There’s been a lot of discussion on many of the internets about Republicans’ increasing use of the word “socialism”. Mark Leibovitch writes:
It seems that “socialist” has supplanted “liberal” as the go-to slur among much of a conservative world confronting a one-two-three punch of bank bailouts, budget blowouts and stimulus bills. Right-leaning bloggers and talk radio hosts are wearing out the brickbat. Senate and House Republicans have been tripping over their podiums to invoke it. The S-bomb has become as surefire a red-meat line at conservative gatherings as “Clinton” was in the 1990s and “Pelosi” is today.
Watching CNN this weekend, I heard Tom Price (R-Georgia) twice use the phrase “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” to describe Obama’s budget proposal. I have to wonder: what proportion of the CNN audience — let alone Price’s wingnut base — knows that that phrase came from Karl Marx (Price mentioned that it did, but that was obscured by the flourish with which Price repeated the phrase)? I also have to wonder if such a benign-sounding phrase is going to scare anyone. If you’re going to get commie with people why not say that Obama’s budget was the financial equivalent of banging your shoe and shouting “we will bury you” or of sending tanks into the streets of Prague?
Another phrase we’re hearing a lot of is “cradle-to-grave welfare state”. For people who can’t afford prenatal care or are worried about their 401(K), that probably doesn’t sound too bad.
I’ve got to think there is some way for Republicans to put a scarier face on socialism. Invoking Stalin is probably too over-the-top, and ABBA doesn’t seem to frighten people as much it used to. So I ask all of you: if you had to find something scary to say about soc ialism what would it be?
Update: Please put a space between “c” and “ialis” in your comments so as not to trigger the spam filter.
Conservatively Liberal
The rich fear it.
Brandon T
Waiting in endless lines for toilet paper. With the frequency I see Charmin commercials, I’m sure that will inspire a visceral fear in Americans.
Seanly
I can make a scary face. Can I haz wingnut welfare por favor? I’ll be their poster boy for the no-bid contract value of $40 million. Half payable up front.
Martin
According to Rachel’s show, the ‘Left Behind’ series says that a global socialist government (U.N., etc.) is the state of the world right before the Rapture. The socialist tag is likely to evoke this.
Remember that even CNN ran with the ‘antichrist’ claptrap. Clearly the audience that is receptive to Obama being the leader of the New World Order is pretty large.
Waingro
(Affects Southern drawl)
"Why, in Ba-rack Obama’s America, you’ll have 6 weeks of paid vacation, free healthcare and college tuition, and a guaranteed pension. Now does that sound like the kinda hellhole, that this great nation o’ ours oughta become?"
(Cue spooky organ music)
Comrades!
In Soviet Russia, Socialism says something scary about you!
anonevent
If Dems were truly talking about implementing socialism, it would be the central management of the economy that would possibly be scary. I had a US foreign relations teacher who had had a East German woman in one of his prior classes. She had told the class that the problem with central planning is that when the state decided everyone needed boots, it also had to decide exactly which sizes to make, which did not include her size.
But, then again, we have companies deciding all the time that they aren’t going to make what you are willing to buy – DSL to every home for example – so I’m not even sure that would carry much weight.
TenguPhule
An oversupply of nubile swedish blondes doing porn.
TenguPhule
Ironically, the people in socialist countries are doing better then we are.
Please keep pointing this out for us, GOP.
Polish the Guillotines
All your guns and bibles are belong to us.
N M
It’d be just like Euro-Socialism!!!! And every one of my rich friends knows how awful it is over there – they take vacations there!
KG
Central control of the means of production and distribution in the hands of government, not to mention the corruption that could ensue. Of course, that’s not what is being proposed here.
TenguPhule
In your base, killing your dupes!
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
This entire thread is going to end up in the moderation filter.
.
AhabTRuler
Um…that my French is really poor?
LaDonne
You don’t listen to enough Hannity.
The wingnuts know it from the man on the street prop Hannity has done throughout the election to this past Friday.
TenguPhule
Wait till they replace the bears with an animated face on Rush’s ass, then you’ll know true buttclenching terror.
JR
Heroin-shooting pornography addicts with seventeen illegitimate kids who don’t go to church will be using YOUR tax dollars to get their gang tattoos removed and enjoy free methadone while having indiscriminate and unprotected premarital sex with dogs.
And Al Gore is fat, too.
