dielectric
June 17th, 2014 | 
Author: As you may or may not know, I like to pick fights with the willfully ignorant on facebook. It’s a hobby. I usually find myself punching down, but occasionally I discover an articulate, well informed whack job capable of civil and cogent discourse. I love that.
I totally salute all three of you.
Inevitably, when I confront them with facts and logic, the catapulting of invective ensues. I find myself at the receiving end of insults entirely predictable. Remarkably consistent. They call me a “libtard”, and gasp, “socialist” and even worse, “communist”.
Every fucking time I ask them to define “socialist” or “communist”, the crickets begin to swang. Not one of these goofcocks actually has any idea what these “isms” actually are or what they mean.
It represents a profound ideological perversion and it’s disturbing. McCarthyism revisited. Short attention span theater. No room for history.
Guess what? I must be a low down dirty dog socialist because I have enough common sense to realize that capitalism, without the necessary ballast of socialism, or regulation, ends up being fascism. Thank dog for socialism. Sorry, three more isms for your consumption and edification.
I can always count on the word socialism launching at the mere mention of Obama. T minus three seconds and counting. In the context of stratospheric stock market indexes, record CEO compensation, all time high worker productivity and the inertia of wages for the middle class, Obama is a pretty miserable goddamn socialist.
Republicans and teabillies alike are more than willing to ignore that without regulation, our food, air, water and energy would be killing us all far more often and far more egregiously.
They would have Christianity solve all that for us.
Dickheads.
It highlights the common malaise of intellectual laziness that is the paradigm for the right these days. To them it’s the political equivalent of calling me a cocksucker. I can almost feel the hot moist spittle of their vitriol. They are as pissed as any self aware species courting guaranteed extinction should be.
Wrinkly old white dudes.
I’ve known plenty of them.
Nevermind that term is an actual slur on its own. More troubling is the catalyst of polarization it manifests as. The notion that conservatism and liberalism, two more isms, are at war is a distraction. It makes it really easy to say that.
I’ve said it a hundred times. Put 50 democrats in a room with 50 republicans and they will agree on at least 80% of the issues. But, they will spend all their time arguing over the remaining 20%
Both parties are guilty, but I’m getting really tired of the false equivalency. Is that equivalency Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren and Grayson on the left compared to Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Sarah Palin on the right? I doubt it. The right makes it so much worse by casually tossing these terms around and by embracing religion as a litmus test. We all live with socialism. It serves us. You know, the fire department, the library, social security. None of us aspire to or admire communism and it’s just ridiculous to accuse liberals of fascism when the right so ardently foments theocracy.
Drinks for my friends.
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I’ll have Scotch, thanks. Make it a double.
I wish I could think of a fabulous “ism” to describe how much I LOVE your work … perhaps I could say it just reeks of intellectualism … :)))))))))))))
It’s become entirely useless to even try to argue with right-wingers. Facts no longer have any meaning at all, whatsoever. The President wasn’t even legitimately elected, and he’s not even a US citizen. A major figure behind the attack on the Benghazi embassy has been captured. Means nothing. Didn’t happen. Fox News and right-wing radio are the only facts in the universe.
We need to stop talking about politicians as if we were cultists, or members of a fan club. People “Love” Obama, or they “Hate” him, but in both cases obsess about him way more than is healthy. He’s just a person. Calm down. He’s got some points, some bad points, that’s it. Issues are the key. Focus on the issues. For example: demand politicians to tell us their proposal to create 20 million jobs for unemployed and underemployed Americans, jobs which pay a living wage. Issues, that’s the key. As soon as it gets into personalities, it’s all over but the shouting.
