Republicans call everything they don't like 'socialism' -- #5

It drags the conversation in their direction, so win-win, for them.




A reminder: I'm posting something on this every day, because it needs to be pushed back every day.
Don't quibble over fine points and definitions, go right at them and their bullshit.

Repeat it they way they repeated "tax and spend" and "soft on crime". They weren't true, but repetition made those themes stick in peoples' minds.

Any time a Republican cries "socialism", I want this phrase to be what pops into peoples' heads.

Republicans call everything they don't like 'socialism' -- #4

Whatever you think of AOC, reallocating her office's staff budget so that the lowest-rung people are able to have an income they can live on without being trust-fund babies is not "socialism and communism on display."

But the pResident's most trusted advisors call it that anyway.


https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1100018209690923008

Republicans call everything they don't like 'socialism' -- #3

I'm not a socialist, but I get called one anyway -- by Republicans. The same is true for nearly all of you.

They call everything that puts checks and balances on the power and abuses of wealth 'socialism'. But checks and balances are not 'socialist', they're as American as apple pie.

They do it to cause a stampede, to get people running the way the want. The boy who cried wolf, the elephant who cried 'socialism'.

Don't get bogged down splitting hairs over definitions. No matter what we do they're going to call us that. Don't hem and haw and duck and weave. Deny their very premise.

Face it head on and swat it down. Every day, all the time.

Or they'll just keep doing it.

Republicans call everything they don't like 'socialism' -- #2

Needs to be said every day. Need a bumper sticker argument? Here it is.

I'm resigned to the fact that most Americans don't "do" nuance about the word "socialism." I'm not out to educate people about what it is and isn't or what varieties of it there are. I'm not one, but I get called that by Republicans. I'm normally up for interesting debates, but this one is pointless. It's debating a brick wall, and the only thing to do is pry the bricks apart.

I'm just out to remind people that if you believe what Republicans today say counts as 'socialism' then we spent at least half of the 20th century as a 'socialist' nation. That's nuts, and it needs to be said over and over again.

The Movement Conservatism that became the Republicans' ruling ideology always hated social programs, but had particular venom for ones that worked. After all, successful ones argued for more, which to them was an abomination.

To them, it was all 'socialism' and 'communism'.

It hasn't changed much. If anything it's gotten worse as they've come closer to grabbing all the marbles: doing away with the last remnants of the New Deal and packing the courts with operatives who will make conservatively correct rulings.

They'll rail against "European socialism" as if they were talking about Warsaw Pact police states and not the same industrialized democracies that constitute the Free World that we used to be 'leader' of.

They invoked 'socialism' when Obama proposed a small increase in income taxes for people way up on the income scale. Taxes were higher for 6 of Reagan's 8 years, with a top rate of 50%, but somehow a change from 35% to 39.6% for taxable income above $400,000 counted as raising the red flag of revolution.

They can't win with their policies, so they scare. That's why the cultivated the base they did.

Anything that helps ordinary people is called 'socialist', conjuring the spectre of an alien ideology from a foreign land.


But checks and balances on the power of money and wealth aren't socialism. They are just that, checks and balances, and are as American as apple pie.


I don't have a cable news network. I don't have a radio show. I don't have Wingnut Welfare funding. But observing those over the years drove in the power of repetition.

So repeat:
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'
They call everything they don't like 'socialism'

They call everything they don't like 'socialism'



and nobody, but nobody, is exempt from being accused of being a weak-kneed backslider. Everything they don't like is 'socialism'.



1976 book, from Reagan's bid to get Republican nomination instead of Ford

Republicans call everything they don't like 'socialism' -- #1

A new recurring series. 'Recurring' as in every day, because it needs to be said. Every day.
Don't let them call the tune, don't let their framing stand.

Weekend TOONs Bonus - The Boondocks, 2019

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

You know what I'm talking about.

Is he going to wrap this up in time for his bedtime story from Sean?

It's gonna be a hot time in the ol'Adderal warehouse tonight.

The income tax had a top marginal rate at or over 70% for 50 years...

...out of its 107 year existence.

Keep that in mind when they bandy about the term "socialism".

Alternative video of Trump speaking