WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW
Blares from the cover of this week’s NEWSWEEK magazine.
I suppose it was around 1949 with the congressional enactment of the House on UnAmerican Activities Committee that the word went so far out of favor. The early Fifties were a time we criminalized political views, enjoyed McCarthyism, and jailed and Black Balled Hollywood artists who refused to squeal on their friends. Adolph Menjou, Elia Kazan and Ronald Reagan were the best squealers of the day. It was also the time we felt the need to put GOD into the Pledge of Allegiance, and on our money and dashboards.
Since that time any call in America to FAIRNESS, helping the poor, universal health care, raising taxes or the government lending a hand to anyone for any reason has caused the GOP to successfully screech Socialism! Marxism! Communists! Pinkos! Reds! Unionists!
Today on talk radio you can hear Limbaugh and Hannity use the worlds "socialist" or "socialism" as the Democrat’s or the President’s last name. These two guys must screech the word a hundred times a day. And of course Climate Change is communism and environmentalists are Marxists. When it comes to the weather, hybrid cars and wind turbines they get so angry they harden their propaganda into groups we should shoot.
Perhaps the word has finally lost its evil connotations? Has it lost the propaganda success it has enjoyed for 60 years? After all, life is socialism.
Frontline – Sick Around the World
last night I happened to see a repeat of the April 2008 Frontline called Sick Around the World. This one hour presents the issue of universal health care better than anything else I have ever seen.
Our traveler is T. R. Reed who goes to 5 different nations which all have different kinds of universal (single payer) health care systems.
In America 15% of us have no coverage at all with another 20% under covered. Health care is 16% of your GNP. Unable to pay medical bills almost a million people a year lose everything and are forced into bankruptcy. Most Americans think our health care stinks.
In all five countries; Switzerland, Japan, Taiwan, Germany and Britain we travel and listen finding health care is half the percentage of GNP as ours, costs families half what it costs ours, everyone is covered, no one – NO ONE – is forced into bankruptcy, and the vast majority of people in those countries like their system are in jaw dropping disbelief that the the United States, the richest country in the world – is so backward and cruel.
You know why we are so backward and cruel on this issue? Because anytime anyone brings this up, the REPUBLICAN PARTY screams…
SOCIALISM!! SOCIALISTS!!
Which they have been getting away with for a generation.
The issue is not whether the GOP will see the light and change its ways – that is impossible – it is the inbred nature of the Beast. No, the issue is whether these past two elections has reduced the Red State Hillbilly factor from its 30 year electorial majority to the silly minority it was before we put all that lipstick on that pig on January 20th 1981. The day the nation died…