Election 2020 & The Not-So-Scary Socialists

I am filled with a kind-of unrecognizable hope because Bernie Sanders is on a path to win the nomination of the Democratic Party.

And Bernie Sanders WILL beat Donald Trump, so I have started to get a bit of an adrenaline surge--a goosebump of a thought that this time the good guys might actually win.

Trump seems to be under the impression that calling Bernie Sanders a socialist will guarantee his reelection.

Keep it , Donald.

Sir Orange Fascist Stubby Fingers wants so bigly to be a Ronald Reagan type figure that he is dragging the corpse of the Soviet Union out of its 1990’s grave, resurrecting it, and claiming that it’s taken the zombie form of a Senator from Vermont.

And that’s a great argument, an election-winning argument, if one were to rely on their own backward notions of what America USED to think.

If we could all teleport back to the land of the 1980’s, when greed was good, I am sure Donny and his hair would win in a landslide.

But back then, we had pensions.

We had an expectation that the next generation would have it better than us.

We bought houses and made long-term plans for retirement.

Student loans were affordable.

Back then, e were ALL going to collect Social Security.

With that stable society, we began to focus on streamlining the government and reducing waste, balancing the budget, etc.

Of course, things weren’t getting better for every American (ask some black people and gay folks how good the 1980’s were) but there was a real white American middle class.

That is what those who support Trump want to bring back.

They want to make America great again — which loosely translated means that they want to rebuild the white middle class in the U.S.

MAGA a selfish and racist but understandable notion when so many people today need so much more than one job to survive.

But what got us into this mess, what killed the white American middle class, was the greed of corporations — a greed that Donald Trump is determined to protect and expand.

A greed that Bernie Sanders wants to protect the American public from.

If we want affordable health care, the only way we are ever going to get it is through Medicare for All — everything else is a complicated scheme wherein the health insurance lobbyists somehow find a way to screw us all again.

If we want there to be a better world (or any world at all) for the next generation, we have to make a radical shift, like the one proposed in the Green New Deal.

If we want every American to have a secure roof over their head and not be subject to the whims of unaffordable rent-increases, then we need a national government and a president who are on the side of the tenants and not the landlords.

All of this is different from the priorities that the government of the United States has had in the most recent past, but that does not mean that having new priorities makes the U.S. a socialist country.

SOCIAL PROGRAMS ARE NOT SOCIALISM.

Socialism is the control of the means of production by the government, not the government making sure that the citizens it has sworn to protect are…well…protected.

Can you even imagine the incredible and booming nature of the capitalist economy of the United States if none of us were worried about the basics (shelter, health care, education) and were able to produce to the full of our abilities?

And mass shootings? Nobody is going to yank the shotgun out of Billy-Bob’s truck — he has the second amendment right to keep that shotgun. But automatic weapons? There are simply not enough deer to require that level of ammunition (and there a seemingly infinite number of deer).

A society with a more stable safety net will be a more stable society.

That’s not rocket science, but one can only understand what it benefits them to understand.

Hair Donny does not benefit from a stable America — not as the head of a corporation and not as the head of a government running for reelection and blaming everyone but himself and corporate America for America’s problems.

The words “radical” and “socialist” are being thrown around by the Donnie-Squad in order to have an impact on the Democratic Party’s choice to run against him.

DONALD TRUMP WANTS TO RUN AGAINST JOE BIDEN, or Pete Buttigieg, or even Amy Klobuchar or Mike Bloomberg. He wants to run against a centrist because a centrist program is no answer for what America needs.

We don’t have to “swallow” and accept anyone as the nominee for the Democratic Party — in fact, we should accept no one who doesn’t support Medicare for All, who doesn’t support the remaking of American society in a sustainable way for all Americans.

There is nothing sustainable about racist police brutality, there is nothing sustainable about anti-immigrant tirades and walls, but there is something immensely sustainable about rebuilding this country to be the beacon of justice and opportunity that we have always claimed to be.

Nothing is built on hate and division except for profit.

Donald Trump is throwing an awful lot of shade at socialists these days. He wants the Democrats to focus on that and to put up their most conventional and “electable” candidate against him in November of 2020, out of fear.

Let’s not do that, shall we?