this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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Uh, what?
You have horrible social security and labour laws. If anyone has been "championing socialist policies", it's the Nordics, or if talking labour rights especially, France definitely more than the US.
The American anti-socialist rhetoric is so bad it has its own name. Even very moderate socialist policies are often disparaged as "communism".
There's so much libertarianism online now, mostly affected by said American rhetoric, that I've actually met an idiot here in Finland who genuinely argued that homelessness and unemployment is a conscious choice by anyone suffering either.
You sound a bit like Peter Thiel in this clip (played on John Oliver) where he is pretending Trump's rhetoric has deeper meaning.
Since most aren't gonna listen here's the transcript:
Cut back to John Oliver
You’ve never heard of Social Security? I personally think it’s important to highlight the fundamental pieces of government that already work using systems people could classify as “socialist”. You pay in. You get you cut. The government uses everyones money as leverage.
The context, is the current population is quite literally on the precipice of throwing out modern liberal democracy all together.
I agree, of course, there are many other components to being human in America that the government isn’t properly established to deal with. But people who already hate the idea of socialism, they should understand that America grew to what it is, what it was, in part because of those policies.
It’s also a much better story to wrap yourself in than WW2 dominance and trickle-down horse-shit, and the ever-constant reminder of failed reconstruction and native demolition. America came together once, in the darkness of the Depression, to build a foundation. The last several generations, even those that existed when these programs were established, have existed to destroy and steal and gut. But Reagan told us all it was the government’s fault, and in the golden hue of the 1980s, who the fuck needed Social Security? It was those same government programs that saved Americas cities, that built Americas roads. Many of the tracks may be gone, but they’ve all been replaced with internet cables — similarly a public enterprise.
America is not a socialist country, it’s constitution needs rewritten. But so much of what makes America what it is, what Americans understand America to be, is solely because of social liberalism. And all of these people that are voting Trump, they should understand that. Because Trump literally stands for demolishing all of it.
Ok yes. In the 1930s the United States came shockingly close to socialist revolution over the Great Depression and as such we won massive concessions that have been in the process of being eroded since the end of wwii, but especially since the 80s. Such a massive propaganda campaign combined with anti communist crackdowns happened that we basically surrendered social security and couldn’t implement universal healthcare
See this guy understands what I’m saying.
To say that America is “number 1” is not what I was saying, it was that at the heart of the American governmental systems lies a true socialist foundation. That’s why it’s been hammered for so long, because it’s what should have propelled America into the 21st century.
Like I’m often the defender of the American socialist tradition both on Lemmy and over in America, but I wouldn’t call it a foundation. We have deep socialist roots for sure, but they’re concessions and arguments. It’s the foundational conflict of our nation: a slave empire built on the idea that all men are created equal. It resulted in a breeding ground for anarchists and fascists.
Those concessions are important and they led to a lot of prosperity, but don’t forget that by the 50s we had McCarthy. We should’ve toppled it and showed the ussr what communism can be