Ripley
Imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. Oh, and American Idol, canceled. Forever. That second one, yeah.
Calouste
The scary face of soc-ialism? You mean Tony Blair?
Ted
I really think you stole the thunder with your throwaway line about Abba, because as far as I can tell that actually *is* what they find scariest. The idea that America might become "European" seems to be self-evidently terrifying to many people; or at least that’s what Congressional Republicans are hoping.
JGabriel
DougJ:
It’s a bad thing, a slippery slope that will lead to the government printing money and making Social Security a government program!
.
John Cole
Great. Because I have nothing better to do than read 400 comments spam filtered because it has $ocialism in it.
AhabTRuler
I know: Television licenses. That would suck.
Comrade Stuck
Aside from the S word, I’ve been reading wingnut hemming and hawing about how Obama and his Marxist agenda is destroying our Free Market System. It never ceases to amaze the wingnut proclivity for blocking out reality when sizing up a situation. That character flaw, and that’s what it is, is likely the biggest reason they are unfit to govern, as they have proved the past 8 years.
In case they had their head in the sand, or up Limbaugh’s fat ass, the destruction of capitalism happened on their watch, resulting from their Laissez fair economic beliefs. Whether or not Obama’s policies will work to fix their pooch screwing, they have no right to complain. If Obama was intent on installing Marxism, he would be taking wingnut Lindsey Graham’s advice and nationalizing our banks, at the very least. And thus far, he has resisted this.
Church Lady
Having to wear a scarf around my head – not a good look for me. Oh, also ugly, heavy brown or black lace up shoes (shudder).
TenguPhule
Heh indeedy.
erlking
First, they came to give me the weekend, and I did not speak out–Because I liked to barbeque.
Then, they came to provide me with unemployment insurance, and I did not speak out–Because sometimes I got fired.
Then, they came to give me Social Security checks, and I did not speak out–Because I didn’t want to eat cat food when old.
Then they came to give me health care, and there was no one left to speak–Because everyone could see what assholes the Republicans really were.
bayville
All Dems are "anti-Burkean." That is plenty scary.
Church Lady
Why am I in moderation? I didn’t even use the S word.
AhabTRuler, Minions' Local #45, Amalgamated Federation of Underlings
@John Cole: Its going to be a long 4 years with the soc ialism, dude.
Dr. Loveless
Orwell once wrote that English workers would never accept soc ialism until they understood it as being about freedom and human dignity. The Repubs — by being so mouth-foamingly against both those things — are doing a better job of selling soc ialism than any old lefty ever could.
DougJ
I don’t follow.
Comrade Stuck
Communal bath houses.
handy
@erlking:
Martin Niemoelle is rolling in his grave, laughing out loud.
JGabriel
@DougJ:
Oh, this is comedy gold.
Doug, the moderation filter sends all posts with ch ialis to the mod queue.
Check out the middle of "soc ialist".
Now do you follow?
.
Graeme
One word: Europe.
Europe seems to scare the hell out of the GOP.
John Cole
@DougJ: The word socialism has the word “cialis” in it, which triggers the spam filter, and that means every comment that says socialism, which will be every one since you posed the question “if you had to find something scary to say about socialism what would it be?, meaning every response will go to the spam filter.
I am already up to 18 comments already that I had to rescue. I wish I knew your address- I would direct a shipment of silly putty your way.
Comrade Stuck
@DougJ:
My comment is in moderation because I quoted one of your sentences with the S word in it. I’m an idiot for doing so, apparently I thought the S word in Quotation marks would pass.
Social — ism. It’s the 4 hour hard on med that does it.
Apparently if Obama succeeds with his S word schemes, we can all look forward to many hours in moderation filters. Teh Horror.
John Cole
And I just realized that at least fifteen people will try to explain that to you, triggering fifteen more filtered comments. Kill me now.
AhabTRuler
to say nothing of ‘L0cal’ and god knows what else.
[extends la mano cornuda]
I’m telling you, the ilter-fay is ursed-cay.
JerryN
"and ABBA doesn’t seem to frighten people as much it used to"
Speak for yourself.
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
@John Cole:
Makes perfect sense. I mean, really, if somebody invents a sex pill called "Litic" then politics itself would become a trapped word.
Your spam filter was written by some fifth-graders during a bad week at summer camp.
"S0ciali5m" triggers a spam filter, on a political blog.
