So the Presidential election is over and the American people have chosen. And it was the right choice; Obama/Biden are the future; McBush and Caribou Barbie promised to take America into a new Dark Age. Thank goodness for an inkling of common sense at last.
Of course we still have the Repugnican whiners complaining about how Obama will turn America into Socialist Hell, where everything you earn will be given to everyone else - the ultimate share-the-wealth nightmare.
My message: get a grip, and learn something about what the word Socialism
really means.
It's easier if I give an example, and what better than the American School System. Yes, it's a Socialist thing. The schools are funded by taxes that we all pay, whether or not we have kids in school. Yes, you're paying for your neighbours' brats' education. But when you put your own kids in school, your neighbours are paying for
your kids' education. The same as when your parents' neighbours paid taxes that paid for
your education.
This is a good thing: parents have extra mouths to feed but those food-sinks aren't contributing income; having to foot the education bill for said money-sponges on top of all that would be too much for many families. When everyone in a community helps with the costs of teaching all their kids, it makes it possible for the kids to have a decent education without breaking the parents' banks. The alternative would be have everyone pay full whack for their kids education, and that's a recipe for an elitist system where only the children of the wealthy would actually get an education.
Socialism isn't 'Sharing the Wealth'. It's
SHARING THE BURDEN.
Now I'm not saying that the American school system is good in itself; it isn't, but that's not because it works on this socialist plan. Other countries have similar systems but their schools do a much better job of teaching; the problem in this country is something to do with the way American schools actually go about teaching, and nothing to do with how they're paid for.
If you don't like this socialist idea, and you have kids in school, then you have only one choice: get your kids out of that commie pinko system and send them to private school - if you can afford it. If you can't afford it, it's homeskooling for
your brats. And while you're at it, consider what America would be like if the education system was managed like the health system, i.e. as a for-profit business whose primary purpose is to make money. I'm not even going to try to imagine what a fucking nightmare that would be.
Instead try to imagine what it would be like if the health system was run like the education system. In fact, you don't need to imagine it because there are plenty of such systems around - America is the only country in the developed world that
doesn't have a national health system, preferring to fool its people into thinking that a moneygrubbing system that would, and does, let them die rather than pay for lifesaving treatment if it saves an insurance company a few thousand dollars, is better for the American people.
Check out the health systems in Britain, Canada, France, Germany. Better still, get a copy of
Sicko on DVD and watch it, and before you listen to some ignorant cunt telling you how Michael Moore exaggerated it all and gassing on about long waiting lists and dirty, underequipped hospitals and underpaid doctors, note that I lived in the British system for 39 years and have more than a little experience of the French equivalent, and I never saw anything like that; Moore actually got it about right.
Socialism isn't good for everything - but it can be very good when it comes to providing the basic services that we all need, such as education, health, police and ambulances.
So back to the plot. The next time you hear the word Socialism, don't immediately run off to check for reds under your bed. Look the word up in a dictionary. UNDERSTAND what it really means, and not what some far-right wingnut, like that asshole Rush Limbaugh, or the incredibly stupid and bigmouthed Ann Coulter, want you to think it means. And make your own, clear-headed decision about whether it's a good thing or not. I know where I stand on it, and I have no problem with people disagreeing - but only if that disagreement is the result of an informed analysis, and not a knee-jerk reaction.
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