Saturday, January 16, 2021

Eeek! Communists!


Poor Debbie Lesko! Some mean people wanted to keep the Republican congresswoman from Arizona from bringing her gun into the Capitol. She is outraged. We don't know what kind of scene she makes at the airport, but in the Capitol, where she and her colleagues are routinely kettled for the convenience of armed mobs, she's stamping her little feet. "We now live in Pelosi's Communist America!" she tweeted thunderously. Yes, you can tweet thunderously.

Ah, that old chestnut! It brings me back. When I was a kid that's what you called other kids on the playground if you wanted to rile 'em up. They were commies! Specifically, dirty commies. Just like Miss Debbie, we didn't know what we meant by it. It was another word for asshole. 

So Miss Debbie doesn't really mean "Communist" when she complains about being detained at a metal detector. What she's really hopped up about is governmental overreach. Authoritarians are the worst, unless they're Russians or North Koreans or some other repressive, crushing regime that we kind of admire, right, Miss Debbie? Authoritarianism is awesome if God's on your side.

"Communist" is just one of those big-basket words that scoops up many different people indiscriminately. It's a broad brush. It's like calling all Republicans "Nazis," when a lot of them are just self-dealing assholes.

I like to keep an ear open for the language being used to perpetuate the plutocracy. It evolves. For four years now "socialist" has been the slur of choice, but now we're hearing more about communists. Hardly anyone can define the terms, but that's irrelevant. Every now and then you will hear someone elucidate what is so awful about being a socialist, and it usually comes down to "they want to take all your hard-earned money and give it to the lazy people."

Sounds bad! But weirdly, they are fantasizing something entirely different from having all their hard-earned wages, pensions, and benefits taken and given to the indolent rich, which is what has actually happened over the last forty years. Someone should look into that.

In any case, I have a lot of commerce with the motley Left Wing and can report that very few of us consider ourselves socialists. There are a few socialists, and an anarchist/anti-capitalist contingent, but the vast bulk of us would align with Democratic Socialism, which aims to maintain a market system but strip it of its worst excesses and failures. A bit more like Eisenhower's America, in other words, without all the racism and sexism and homophobia and xenophobia and...well, we'd like to polish things up a bit, and try to save the planet in the bargain. It's not really scary at all. Make everyone's lives a little better, without making the billionaires' lives worse. Because above a certain income, you shouldn't be able to notice how rich you are. You can drown your soul in a bathtub of money just as easily as in an ocean of it, after all.

There's a lot not to like about our current economic system, in which profit for some is sacred and the true costs of it are paid by the rest of us. Let's look at the results. Our planet may soon become uninhabitable. Extinctions are accelerating. Our resources have been stripped and turned into cash for the few. Legions of us are impoverished, homeless, sick. Entire populations all over the world are on the move for their very survival.

We would like to not be ruined by medical expenses. We would like to not be ruined by fossil fuel consumption. We would like clean water and a range of basic services. We would like to support small farmers. We would also like maybe some bullet trains, please.

"Communist America!" Poor Miss Debbie doesn't mean anything by it, not really. She's just using it as a phony label to instruct the masses who they're supposed to hate. You fling that word out enough and it fails to mean anything at all--it's just a stain in the brain that will hopefully remind you what Debbie wants you to do in the voting booth.

What she doesn't want you to do is think.

41 comments:

  1. I know it's divisive of me, but it's difficult for me to like Republicans anymore. That they can believe a known liar shows that they are stupid. That they still consider him worth following shows that they are really white supremacists. I still see Trump signs all over people's lawns over the border in PA. Accompanied by lots of flags dotting their yards, because they are SO fucking patriotic. I used to roll my eyes at all these flag-wavers that showed up after 9/11. Now I profile all the flag-wavers as Trumpers and avoid them.

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    1. I am mostly spared that here. In fact, I haven't seen one Trump sign in my perambulations through the neighborhood.

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    2. Well, they're about. Five-six days ago, I was headed east on Burnside around 60th and, about four cars in front of me, there was a big-ass pickup with huge-ass red Trump flag putting merrily down the road.

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    3. Headed east, right? Right? Yeah--I've seen that dude too.

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  2. Exactly. Socialism and communism are just labels for anything they don't like. I routinely see homosexuality, atheism, swearing in movies, etc referred to as "cultural Marxism".

    They're always ranting about the US becoming Venezuela, whereas in fact we want to become more like Denmark or Germany or Canada or..... well, actually, we're the only developed country that hasn't managed to do this stuff yet.

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    1. Finland. We want to be like Finland. Good schools, great healthcare, and people know the value of personal space.









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  3. An impressive read, Murr. I thank you for it, very glad I found your voice. The ignorance of these people in Congress astounds & frightens me. And mimimanderly if you’re reading this, Jesus yes. I live in PA but fortunately in the city (Pittsburgh) where I never saw a single Trump sign. Sadly, about 75 miles south of here in my hometown, every house still has their Trump signs out front, hoping their warped truth wins out in the end. Why can’t I get this. Where is this adoration coming from. I thought after 4 years of this ignorant, despicable madness the bulk of the country would be so desperate for goodness again, not so divided. Anyway, I miss feeling patriotic or “proud to be an American”. I’m ready to be proud to be a Finlander or New Zealander.

