The cloud of Socialism hangs over the United States of America. Make no mistake about it my friends! Of course, I’ve always been a fan of clouds. Sometimes you can just stare at them up in the sky and matrix them into all kinds of fun shapes, a puppy, a crocodile, Jessica Alba.
The Republican Party, which has been in complete disarray since losing the election last November, has now proposed that the Democrat Party rename themselves the Democrat Socialist Party. I for one, think it’s a beautiful thing! Of course, I don’t think the Democrats will do it, or that the idiotic tactics being employed by the Republicans are going to do them any good, but I’m overjoyed that the threat of Socialism is running rampant throughout the U.S.!!!
Now don’t tell anyone, but I’m not really supporting Socialism in the U.S. Although personal heroes like Kurt Vonnegut and Jesus Christ were outspoken Socialists, I don’t really think socialism is the answer to our countries problems. But the threat of socialism is a beautiful thing, don’t you think?
Our country is made up of a tiny percentage of rich people, who have more money than they could ever use and they sit on it. Then there are the rest of us who bust our humps, get paid salaries that allow us to get by and little more and it gets you to thinking, how did all of this happen?
Back in the day, we had actual industry here in the United States. Industry, for those of you too young to have ever witnessed it, can be simplified to “making stuff.” Yes. We used to make stuff here. We used to ship it to other places just like China and Japan and Indonesia ship stuff that they’ve made here now.
When we used to make stuff, the same type of thing was happening. The people who ran the companies made all the money and they allowed their employees to live paycheck to paycheck, barely surviving. They did this because they were greedy little bastards, but if we’re honest with ourselves, deep down, we all are and would have done the same thing.
To continue the history lesson though, the workers eventually got a little pissed off and just like that, the Unions were born. The Unions fought to get fair wages, reasonable workday lengths, over time pay and all kinds of things that made the workers happier. The rich still got rich, but not quite as rich as they were before. Then the Unions started to get run by nefarious types and before long, they were as corrupt and greedy as the captains of industry.
The workers were greedy too though. They didn’t want their kids to grow up to be coal miners and farmers and machine operators and laborers of any kind. They wanted their kids to have jobs in offices, with desks and phones and collared shirts, so they sacrificed and saved and sent their kids off to college.
About this same time, captains of industry were upset about the way things had turned out with the weakening of their profit margins. Paying workers an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work really wasn’t a popular idea, but the Unions, being run by nefarious sorts, were unbreakable, so other plans had to be made.
It turns out the plan was to stop making stuff here in the U.S. You won’t believe this, but you can pay a 12 year old Chinese girl less than a dollar a day to do a job that a Union worker in the U.S. would make $20.00 an hour to do! Of course this probably seems a little unfair to the U.S. worker doesn’t it? Surely our elected representatives would have something to say about that, right?
Unfortunately, no—they did not. You see, it takes money to get elected to political office and it’s much easier to work for a lot of money from a captain of industry, than it is to work hard for a bunch of people who can only give you a little bit each. Thus, the captains of industry purchased the United States of America and set the puppets they put into office about to do their bidding, instead of the bidding of the constituency they were supposed to be “representing.”
Sadly, we the people, didn’t much notice. We didn’t want to work in factories and fields and mines anyway. We wanted to work in offices, with water coolers and staplers and photocopy machines. As the Unions really didn’t protect the office dwellers, since the office dwellers were the ones who they were protecting laborers from, the office dwellers became an exploitable commodity. Of course it wasn’t like the old days—the office dwellers still got a few vacation days here and there and insurance and such, but most of them were put on something called a salary, which essentially meant they were paid for 40 hours worth of work a week, and given 60-80 hours of work to do each week.
And predictably, there weren’t enough real office jobs for all of the people who were too good to work in fields and factories and mines so enterprising new captains of industry created fake jobs for them. A fake job is any job that isn’t essential. If you don’t make it, mine it, transport it, etc, you have a fake job. Some companies, who can’t afford to hire people from our country to make their products, can afford to pay millions of dollars for 30 seconds of advertising time for a commercial during events like the Super Bowl—how’s that for fake?
