We were talking just last night about how so many Americans these days are willing to undermine themselves in order to avoid helping anyone else. I believe this is largely due to a deliberate campaign to convince Americans to think that way. Rush Limbaugh and the others in the army of “conservative” thinkers who have dominated media in much of the country have been presenting this selfish, self-centered, amoral, individualistic, fear-based point of view in a way that makes it sound “reasonable” for years now. In the absence of any countervailing education, much of the country has been convinced.
In another conversation this week, someone was saying that socialism results in the murders of millions. I countered that Stalin etc were not really socialists, but dictators. It occurred to me that socialism in the hands of a country used to an absolute ruler and absent any democratic structure, devolved like Russia did, but countries like the ones in Scandinavia that had a different background took socialism and produced something very different and much more successful from it. We had the democratic background, but were prevented from developing into a semi-socialist paradise by those who made “socialist” a dirty word by defining it as Stalin and his ilk.