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    1. I live in Delaware, which is heavily Democratic (at least north of the Mason-Dixon line), but just over the border in Garnet Valley, PA (where the local farmer's market is) I see LOTS os signs for that despicable man. I always knew that there were hate-filled, stupid people out there. I just didn't realize there were so MANY of them!

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    2. I spent my summers in the lower third of the Delaware and remember the abundance of backward, ignorant racists down there. It was difficult to avoid them as many were my stepmother's relatives. Being forced to attend functions was always an education in backwards ass thinking. At least it taught me what I didn't want to be when I grew up.

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    4. I remember back in 1980, I had a long-distance relationship with a guy who lived in Laurel. The first time I went there, I was meeting him at a local tavern. Knowing me, he told me not to bring a book with me or they would think I was snobby. I had short blonde hair at the time and earrings that didn't match. It was the first and only time I was considered "exotic."

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  4. We turn to shorthand labels when we are too tired/lazy/worn down to think in greater detail - when we are lashing out.

    I live in a suburb of the largest city (Wichita) in the red, red state of Kansas. I acknowledge that I don't get out much these days, being 83 and COVID-phobic, but I didn't see a single Trump sign this past election season (or maybe I automatically tuned them out?) There were, however, lots of signs for his sycophants who won the senate seat and house seat for our district.

    My husband has always claimed to be to the right of Attila; but, even he, abandoned the GOP in 2020 and registered as an Independent - lest he be lumped in with the idiostocracy.

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    1. Oh, that's good news! I haven't heard much from people who voted for him and then abandoned him.

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    2. To be clear: My husband and I were, previously, registered Republicans; but, neither of us voted for Trump - ever. I re-registered as a Democrat. But then, most of my life I've been registered as Independent and only sporadically as R or D.

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    3. I think people like to register as independent because they like the sound of it, but it's not all that useful in a primary.

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  5. I want to print up a sheaf of these and drop them all around for my coworkers, bosses and general acquaintances to read. Oh, and blood spawn as well. I am on a lonely island where I live.

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    1. Please share as much as you want. I don't know if a SHARE button pops up when you read this--it doesn't on mine, anymore, although I installed it--but there are ways around it.

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    2. Can't find a share button but copy/paste works just fine. Well said as usual, Murr!

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    3. I need a Young Person to install my share button so it stays installed.

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    4. The Share icon (ShareThis) is still at the bottom of your posts on my computer (Firefox)

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  6. Communists, facists, socialists, anarchists...hand me a dictionary please.

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    1. Pfft. To define is to limit. Humans are just chimps with ideas above their stations. We should be more like Bonobos.

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    2. Now we know mimimanderly is a sex fiend.

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    3. Yeah... about as much as Donald Trump is a Great Intellect. *Sigh*

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    4. I reacted the same way as Murr when you mentioned Bonobos. DT could have been outperformed in his job by any random person on the street.

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    5. You guys obviously know a bit more about Bonobos than I do. I meant that Chimps have a patriarchal, war-like society, yet Bonobos, who live across the river from them have a matriarchal, peaceful society. A Bonobo will not kill another Bonobo. I'm not sure whether they would kill a chimp, but I'm guessing yeah... with the right provocation.

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    6. Plenty of species display murder of conspecifics, but we are the ONLY species that can, while murdering a conspecific, declare "What I'm doing to you is morally right."

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    7. I'm trying to come up with an exception... ... ,,,,,

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    8. OMG mimimanderly you know more about Bonobos than I do since I thought perhaps everyone was referring to a PERSON!
      LMAOROTF now it's been explained...

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  7. I couldn't read this because brain not functioning today.
    But i want to say i love your posts and your perspectives. I always like to read what Murr has to say. I also like to thank you for the links you provide.
    I've found some great things just by following a trail.

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    1. Heck, all I do half the time is chase rabbits down rabbit-holes. It's all good! And thank you.

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  8. Well said Murr. I remember being called a Nazi in primary school a time or two simply because I'd been born in Germany. I wasn't bothered because I knew the kids had no idea what a Nazi was and were just parroting what they'd heard at home.

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  9. I reserve the word "nazi" for — well, it's like this. A century ago there were two groups of white supremacists in the US of any significance, nazis and the klan. What did they have in common? They both wanted me and all my relatives dead and were ready to work toward that end so long as they could do it with no risk to themselves. How did they differ? One was obsessed with German culture and the other with Confederate culture. I find those differences utterly insignificant as compared with their similarities. Now there are over 1,000 such groups. If you wish to call them all klansmen, I will not object. I'll call them all nazis.

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  10. "Sounds bad! But weirdly, they are fantasizing something entirely different from having all their hard-earned wages, pensions, and benefits taken and given to the indolent rich, which is what has actually happened over the last forty years. Someone should look into that." Yeah, that pretty much encapsulated the last 40 or so Years and hasn't worked, yet so easy to have too many Fear something better... perpetuated of coarse by the ones who've profited most from the last 40 or so Years of how it has exploited the masses.

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