Who could spoof something like that?
Polish the Guillotines
@AhabTRuler:
Would it? Would it really ?
ThymeZoneThe Plumber
Now that is sexy spamapalooza I can believe in.
And funny.
Comrade Stuck
@John Cole:
Why couldn’t Obama just have been your average Fascist, or anarchist, and we wouldn’t be having this problem?
mantis
For the wingnuts, obviously it has to be that the sizocializm will make Jebus illegal.
Calouste
@Graeme:
Interesting point. The GOP are like some kind of rebelious teenager. Don’t know what they want, but they sure don’t want to be like their parents, or in the GOP’s case, the old continent. Of course we are talking about a rather dim-witted, stubborn teenager here.
cyntax
@John Cole:
Well if we haven’t quite gotten to what’s scary about soc!alism, at least we know what’s annoying about it.
scarshapedstar
How about we call it sov iagraism instead?
Wait… never mind, bad idea.
TenguPhule
They could have a point.
Would any of you want to walk in on Coulter, Rush, Malkin and Oreilly taking a bath AT THE SAME TIME?
r€nato
We have a pension program for the elderly.
We have a government-run health care system… for veterans.
We have multiple programs to assist the poor and indigent, like food stamps.
We have a progressive income tax.
We have the government owning substantial shares in private banks and a major insurer.
We have the government bailing out the automakers and Wall Street.
Soc*ialism? You’re soaking in it, to a certain degree. It’s just that nobody dares call it that.
Polish the Guillotines
@TenguPhule:
If it was an acid bath, perhaps.
cyntax
@TenguPhule:
Ack, individually is bad enough… at the same time makes me want to apply large amounts of whiskey to whatever part of my brain that image is now lodged in.
opium4themasses
This reminds me of a filter that would catch pocketwatch.
TenguPhule
But that would leave them even more naked without their skin on.
JGabriel
r€nato:
Especially on Balloon Juice.
.
handy
@ThymeZoneThe Plumber:
"Hey baby, how about you wash my back and I wash yours and we can discuss the implications of division of labor in a post-bourgeois society."
Comrade Stuck
@handy:
Your imagery pretty much kilt this thread:)
Shawn in ShowMe
[Rushbo] Do you really want to be forced to live in a commune with a bunch of godless, pot-smoking hippies my friends? [Rushbo]
Martin
Isn’t the military the most social-ist system we have in the US? Even the wingnuts don’t seem to mind it when it work. In fact, they seem to worship it.
Joshua Norton
Screw that. I order on line from Safeway. Let the person filling my order stand in line.
For some reason I can’t stop laughing over that statement. Strange what will set you off. Have to stop. Still laughing…..
Anoniminous
Under the Obama $ocia!ist system all toasters will be nationalized. To get your morning P0ptart’s you will have to go to the People’s Breakfast Commune.
(Used a zero instead of an "o" as this stupid spam filter reacts in strange ways. A previous comment is ‘in the void’ due to, I presume, the word L,E,S,B,I,A,N. )
Delia
Soc-ialism will not be complete until every last one of Bernie Madoff’s assets are stripped away. And his family rots in the poorhouse. And Rush is sent to a specially made guillotine that’s big enough for his fat neck.
Until then these gooper frootloops are only scared of their own shadows.
Conservatively Liberal
Only if there was a hair dryer plugged into a non-GFCI outlet sitting next to the tub.
And no witnesses.
Person of Choler
I’ve lived and worked in one of the -ist countries for 14+ years and have learned one thing that could be scary to some people:
The tax authorities here are absolutely adamant about getting all taxes paid in full.
This might frighten many of Obama’s appointees.
Chuck Butcher
Damn I’m still alternately rolling around laughing about traps explanations and choking on naked Coulter, et al., images.
Half an hour ago I was in a bit of a funk. I now have to sell a very nice car in a shit market. Damn, now I have to go read the thread again to regain my mood.
gwangung
Not half as much as the entire Republican party.
Martin
Nah, they just hide behind the Swiss.
See, socialism is teh win when it helps you avoid paying taxes.
Martin
Heh. I forgot to add the hyphen.
We should have a social-ims protest. Grab one of John’s open threads and have every post trigger the spam filter until he takes ‘cial-is’ out of there.
