We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Socialism!
Last year, about a month before the election, my wife and I got in our car on a Saturday morning and took a ride through the back roads of southern New Hampshire, towns like Swanzey, Jaffrey, Winchester, and Fitzwilliam. I wanted to see whether the polls which showed Joe with a 7-point lead in the ‘live free or die’ state were correct, because I was convinced that if Joe could win New Hampshire, he’d take the whole thing.
How did I do my research? I counted yard signs. Actually, Joe hadn’t given out yard signs in New Hampshire, but if someone had a BLM sign on their front yard, I assumed they were voting for Joe.
I stopped counting when the total number of yard signs in those 4 towns and a couple of others hit one hundred or so, and Joe’s total was 7% higher than Trump. In fact, two weeks later, Joe took New Hampshire by 7 points.
I have been driving around the back roads of New England for over 20 years and until last year, I never, ever saw a BLM sign anywhere. And BLM started operating in 2013. In 2020, they were all over the place. And this past weekend, the BLM yard signs were still in evidence as we drove through those towns again.
As for the Trump signs, there were a couple of tattered ‘Trump-2024’ banners here and there, but most of the 2020 campaign signage was gone. I must say that I didn’t miss seeing Trump’s name one, goddamn bit.
Something’s going on right now in terms of the content and style of how we talk about politics which, as usual, the liberal media seems incapable of understanding or reporting about at all. Right now, we happen to be in one of those occasional but not typical moments when liberal ideas and liberal political culture define the way a majority of Americans think and believe. How long will it last? Based on previous episodes, it will last only as long as we continue to grapple with Covid-19.
For all the talk about ‘cancel culture’ and ‘critical race theory’ and all that other stuff, the United States happens to be a very conservative country, at least in political terms. We are the only representative democracy in the entire world that does not have a Socialist Party running candidates in any national or state-level election.
We are the only country which delivers medical care on a private, fee-for-service basis. We are also the only country where students can go to colleges which are private institutions, as long as these students or their parents can come up with the necessary cash. I did part of my graduate work at the Sorbonne, and when I told my classmates in Paris that I was registered at a ‘private’ university in the United States, they thought I meant a school that was run by the Catholic Church.
The only time that government is seen as the first, rather than the last response to any problem is when the problem is so big, so serious and so threatening that free-market, capitalist responses fail to exist. That’s why FDR got elected multiple times. That’s why Clinton won in 1992 — ‘it’s the economy stupid,’ remember? That’s why Obama got elected in 2008.
Know why Trump beat Hillary in 2016? Because there weren’t any real issues in that campaign. Which made it easy for Trump to talk about ‘crooked Hillary.’ Because when there’s nothing really wrong with what’s going on, a political campaign based on personal insults is what happens just about every time. And Hillary came into 2016 with a lot more baggage than Trump, even after the Billy Budd tapes were played.
Our entire political system and the rhetoric which is used by everyone in that system does not allow for even the existence of alternative or oppositional strategies to free-market (read: capitalist) institutions and ideas. And one of the reasons for this absence of any degree of public consciousness about the limitations and inequities of capitalism happens to be the fact that this country is so rich.
The only countries which have a higher per-capita GDP than the United States are tiny places like Luxembourg, whose total population is about one-third the number of people living in The Bronx, and its basic so-called ‘industry’ is all the untaxed gelt (read: cash) sitting in those unnumbered bank accounts. Monaco’s another country whose per-capita GDP is higher than our GDP. Get it?
Yea, yea, I know about all the poor people living in what we now politely refer to as the ‘underserved’ communities which when I was growing up, we called ‘slums.’ It is scandalous that more than 35 million people, according to the U.S. Census, live at or below the official poverty line. Which means that nearly 300 million Americans live above the poverty line. And most of them believe that given an opportunity and some good luck, they can do better and live better in a free-market economy as long as things don’t collapse.
When we use a word like ‘socialism,’ it’s usually taken to mean extending the Welfare State, or the Entitlement State, or whatever you want to call the Government Handout State. That’s why Bernie Sanders calls himself a Socialist, because he’s always yapping about the government paying college tuition, extending family leave, increasing the minimum wage — nice, compassionate things like that.
All of those programs started appearing in Western Europe at the end of the nineteenth century when governments in countries like Germany and France felt threatened by strikes and mass mobilization of labor unions. So, the idea was that you gave a little bit to the workers here and there, but the economic system based on private property and private gain was never changed. It was, however, changed in Russia and China, except that free-market capitalism eventually overcame and dismembered these worker-states too. Another reason why we don’t have any solid understanding or even memories of what Socialism really means.
I keep saying (hope, hope) that the GOP will become the permanent minority party if it doesn’t find some way to move beyond a narrative that only appeals to White voters as well as to what Grandpa would call the “vilde chayas” (read: real crazies) who used to show up at all Trump’s events. Hey — what happened to all those events?
Which means the GOP also has to get rid of Trump, but he seems to be doing a pretty good job of getting rid of himself. His website is now attracting less than 130,000 visits a day. Boy — that’s quite a crowd. What Grandpa would call “bupkis” (read: nothing.)
The real question is whether someone will emerge with the smarts and political creds to take the GOP in a different direction or whether they will go into 2022 and then 2024 with a warmed-over version of Trump like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul. As for DeSantis and Abbott, those two jerks can spend the next year explaining how and why the hospitals in their states have been forced to ration ICU beds in order to protect the freedom of Americans to get sick and die whenever they choose.
I hope the Democratic Party deals with Covid-19 not just by reminding everyone that you can’t solve any public health problem without strong and effective government controls, but these controls can be imposed without having anything to do with Socialism at all.
In other words, as the Covid-19 threat begins to recede, the Democrats need to make it clear that they have been the driving force behind such radical issues as civil rights, gender rights, abortion rights, immigrant rights, gay rights and, by the way, increasing the minimum wage. Mentioning anything having to do with Socialism is to play the game by the GOP’s rules.
We need to play by the blue team’s rules, okay?
