Conservative Insanity

If you believe that Joe Biden is a socialist, or that he is under the influence of socialist forces within the Democratic Party, you suffer from the same kind of insanity that has afflicted the mind of Donald Trump. It is well known that the current POTUS spends many hours per day watching Fox News, which has become his personal propaganda channel, and his supporters let their minds be infected with their brand of right wing insanity; hence the completely ludicrous notion among Trump supporters that a Joe Biden presidency is a one way ticket towards communism...

Not too long ago I saw a long-form interview with Charles Sykes, a best-selling author and conservative radio host, called "How The Right Lost Its Mind"; it's about an hour long and I recommend you all watch it. The question he tries to answer in this interview is this: how did a movement that was defined by its belief in limited government, individual liberty, free markets, traditional values and civility find itself embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery and outright falsehood? If you've read my posts lately you know my perspective on this issue, namely that the rise of Donald Trump is a symptom of the larger issue of right wing reactionary forces pitted against a perceived rise of left wing ideology among the citizenry, the rise of fascism. "Embracing bigotry, political intransigence, demagoguery and outright falsehood" are all defining characteristics of fascism, born out of and rising alongside anti-intellectualism, the rejection of science and a propensity for simple answers to complex questions.

Fascism, in short, is the extreme reaction to leftism in times when the capitalist status quo is threatened by the rise of left wing populism during crises born from capitalism's internal failures. The choice by the Democratic Party to fully back Joe Biden as their candidate, and the stab in the back of Bernie Sanders during the primaries just before Super Tuesday, was reported to be made because of fear that if Sanders would have become their candidate, the blue party would come under attack from the GOP for having become a socialist or communist party. This choice and this fear was bogus to begin with because, as we see now, and as we saw with Obama and every other Democratic presidential candidate, the GOP will ALWAYS accuse ANY Democratic candidate for being socialist. This is why right wing populism holds in it the danger, especially in times of crisis, of degenerating into fascism. We can see this happening right now; when leftists address the problem of billionaires existing right next to abject poverty in the richest nation on earth, they do so on ideological grounds based in socioeconomic theory and practice. When conservatives address the problem of billionaires, they don't mind that they exist, rather criticize them for not being patriotic enough; they accuse Jewish billionaires like George Soros for supporting socialism and leftist extremism, or they accuse big corporations for moving their factories abroad. There's always this xenophobic angle with right wing criticism of the economy in times of crisis; finding an external scapegoat, be it immigrants, low wage countries or China in particular (the "China-virus", anyone?), is the simple, anti-intellectual answer to complex internal issues that fascism and fascists come up with...

It's laughable how these Republicans accuse leftists of having a victim mentality when they are the ones who constantly blame, and whine about being treated unfair by, other people; they accuse foreigners and foreign countries for their economic ailments and leftists for "cancel culture" and the so called redefinition of words, like pronouns for non-binary gendered people or the inclusion of systemic racism when in their narrow minds racism is exclusively individual. Never will the right wing populist point the finger at himself or his own nation, for he and his own nation are perfect, or at least the nation was perfect, it's just that we need to restore the white, patriarchal power-structure of yesteryear, and everything will be fine again. Complex questions, simple answers; a deadly combination, as is proven by Trump's simple answers to the pandemic that has cost over 200,000 American lifes so far.

This right wing insanity is on display every day, on Fox News and coming from the POTUS in his tweets and public statements. Just the other day the popular Fox program "Fox & Friends" called a proposal for affordable housing for everyone by the Democratic Party's left wing "communism". Communism! Never mind that 40 million Americans are under threat of being kicked out of their houses due to the current economic depression. Healthcare for all is also "communism" according to these airheads, even when hundreds of millions of Americans just lost their health-insurance because that was tied to the job they no longer have. How the economic fallout of the pandemic was handled in America is insane; multi-billion corporations were bailed out without any strings attached. Here in Europe those mega-corporations were also bailed out, but only under the condition that they fire nobody. Another part of the proposal of the Democratic Party's left wing that's under right wing attack, is that if corporations are bailed out, the public gets an ownership share of those corporations. This is economics 101; if you pay for something, you own it. When the German airline company Lufthansa was bailed out, the German state got a 20 percent stake: Lufthansa agrees €9bn bailout with German government. This is how it's done under reasonable and fair leadership. Not according to the madmen and crazy women at Fox News though, and not according to the crazy Republican voters who, like the POTUS, let their minds be infected by them.

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