✡ Over the weekend I was channel surfing down from Discovery looking for one of the PBS channels and crossed Fox News. When I did so, I stopped to read the banner at the bottom of the screen. Something there caught my eye. I really forget what it was. But I started to listen to the host and his guest banter about Iran and other issues related to oil wealth. The basic idea is that we are borrowing money from China to buy oil from our enemies to fuel fighter jets and tanks to proxy fight our enemies. A brilliant idea for these right wing neo-fascicts to arrive at. Where we differ is they want to rape new parts of the world to continue to fuel these ill-advised adventures whereas others amongst us want to just stop fighting war as much as we have been!
This is not the point of this rant, however, what was sickening was the hosts statement, almost aside, not noticeable, except if you had your brain turned on. He said something very close to, “We know the problems of socialism in some of these countries, we have seen it, it doesn’t work and and cripples growth”. The was in the context of, mind you, a nation’s ability to turn oil under the ground into real exported petro-products.
This out-of-context statement first made me angry, then I laughed. Because there are two kinds of people who decry socialism: those that are so fat on wealth they feed their kids with the blood of the abused American worker, ie are mean spirited Ebenezer Scrooge types and under educated poor people who do not understand their own self interest enough to realize they are under educated and poor because of the the former.
Socialism is not communism. Socialism is neighborliness – a GOOD OLD FASHION AMERICAN VALUE. But we can’t be out being good neighbors because if we are then we are not at Wal*Mart or Target support the Chinese, we are not alone in our houses watching mind numbing TV, we are not jacked into the ‘net buying more and more, we are not fattening the wallets of the robber barons of our times.
So no wonder they hate socialism, it might mean they have to pay a living wage and full health care. They really must worry about the day we all start treating each other as neighbors again, because they worked hard to destroy that part of what used to make America special.