The Socialists are Coming! The Socialists are Coming!!

THE BIG LIE: NEW CHAPTER

So it turns out that for the first time in years – or since Bill Clinton triangulated their meaning out of existence – some members of the Democratic Party believe in something other than getting reelected or in the case of New York standing for corruption.

Some of the newly elected members of Congress – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, Ayana Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, to name the most well-known, following the example set by their mentor Bernie Sanders, seem to be taking the Democratic Party “left” with their ideas about healthcare, energy and education.

Further the existence of a free-for-all Democratic primary race for President has let loose a battle over these ideas taking a more liberal -if somewhat idealistic – course that supports the newbies approach.

So what do we hear from the other side? Exactly what we’ve heard before – the Big Lie – to be repeated endlessly with absolutely no factual base…it just sounds good…and if you say it often enough, it works.

And that big lie is that the socialists have taken over the Democratic Party to the detriment of the nation should they ever come to power.

Now before we take a look at what socialism is and what these Democratic ideas look like compared to real socialism, let’s remind you about how the Big Lie has so often become an important piece of American history.

Two brief examples: in the 1950’s a New York attorney named Roy Cohn became legal counsel to a US Senator from Wisconsin by the name of Joseph McCarthy. Cohn, a ferocious anti-Communist and McCarthy, an unknown hack politician who used the matter of Communism in America to win an election nobody believed he could win.

Cohn gave him the plan and McCarthy followed it fastidiously: Communists were everywhere in America: in Hollywood, on college campuses, in government bureaucracies…everywhere. McCarthy never named names…just used numbers to frighten the country. And the McCarthy era was born in America and all based on a Big Lie.

Karl Rove, using the power of his vitally close relationship to the Bushes and Cheneys and the prior victories of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, claimed that all liberals were dangerous to the future of America, that they were all big-spenders, that their policies were failing the country, that they were soft on crime, had destroyed public education, raised taxes all the time and that to be a liberal was to throw money at every problem and when that failed, to throw more money after the bad.

Today many liberal Democrats feel more comfortable calling themselves ‘progressives’. And not a single Republican on any level of government refers to being liberal…though once upon a time liberal Republicans worked with Democrats to make government work.

Today very few people think government works at all.

But the strategy of the Big Lie remains. Roy Cohn said it simply: just keep telling it over and over and it will take. Fox News’ Roger Ailes believed it and it made that cable station Number One.

One of Roy Cohn’s friends and followers, in fact once one of his clients, is the President of the United States.

SOCIALISM

With the advent and strength of Communism in the 1950’s, the ideas and beliefs of socialism faded deep into the background. The Socialist Party in America had run a serious candidate for President for more than 20 years during the middle of the Roosevelt era when the growth of American capitalism made America the most powerful nation in the history of the World.

Its candidate was a New York minister and intellectual, Norman Thomas. He genuinely believed that the worst kind of capitalism – that marked by unmatched greed and total power – would corrupt America and fail the common man. As such he believed in the critical point of socialism that government should control all means of production and that the corporate power that forced so-called free markets would lead to an end to a fairness that marked our democracy.

Now if you think about the meaning of socialism – that government controls all means of production – and you think of Brooklyn born and educated Bernie Sanders who moved to Vermont for a political career, you could never-ever believe that Bernie was a true socialist.

He was Mayor of Burlington, Vermont for four terms and then a member of Congress and never mentioned socialism. But then he became a US Senator and was suddenly a democratic socialist. A cynic might say that the crusty Bernie just wanted to be different. But there is more to it than that.

In 1983 a brilliant historian, political intellectual and deeply respected New Yorker, Michael Harrington who was a protégé of Norman Thomas, formed an organization he called Democratic Socialists. It was not meant to be a political party. Harrington knew that America would NEVER become a socialist nation – and he simply wanted to offer the Democratic Party a more liberal arm. Harrington had gained a national reputation when his 184 page book “The Other America -Poverty in the United States” had been used by President Lyndon B. Johnston as the model for his War on Poverty…changing the way government money flowed to help the poor.

It was often thought he would run for President but sadly cancer cut short his life when he was still in his 60’s.

But the Democratic Socialist organization still exists and it was its volunteers who helped Ocasio-Cortez work her way into Congress while her opponent long-term Congressman Joe Crowley was busy living in Washington trying to unseat Nancy Pelosi.

HOW SOCIALIST?

So here is Bernie in the 2016 Presidential campaign talking about the millionaires and billionaires owning America. And telling us that there ought to be Medicare for All and a free college education for all without ever explaining how any of those ideas would work.

Now he is back along with Elizabeth Warren and a host of other primary candidates who are telling us how these ideas could work. And there is the Green New Deal led by media darling AOC which would end the production of all fossil fuels for wind, sea and solar power.

Socialist? Lefty?

Well maybe to some but seriously look at what the challenges are. These folks are taking on the most powerful industrial forces in American history. Private health insurers and Big Pharma literally own Congress. Their money has bought them Congresspeople and Senators in large numbers. Their expenditures for lobbyists are off the charts.

Are they going to permit Medicare for All and end private insurance coverage?

Ditto for oil and gas producers who have made the same’ purchases” and were America’s leading companies until Facebook and Amazon took away that standing. A green new deal overcoming this power bloc?

There isn’t a politician alive who will criticize a teacher and lose a vote – no matter how bad our public education system has become. Or take on a university tuition system based on close relationships to banks and the most punitive loan agreements ever established and supported by American government.

Interesting ideas to ponder. Something to work for. Unrealistic in a government so sadly divided and so indebted to corporate and industry money.

But socialist?

Not even close.

A new Big Lie?

Absolutely.