Q: How do you define socialism personally A: “Socialism” is an RW snarl word that means “awful”. Just like foreign workers and boys playing on girls’ teams. All these things are unAmerican and you should all hate them all equally.
IMO from a political perspective that was a perfect answer. The Right will totally eat that up. Preventing the use of the word “socialism” in actual thoughtful debate is the goal, and he’s doing a bang-up job at that.
When they control the vocabulary their opponents are permitted to use, they control the debate. And they know that.
Yeah, if their audience were ever allowed to hear descriptions of actual characteristics of socialism, such as “owning and managing major industries for the national benefit rather than for the private profit of billionaires”, or “reducing economic inequality in order to take care of the basic needs of all people, including housing, healthcare and education”, etc., they might start wondering what’s so bad about those goals. And we can’t have that, now can we?
I first saw this on The Daily Show; Elon Musk was with the president talking about the impact of artificial intelligence. Musk said, “I think by far the most likely outcome is an age of abundance where we don’t have just universal basic income; we have universal high income.” So now they’re promising a socialist utopia if we just allow AI to run rampant?
Except Vance, who thinks the Ivy League are importing foreign workers in order to depress American workers’ wages.
(Vance is a Yalie, FTR.)
I’m reminded of George Orwell complaining, over 80 years ago, that the word “fascism” had become so diluted as to be meaningless;
“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”
I think that Tuberville with his 1st grade education doesn’t realize that “founding” means something other than “the person who found something”.
Also note that Puerto Rico, which is part of the United States (despite what many conservatives believe) was one of the locations that Columbus discovered and landed at (and reportedly spent 2 days on the island before leaving). So technically speaking, he did set foot in the United States.
I guess if we’re being historically accurate Sen. Turdville style we should promptly relocate the US seat of government to San Juan. That’s where it all began, and Ol’ Columbus was the original and only Founding Father. Accept no latter-day fakes like Washington et al.
Probably not an accident Turdville selected a statue of Columbus in a pose reminiscent of a Nazi salute for his post.
If we’re splitting hairs, Puerto Rico didn’t become a US territory until the Spanish-American War, 122 years after the founding of the United States. So Tubbyville is still a dope.
, one is named after the other but only as the result of a coin flip
