Redefining Socialism

By Terry Canaan

October 20, 2008

“____ is socialism.”

Ever since Roosevelt’s New Deal, it’s been common for Republicans to attack economic ideas they don’t like as “socialist.” In fact, this line of BS has become so deeply ingrained in the Republican mindset that many of them believe it themselves. The problem, of course, is that when you start operating as if your propaganda is true, you wind up operating in a different reality. In the end, you ignore the present reality and all of your reasoning is based on “facts” which aren’t facts at all. You wind up doing stuff like invading Iraq for no real reason. It doesn’t really work out all that well.
To give you an idea of just how deeply this redefinition of socialism is set in the Republican psyche, I give you the man who — with any luck — will probably become the archetypical Republican dope for years to come.

Salon:

[George W.] Bush once sneered at [his college professor Yoshi] Tsurumi for showing the film “The Grapes of Wrath,” based on John Steinbeck’s novel of the Depression. “We were in a discussion of the New Deal, and he called Franklin Roosevelt’s policies ‘socialism.’ He denounced labor unions, the Securities and Exchange Commission, Medicare, Social Security, you name it. He denounced the civil rights movement as socialism. To him, socialism and communism were the same thing. And when challenged to explain his prejudice, he could not defend his argument, either ideologically, polemically or academically.”

That’s from Mary Jacoby’s great 2004 piece “The dunce,” about just what an idiot Dubya was in school. She interviewed Yoshi Tsurumi, who taught a macroeconomic policies and international business class at Harvard, on his former student and found young GWB to be a simpleminded moron who recited right wing talking points and seemed not only unwilling, but unable to learn anything that disagreed with those talking points. When asked what sort of students he tended to remember, Tsurumi was less than complimentary. “…I always remember two types of students,” he told her. “One is the very excellent student, the type as a professor you feel honored to be working with. Someone with strong social values, compassion and intellect — the very rare person you never forget. And then you remember students like George Bush, those who are totally the opposite.”

All of which brings us to another Republican brain, imprinted with this misdefinition of the word “socialism” — John McCain.

Terry Canaan is a former political fundraiser living and writing in Wisconsin. He published the blog, “Griper Blade.”

Terry Canaan

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