Comment from Tony Logan   (IP: 97.112.157.36)
Time: October 30, 2009, 7:39 pm

‘Economy grows by 3%’…’But only on the strength of the Socialist programs like Cash For Clunkers and stimulus payouts.’

Sorry, Jonah, but I have to totally disagree with you here. Neither ‘Cash for Clunkers nor the ’stimulus payouts’ had the least bit to do with anything called a ‘Socialist program’. They had absolutely nothing to do with ’socialism’. Just the opposite, in fact.

It is absolutely wrong to call ’socialist’, any of these government programs by a capitalist strong state like the one we have in the US. To do so only foments utter confusion for many who can’t see the difference between “National Socialism’ and the big mechanical bureaucratic ’socialism’ of the previous Stalinist regimes in the former Soviet Union and Mao’s China.

Comment from Brother Jonah   (IP: 174.22.134.111)
Time: October 30, 2009, 8:10 pm

I know that. But the Reich wing call it “Socialism” and Tyranny.

I threw their hyperbole back to them.
Sometimes, it’s the only way to deal with their stupid shit. Fortunately I speak their language. Trust me on this one.

They’re already confused. What I’m trying to do is get them to think at least a little. Sometimes it works.

If it works once, only once, it’s a victory. The ones who are further repulsed by it, well, some people will refuse to think, no matter what is said.. If they can’t be reached by any other means, then not educating them this way won’t be any more or less a failure than not reaching them by any other means.

Social programs, social spending, it does work. The alternative offered by the targets of the message, would be rabid “free” market profiteering. Perhaps a balance could be struck, but that balance would always be under attack.

Meanwhile, as far as I can see, that reactionary capitalism approach has not only failed to bring prosperity it’s done exactly the opposite. Some of them are intelligent. Some have a conscience to go with their consciousness.

The ones who have both could be valuable to the human race if they can be convinced to think about what they’re advocating, and see that it’s wrong, and choose to abandon that path.

Somebody once wrote to me (concerning the protests of the run-up to the Iraq invasion) that we needed allies more urgently than we do converts. Actually, we need both. That’s we as in the whole of humanity.

Comment from Tony Logan   (IP: 97.112.157.36)
Time: October 30, 2009, 9:01 pm

Well, the problem are the so-called liberals also, Jonah. They, too, have their wires quite crossed when it comes to the question of what is ’socialist’ and what is not?

So it really is important to be quite clear that a capitalist government giving taxpayer money to the super rich is not a form of ’socialism’. In fact, it is just robbery by the rich against the poor done through a capitalist government controlled by the super rich. We, the people, do not control the Obama Adminstration.

People have the idea that almost any government give out to anybody is ’socialism’, since they have always been taught that by the Right Wing media and think tanks that that is the case. They don’t believe it to be the case though when government money is given to the corporations for the military and police. That is supposedly all OK??? per the same corporate Rightist media heads.

There simply is a lot of confusion about ’socialism versus non ’socialism’ which is fed by the Right Wing, and it helps more to clarify the issues rather than to play into the general confusion.