it is a complete government takeover. Literally, it’s theft. Socialism is theft. You name your issue. It’s restriction of free speech.”
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump believes the word socialism “should be read with the same intonation you’d use to say ‘the boogeyman’ to a 4-year-old you were trying to scare.” He defines the S-word’s colloquial usage thusly:
The government can’t be trusted to do things except the things it does that I like. It’s trivial to extend that outward to capture a debate that’s potent at the moment: Government-run programs are unacceptable socialism, except the good ones.
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare!” shouted an older man at a South Carolina town hall event in 2009. Reflecting on the man who launched “a thousand ironic riffs,” Bump comments on a recent Economist-YouGov poll that asked, “Do you have a favorable or an unfavorable opinion of socialism?” Republicans hated the term far more than Democrats while approving of government programs they like. Bump turned the data into a handy chart.
Free health care for all: socialism. Medicare for seniors over 65? Government-administered health care for veterans? Not socialism. There is “a 50-point gap in the likelihood that a Republican will call Medicare socialism and the likelihood they’ll say that of free health care for everyone.” For Democrats the gap is 11 points.
Black continues:
Sweden, Norway and Finland are often called “socialist” models. They use the term to refer to their own systems, which include plenty of free enterprise and prosperous companies. They are also solidly in the camp of democracy. Life there is very good, better, by many objective measures, than in the USA. Is that because they’re “socialist”? Or because Scandinavians are hard workers? Or some other reason?
If you wanted to have an honest discussion, you would deal with all of those cases, and others. If you just wanted to scare Americans, you would say that Venezuela is hell because “socialism” is hell, while Sweden is heaven because Swedes are just good people, even if they don’t love “freedom” like we do. (By the way, a lot of Swedes are good people.)
The U.S. has always had a mixed economy. It’s no more pure capitalism than it is a pure democracy, as conservatives pedants are quick to remind. But we cannot have that discussion. There are elections to win and opponents to smear.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump doles out subsidies to make up for the beating farmers are taking over his tariff wars. Two rounds of agricultural bailouts totaling tens of billions of dollars? Totally not socialism. Propping up the failing coal industry? Totally not socialism. Nor is it socialism in Republican eyes, Catherine Rampell observes, to have the treasury secretary lecture “U.S. retailers and manufacturers about how and where they should reallocate their supply chains; nor when the president himself lectures firms about what products to stock; nor when the administration tries to get other countries to engage in more centralized economic planning.”
Ultimately, the leading lights of the Republican Party don’t really care about the size of government spending. The charge of socialism by Republicans comes down to who is doing the spending and into whose pockets the federal dollars are flowing. Will funds benefit salt-of-the-earth, Lee Greenwood-humming Real Americans™ hanging out in idyllic Wall Street cube farms (also, country diners), or into those of darker-hued sub-humans who reside in “rodent-infested” cities like Baltimore?
So, ask the Joni Ernsts and the Tom Emmers whose voters get socialized national defense, education & transportation systems, socialized fire and police protection and public utlities, socialized retirement, socialized health care for seniors and the poor, plus socialized farm supports which they plan eliminating from their fair states first?
Update: Mercy, I originally left out the last ‘t’ in Scarlett.
