Booman recently posted something…a rather weak hit piece, apparently…about Bernie Sanders titled He Doesn’t Even Believe in Capitalism.
In a comment, Phil Perspective quite accurately posted:
[Socialism is] not a dirty word anymore. We can thank Rupert Murdoch and his minions for that.
Booman replied:
Next you’ll tell me that atheism isn’t a dirty word anymore.
PhilPerspective did not answer him.
Not yet, anyway.
I will.
At length.
Read on.
“Atheism” may still to some degree be seen as a a dirty word by many Americans, Booman, but not as dirty as is capitalism. Not really. Why? How? Because so-called atheists have not had much practical, negative input on the way that most Americans live their lives while “capitalists”…an unbridled capitalism of the sort that we have been seeing in the U.S. since the JFK assassination if not before…has literally destroyed the American Dream right of front of people’s eyes and and right in the middle of their lives as well.
The “dirty word” throughout an appreciably large number…quite possibly a working majority…of potential voters is not “socialism.” It is now capitalism!!!
Why?
Because it’s not working very well anymore, that’s why. When the real American Dream…a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage…was fairly easily attainable by the majority of Americans, the word “capitalism” could be hyped by the media. It was no big deal that those voters were being progressively ripped off by the so-called “capitalists”…who in reality are and have been simply white collar thieves who more accurately deserve the label “criminalist”…because there was still enough wealth left over after the capitalists’…errr, ahhhh, criminalists’ …depredations to distribute among the middle and working classes.
But things got more complicated on any number of levels.
First of all the population of the U.S.grew enormously, and most of that growth happened among the less economically gifted classes.
Secondly, from the Clinton era on the capitalists sold the U.S. industrial system down the river…abroad…in a quest for even more profit.
And third, the enormously profitable, militarily-enforced economic imperialist system that quite literally ripped off the entire Third World from say the 16th century on became more and more difficult to sustain. As I have said here numerous times, if one reduces the fairly recent history of that system to the metaphor of an old-fashioned Hollywood movie, the classic line “Uh oh!!! Them injuns got rifles now!!!” would apply. From the time of the independence of India from British rule right on through the present, the so-called ‘wars” that the U.S. and its NATO allies fought to maintain power in the Third World became more and more difficult to win. Korea? Vietnam? Now the awful situation in the Middle East/North Africa? Worser and worser, as Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have said.
And now…???
And now here we jolly well find ourselves, smack in the middle of the first quarter of the 21st century. The entire U.S. infrastructure is rapidly deteriorating to the point of total failure. Schools, roads, mass transit, the federal, state and local bureaucracies in all of their glorious incompetence…the works. Further down the tubes every year. Every month, to be more accurate. The poor are…successfully to some great degree…rioting against the police presence that has kept them in place (an analogue to the failing military presences that can no longer keep the third wold under control); the middle class is overall in debt up to its ears/scared shitless and the real “capitalists” (the super rich) are only getting richer and richer.
Under capitalism’s rapidly metastasizing, cancerous rule much of the populace…again, quite possible a majority…has lost all faith in the ability of the corporations’ satrap politicians to govern and its equally satrap media to inform.
And here we are on a so-called progressive website debating whether the word “capitalist” is acceptable to the American people?
Please!!!
It’s a curse word now!!!
DIRTY CAPITALIST PIG!!!
Like dat.
WTFU!!!
If Bernie Sanders uses the word “socialist” and gets creamed it won’t because socialism is a bad word now…not to an appreciable number of Americans it isn’t, anyway. It will be because he’s not very good…not good enough, anyway…at his current job, which is running for president. The media will of course give the “But…but…he’s a socialist!!!” routine a good try, but really…when have they been successful at anything to which they have been tasked by their corporate controllers this year? Look at how well the initial attacks on Trump worked. Why didn’t they work? Because Donald Trump is a supremely talented huckster, that’s why.
Bernie?
I dunno about Bernie. I think not, myself. Tonight will begin to tell the tale.
Watch.
I’m rooting for him, myself. Trump too. I don’t think either would be a particularly good president,…each for different reasons…but as a couple of monkey wrenches thrown into this wretchedly failing system?
VAYA!!!
Later…
AG
Like DAT!!!
Later…
AG
I think one problem is that capitalism is, in essence, a religion in the US, and is often used as a euphemism for freedom, democracy, and liberty. The people with all of the money, i.e. the capitalists, of course want capitalism to be a religion and a euphemism for concepts like freedom and democracy, because they’re the capitalists with all the money.
You can even look at the language used for clues to the inherent religiosity of capitalism.
jobCreator
the Invisible hand
Freemarket
What I find, though, is that capitalism worship is basically Mammon worship. Mammon was worshiped, along with the people that Mammon personally blessed, which is why you see such fawning over the super rich. Mammon blessed ’em, so they deserve praise too, hence the praise and title Creator.
I think that this current second gilded age will come to an end as people realize that “Free” corporations and the people who own and operate them do not give one fuck about the people, about the countries in which they operate, and are basically analogous to cancer.
Cancer cells are deadly because they don’t die and end up taking the place of functioning cells, diminishing the body’s ability to function.
Socialism, social democracy, regulated capitalism, however you want to phrase it, is in essence a way to prevent corporate power from overtaking the power of the people to write the rules of a country.
Just as we know that eating healthy, exercising, and limiting pollution and toxins reduces the rates of cancer, we also know that regulating corporations and their political influence reduces the rates of inequality and the destruction of the middle class/ability to earn a living and improve your economic viability through honest, fair labor.
Without going on a rant, corporations don’t want Americans to pay attention, they don’t want them to be educated, and they don’t want them to vote, if at all possible. As long as most Americans are consumers rather than citizens, they’ll continue tuning out and staring at their phones, while the people who are paying attention write laws to benefit themselves and their tribe, which is often limited to their immediate families.
Don’t think so. Outside of lefty blogs what I see is “Bernie Sanders is a socialist/communist. He wants to take all your private property and give it to the lazy.”
“Socialism same as Communism, Sanders wants an all powerful government to control you with secret police and gulags.”
It’s his “Dean Scream”