Dispelling the Ignorance: The “S” Word

[TexasTowelie]

By Carol Morgan

One thing you must admit about the Bernie Sanders campaign…it’s brought socialism out of the shadows and into the sunlight. Americans are becoming more and more curious (and more accepting) about the “s” word.

Merriam-Webster lexicographer Peter Sokolowski recently remarked that since Tuesday's Democratic debates, the search for a definition of “socialism” through M-W’s online dictionary has spiked.

Before Bernie began talking about socialism in his media interviews and even in his stump speeches, people secretly pondered an America with universal single-payer healthcare, maternal or family leave, a debt-free college education, and shoring up the Social Security system.

We may have thought about those wonderful things, but we never talked about them as a reality, lest we be mistaken for Warren Beatty or Diane Keaton in the movie, Reds.

It was a liberal fantasy to believe that a political candidate would include them in his/her campaign platform.

To understand how socialism earned its near-expletive status, go back one hundred years ago. The turn-of the century migrations brought workers who lived under different economies in their home countries and as Americans, they suddenly found themselves in a new kind of dangerous and abusive wage slavery under the boot of the gilded age tycoons of capitalism.

Sounds familiar doesn’t it?

To escape their vocational misery, Americans voted five different times for the Socialist Party with Eugene Debs as its Presidential candidate. With the Bolshevik revolution passed and the cruel realities of World War 1 leaving Americans sorely disillusioned, the Federal Government was worried. To nip civil unrest in the bud, they arrested the leaders of the Socialist movement in the Palmer Raids, a series of raids intended to rid America of radical leftists who worked for a new economic system.

The capitalists were happy to assist the Feds, by leading a major propaganda campaign against socialism. Fast forward to Joe McCarthy, the HUA hearings, and the Red Scare, and more propaganda was heaped upon the leftovers from the Taft-Wilson era.

That view of socialism has persisted for over a century.

For too long, Americans have conflated socialism with communism, the “c” word associated with the gray grim pictures of the old Soviet Union; hungry people standing in line for bread and government atrocities.

That's the same one that’s associated with the brutality of Joseph Stalin and the chilling words of Nikita Khrushchev, “We will bury you.” Most Americans of a certain age associate the "c" word with nuclear fallout shelters and school duck and cover drills.

Americans don’t realize that’s not the economic model that Bernie Sanders is bringing into the political conversation.

Read Friday’s piece by NYT’s columnist Timothy Egan; it's a great job of dispelling the ignorance that fuels the fear about socialism.

A recent Gallup poll found that half of Americans would not vote for a socialist. More people said they could accept an atheist than a socialist president.

Yet, 50 percent of Americans favor single-payer healthcare.

68 percent of voters said wealthy households pay far too little in federal taxes and favor increased taxes on the very wealthy.

58 percent of voters agree with Sanders and support breaking up big banks.

63 percent of Americans completely agree with Sanders that it is imperative to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

But, gosh-oh-golly-gee...all of that is socialism, right?

It’s that darned “s” word that ruins it all.

Yes, we like those things that socialism provides; public education, roads to get to work safely, the military that defends our country, the GI Bill that funds veterans’ schooling, public parks, coop-owned utility companies, social security and Medicare—as long as we don’t use the “s” word.

Americans have more problems with the word "socialism" than the services it provides them. It's merely the 100 years of brainwashing that conjures up fear and loathing of the word.

If {you} want further explanation of what socialism really is, read Dylan Matthews’ piece on Vox.

In the same vein of Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Socialist label, he explains it this way: “It entails single-payer health care, not Obamacare. It entails tuition-free college, not subsidized loans. It entails government jobs to deal with our unemployment problem, not stimulus through tax breaks…they don’t amount to the overthrow of capitalism.”

Perhaps it's better explained as the opposite of unchecked, unregulated capitalism. Americans have that right now, but the corporatists get to enjoy socialism, while the rest of get casino capitalism, job instability, bad wages and working conditions.

Sure, capitalism may reward creativity and innovation, but like anything else left unregulated and unmonitored, it leads to excess among the greedy and power-hungry. That's why about 2,000 individuals own over 50 percent of everything.

For those Christians out there, it's socialism that backs up the foundational tenets of Christianity. If you want to claim American was actually founded on Christian values, then you cannot embrace free market capitalism over socialism without denying your belief in Jesus.

Socialism is not about giveaways. This is about equality and equal opportunity for all, not just for those members of the lucky sperm of the month club who were born on third base, while the rest of us are still in the dugout.

The most sickening part of all is that the extremist wing of the GOP and America’s billionaire class will continue to use the fear-producing false definition of socialism as an ugly baton to beat back the middle class and the poor. After all, economic fairness and helping America thrive would cut into the insane corporate profits and corporate campaign donations.

Remember bedtime, when you were a child and you were sure there was a monster under your bed or in your closet? And then your mom or dad got the flashlight to show you it was only your imagination?

The "s" word is like that non-existent demon. When you bring something out in the open, illuminate and explain it, it makes it a lot less scary.

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Carol Morgan is a career/college counselor, a freelance writer, and former Democratic candidate for the Texas House. She is the award-winning author of two books: Of Tapestry, Time and Tears and Liberal in Lubbock. Email Carol at [e-mail] , follow her on Twitter and on Facebook or visit her writer’s blog at www.carolmorgan.org

http://lubbockonline.com/interact/blog-post/carol-morgan/2015-10-17/dispelling-ignorance-%E2%80%9Cs%E2%80%9D-word#.ViNMtSvziKI

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[redstateblues]

1. Something that takes that long to explain

won't change a lot of minds and will not be a good platform to run on in the GE.

[1StrongBlackMan]

2. Agreed ... I have said before ...

If racism and racial stereotypes persist in America ... despite decades (if not centuries) of African-American industriousness, intelligence and up-rightness, proving the perception wrong; what makes people think that months of talking is going to change Americans' perception on socialism?