Chuck Butcher
Of course what DougJ has now done is tell every troll in the world the dirty little secret about sewshulizm.
oops or was that me
Down and Out of Sài Gòn
Having lived a couple of years under the Hammer and Sickle, it would be easy for me to demonize "S*c**l*sm". Decaying infrastructure with two parts crumbling concrete and one part rust. Corrupt and bullying cops. Rude and untouchable bureaucrats. Paranoid and authoritarian leaders.
It’s just like the last eight years under Bush.
This explains why the Republicans are so inarticulate about expressing their problems with "S*c**l*sm". If they really thought about it… but then cognitive dissonance would kick in.
Person of Choler
gwangung,
Certainly you can do better than that.
Paul Crowley
@AhabTRuler: Yeah, who’d want something like the BBC when US broadcasting is so good?
(Though I don’t see TV licences lasting much longer – the boundary between a TV and a computer will get too hard to draw)
Graham
Since we are all comrades now, why not sozialism instead of the other uncomradely spelling?
Zuzu's Petals
How about the old standby, "socialized medicine"?
Conservatively Liberal
@
Person of CholerBilious Person:Maybe a small adjustment if anything. Figuring that people who make a lot make bigger ‘mistakes’, I would guess that anyone who makes a considerable sum and makes one of these mistakes could be in trouble. Since the Republican party is the one who has proudly sold themselves off to the highest bidder, I would guess that they have more rich people in their party than the Democrats do.
Pretty simple to figure. Try again O’ Bilious One? I am enjoying watching you stupid wingnuts gnashing your fangs, yammering and drooling all over yourselves in your defense of the indefensible. Obama looked at the mess your party and its leaders have become and did America a favor by tossing you an anchor while they are foundering in the sea of politics. A big, fat, rich, drug-addled, thrice-divorced, limp-dicked hermit of an anchor that you idiots will gleefully wrap your arms around and sink with, all the while howling defiantly at the moon.
Please, keep at it. People like you are helping to make others see what a bankrupt ideology you and your party have embraced, that you care little for our nation or its standing in the world. You only care about you and yours, everyone else can go to hell. Watching this mess unfold, you know that embracing Rush will sink your asses but you know there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
As Rush himself said, he "owns" you. Good luck with that. :)
Zuzu's Petals
The first Christians, were, of course, soshalists.
So I wonder if Tom Price and the other nutters realize that the Karl Marx quote they’re so fond of throwing around is actually…hey, scriptural.
Ash Can
OK, I’m laughing tears over this.
Person of Choler
Conservatively Liberal (#76) Jeez, where did I say all that? I don’t even like Limbaugh.
Honestly, you should sharpen your reasoning and rhetorical skills and let your talents for motive attribution, hyperbole, name calling, amateur profanity and sarcasm atrophy.
Is this the sort of logic and analysis you apply to your job?
Aimai
Tbogg catches some jon galtt wannabe over at malkinworld furiously rejecting obama higher taxes for social thingy welfare retiring early to go on Medicare. Really. Is there a term of art for accidental buy in? How about oopsalism. Or maybe "I’ve fallen and I can’t stop sucking at the government teat?". –aimai
Conservatively Liberal
Sure, I have been completely ignoring everything you say just to respond like that. Gotcha.
HeartlandLiberal
Well, a list:
1. The trains would run on time? (OK, so there is a historical allusion there, but heck, we might actually HAVE efficient passenger trains again, and they could really run on time. Bums me that the only time in my life I have enjoyed a decent rail system was the year I lived in Germany.)
2. Revitalized infrastructure, you know, roads, bridges that don’t collapse.
3. Assured medical care for all citizens, thus increasing the level of general health, thus increasing the pool of able workers, rather than pouring money into disability payments after workers go without medical care until it is too late to keep them healthy. I know, preventive care that ultimately creates massive cost savings, such a weird concept.
4. Taxes spent on the needs of the people, NOT pouring them into the coffers of corporations who are pouring uncounted millions into the hands of the super-rich, corrupt politicians, and lobbyists. The K-Street culture needs to be destroyed, once and for all.
I know, silly me to dream of such a logical outcome. But there is a bottom line here. Government is NOT going to go away. Human beings cannot function in groups without working out some sort of hierarchy of power. Why not accept that, and do what our founders started the ball rolling with when they wrote the Constitution: fashion government so that it actually works, equally, under a rule of law, not the whim of tyrants? And if you don’t buy that, you have not looked at the DOJ memos from Woo and his seditious brethren that were released this week. Why Berkley has not fired the SOB is frankly beyond me at this point. How does the man have the guts to walk across campus and not hang his head in shame?