MWD, Here you are sharing that communist, socialist, fascist ideology as an apologist for that non-nationalist, blackist president ever. Am I doing pretty well at imitating a Teabilly? 🙂 Another Great Column my friend! I am so sick of these idiots who when challenged go right to insulting your character when an “elitist” such as yourself shares a little reality with them. I wish our nation would do what Canada does an not allow Faux News on the air because their journalistic standard is too low. As the FCC has control over what is broadcast they should have standards on news agencies to be accurate or lose their licenses, since they are in the public arena. The disinformation and propaganda spread by Faux News is the direct result of a lot of idiots not knowing their asses from holes in the ground in general society. I once asked a cousin of mine, who is a Teabagger and loves Glenn Beck, if he knows who started and massively supports the Tea Party movement. When he said he didn’t know and I told him it was the Koch Brothers and that they are using him and everyone like him who doesn’t know any better he yelled at me “Fuck You!” and hung up on me. Thanks again!
Holy cowbell ~ this is GREAT! Another word they love to bandy about when referring to liberals is “elite.” The other day, I posted a facebook status that said:
I love it when I hear conservatives refer to liberals as “elites.” We are all on the same page about the definition of the word, aren’t we? According to the OED:
“A select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities:”
I’m in! and make it a virtual double scotch, neat, please.
Good article. It is extremely important, IMHO, to DEMAND that the definition of “socialism” be confined to what it was for over 100 years: a system where the plant and equipment of industry are owned by the society at large.
The USA has never, remotely been a “socialist” country. Regulated capitalism is not “socialism,” and we have had regulations and socially owned resources as long as this country has been in existence. One glaring example would be the common ownership of game in this country. Game was an important resource in the early days of the land, a matter of survival, not just of profit and sport. In England, game belonged to the crown. In the United States, it COULD have been considered property of the landowner IF we were to be a totally private-owned society. Instead, game is owned by the society and regulated by various governments. The founding of the Post Office would be another obvious example, and of course, the lunatics are using all manner of deceit to turn that enterprise over to their corporate hoodlum pals today.
It comforts me that you’re out there with a voice and you get it. I miss talking to you. Cuarenta Y Tres on the rocks. xoxo
Very well stated. This is an excellent essay on the state of religion corrupting our political system. I am a man of few words, and am less tolerant of religion on the world stage. I suppose that I am nothing more than a cranky old fuck, but I will continue to beat back the bully until such time as I return to the cosmos.
Bravo, Michael.
All hyper-exacerbated thanks to for-profit “media” like Rush, Fox, etc…no one except warrior-bloggers like yourselves or late-night comedians (who have more journalistic credibility than Fox anyway) ever call them out on it. But I think lately, they’ve been overreaching and it’s starting to show…there needs to be a high-profile outlet that unravels and discredits their BS and unfounded slanders 24/7…
Glenmorangie?
Darwin’s theories don’t just apply to monyeks.. it will sort itself out, by necessity, over time.Sadly.. there are going to be a great many bitter pills to swallow when the economy hits the wall (and it hasn’t by a long shot) as the deficit continues to grow, and, eventually, interest rates rise..Start buying Krugerrands America, you’re going to need them when the wheel barrow full of greenbacks won’t buy a loaf of bread.The sad thing is that those who are most at risk are the poor and lower-middle class who are, obviously, going to be hurt he worst.. kinda ironic.
“capitalism, without the necessary ballast of socialism, or regulation, ends up being fascism”
Nailed it!
I remember bumping ideologies with someone who felt pure capitalism was they way to go, he even told me a tale of a friend of his whose parent migrated from the Pacific Islands while he was still young, worked hard, went to a private college got grants and was now a successful doctor. He toted that as his prime example of how a capitalist system worked.
He forgot, his parent came here under a socialist immigration program, and no matter how hard his parents worked in a technically capitalist business to raise money for their son, the son went to a socialist school, took the socialist school;s bus, driving on socialist roads, taking socialist showers, using partially socializre electricity, living in a house build to a socialist code so all these other socialist systems function.
He denied it all, uneill I brought up an article from the school he was toting, the school his Asian friend got his supposedly capitalist degree in, He even ignored the fact that schools are set to socialized standards. But the headline of article I pulle was “XXX University receives 2 Million Dollar Federal Grant!”
Undeniable proof that all this lean well toned capitalist systems is held up entirely by a socialized and regulated structure,
Not getting the pun in the title…or is it a typo?