President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Socialism = government ownership of industry. That doesn't characterize anyone in the clown cars of the two mainstream parties. If it did, it characterizes Donald Trump's luddite rhetoric as much as any of the Democrats, in so much as he often sounds like a tin-plated fascist, which can kind of be like socialism with a capitalist veneer put over it. And even his various schemes to try to benefit one hand-picked constituent over others (to our aggregate detriment), isn't socialism, which really requires a complete government takeover of industry, not simply using government power to create winners and losers (and a lot of unintended consequences).

These terms have gotten perverted, by the people using them. ... and by the people trying to label them with it. Most people using socialist as a perjorative have no clue what socialism really is.

Warren and Sanders are populists to me. They create boogymen, mostly in the mold of "the rich are screwing you" (they go after a small number of citizens who are easy to scapegoat), hammer the boogeymen with rhetoric and then make promises about how they are going to go after the boogeymen to create prosperity for the masses whose votes they are trying to win. People have always fallen for this from politicians. It isn't socialism. It's maybe tyranny of the majority -- if they could have their way. The various things they advocate are anti-individual liberty. In practice, they would probably amount to rampant corruption, a la Huey Long. At the least, economically, they are prescribing economic inefficiency, crazy amounts of debt and a generalized decreased standard of living, whether the people who buy their rhetoric realize it. But they have never struck me as true ideologues. They are professional scapegoaters who will demonize whoever and whatever it takes to advance their own political ambitions, and in the case of Warren, at least, I suspect to line her own pockets in the process.

 

Out of all the shitty things that have come from Trump being president, it's things like this that make me feel saddest and most embarrassed for the country. I used to believe in American exceptionalism. Not American infalibility. But the U.S. truly having some special qualities that have allowed to it shine at times. This guy is just mean-spirited, morally repugnant, racist, etc.