That brings us to the present time. The economy is in bad shape. Many of us are finding out just how expendable we really are; we’re finding out that our jobs are fake, or that they can be pared down and done by fewer people. The captains of industry don’t much care, because they still have so much money that they won’t ever possibly spend it in their lifetime, and neither will their children’s children. Unions are dead. There is no industry here anymore to support them. The office dwellers can’t spend money because they aren’t making money and so those who have sit tight and wait, while those who do not, begin to suffer. And that is precisely why the threat of socialism is such a beautiful thing right now! We should all embrace it! Say it with me now: Workers of the world, unite!
The current political intent is to scare you with Socialism. The former Soviet Union was a socialist country you know! Communists in fact! They want you to be afraid of it, they want you to mistrust it. They want you to be worried about it happening to you, they equate it with a loss of freedom, but that’s not really the case. Socialism isn’t a bad thing necessarily, not if it’s Democratic Socialism. You see, there is a big difference between Communism and a Democratic Socialist government.
Socialism, at its core, is the belief that Capitalism unfairly conglomerates power and money, to those who have the capital and money. In other words, it believes that the rich getting richer is an unfair way of doing business. Socialism is more of an equal opportunity kind of government. It stands in opposition to the imbalance of Capitalism. And, of course, it’s a horrible idea for the United States. We were founded on the principles of Capitalism and have thrived under them. It would be foolish to just do away with them.
But the powerful and rich have gotten too powerful and too rich and they control too much of the money and too much of us. In November, for the first time in a very long time, we the people decided that we had just about enough of the puppets of the those captains of industry running things, so we elected a guy they hadn’t gotten their hooks into yet. And he has messes to fix.
Some of the methods and ideologies of the fixes he’s putting into place smack of socialist ideals. Universal health care means everyone gets it! Not just those who can afford it! And those who make more, have to pay more so that those of us who make less, don’t go broke paying for it. So, unless you’re rich, that should sound like a great plan!
The thing is that the economy works best when there is a lot of money flowing through it. It doesn’t do that when it’s all bunched up at the top. It doesn’t trickle down as they’d have you believe. Greed is too powerful an instinct to us. We gather to us all we can and more. Me first. So, our President is putting money into the bottom and letting it flow up. Not all of it, mind you, just enough of it to make those who have it pretty nervous.
Which brings us all the way back to the pretty cloud of socialism that’s hanging over our country. Embrace it my friends! Don’t embrace the idea of socialism—it works brilliantly in some places, but it would never work here. Embrace the threat of it! It’s been a long time since those at the top of the food chain have feared those of us at the bottom. And fear is a powerful motivator. They don’t like that we’ve elected a President without consulting them. The Republican Party is in disarray because we did. We became so disgruntled with their representation that we turned our backs on them and now they are all busy running around and howling at the moon. The more liberal Democrat Party is in power now, trying to fix the economic problems with liberal theories and ideas—some of them that even smack of socialism. And they fear it.
It would be an end to all they know. It would be an end to their power. It would be an end to looking down with disdain at the rest of us. It would be a mistake. As much as we don’t want to admit it, we need them. But they don’t know that we still know that. They are afraid of the step we’ve taken away from them, and they live in fear of further steps, like the step to socialism.
People of power will not go down without a fight. The fear will make them change their ideas and thoughts and they will look to appease us—because there are so many more of us than there are of them. And when used, there is power in numbers—when we vote, like we did this past November. In order to avoid the calamity that would be actual socialism in the U.S., they will make efforts to make wealth and power more accessible to us. They will share, so as not to lose. We shouldn’t want equal pay for everyone, but we should want what is fair. We should want to be able to keep our jobs in favor of executives getting multi-million dollar bonuses. That’s ridiculous. That’s the kind of compromise we can force.
Such is the power of the threat of Socialism. It is a weapon. It is fear. It is motivation. What our President is doing now isn’t socialism, but it’s close. That closeness, combined with the lack of any real message or direction from the Republican party has caused them to try to make us—we the people—afraid of socialism. Be not afraid my friends. They have unwittingly provided us with the weapon we can use to close the gaps that exist in our country today. Let’s make them think that we’re actually crazy enough to use it!