Works for me.
cleek
the exact phrasing is Blanc, not Marx, though Marx popularized it.
and the message itself precedes both by a couple of millennia:
Acts 4:
32. And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common.
33. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.
34. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold,
35. And laid them down at the apostles’ feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.
Josh Hueco
@cleek:
I wonder how many Christians are aware of this. As I say, there’s nothing Christian about the Bible Belt.
Montysano
I’m in absolute terror of the taxes I’ll theoretically pay when I magically begin to earn 6x what I do now.
Richard Stanczak
Lets be honest here. Most people don’t have a clue what that quote means, who the hell said it, and what socialism is.
I’m a Canadian and I have to laugh when some of my conservative friends rail on about socialism. They only complain that the health care system doesn’t cover enough and it ‘takes too long’ to get treatment. And of course, how everyone but them is ripping off the government.
According to you guys, Canada is as socialist as it gets.
Fine by me.
Montysano
@TenguPhule:
Sadly, yes.
Hey…… I’m old but I’m not dead yet.
AhabTRuler
@Montysano: Yech. All bones and crazy showing!
KevOH
@Martin:
Under the GOP, the military has been systematically dismantling many of its socialist elements. Things such as medical care are no longer guaranteed for military family members, as the base clinics are closing and the local hospital has the right to refuse tricare. The alternative is for the spouse to get a job that offers private health insurance or pay out-of-pocket.
Base housing is also being privatized.
Person of Choler
Conservatively Liberal,
"Gotcha" ? You’ve gone from hyperbolic logorrhea to riddlespeak.
TR
@Montysano:
Still, with Coulter and Malkin, that’s one man and one woman. Why not make it two women, as long as you’re fantasizing?
gex
@anonevent: This makes me laugh. I am a non-standard sized human and capitalism fails to make clothes, boots, cars, chairs, desks, etc. that fit me. I’m the size of woman for whom the airbags in cars that make everyone else safer pose a death risk for me. You’ll need to find another scare tactic for me.
Scott H
I remember the howling and rending over Medicare. You would have thought the Bolshies were storming the beaches.
So-make-your-girlfriend-go-wow!-ism. What a concept.
John PM
@Zuzu’s Petals: @cleek:
Exactly! What was the Sermon on the Mount if not Soc-alism? Jesus took fish and bread from one person and gave some to everyone. Did anyone there pay for their loaves or their fish? No. Also, my favorite phrase from the Bible: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass through the gates of Hevean," which Jesus said after the rich young man refused to give up all of his possessions and follow Jesus.
I think socialism is scary to the Republicans now because they realize that they have created the conditions for it to once and for all take root in the United States. It really is like Marx’ dialectic is starting to come true. It has been a long time since I read Marx and Engel, but IIRC socialism (and ultimately communism) could not take root until the ruling classes had overreached. I think we have finally reached that point.
Person of Choler
KevOH,
George Bush isn’t president any more, you know, so it’s up to Obama to rectify the short-changing of the military and their families you mention in your comment.
The problem is Obama’s to fix, let us know when he’s taken care of it.
Josh Hueco
A local old-timer in today’s newspaper sons the know-nothing sunshine patriots who are screaming ‘so-getyourboneon-ism’.
anonevent
@gex: Thats kind of the sad thing: any example that might have sounded scary soc ialist is something being done by corporations in our country. In one of the posts yesterday BOB was claiming that he didn’t trust government because they would ultimately just try to grab power to protect themselves; sounded an awful lot like the way corporations run today.
Although in this womans case the government made boots only came in something like three or four sizes.
bootlegger
@Josh Hueco:
All around the country fingers are plugging up ears and a loud voice rings out: "la-la-la-la-la I can’t hear you la-la-la-la-la."
bootlegger
Wingers follow the Hayak bible on this, that collectivism (filter dodge) necessarily means less individual freedom. This is a ridiculous point if you’ve ever been to Europe and seen the level of freedom they enjoy living under social democracies. A second, and probably more compelling point, is actually regarding communism and it’s inefficiency as a system of resource distribution. This is why the Europeans only use centralized planning for resources that would be unequally distributed with a free market but are needed by everyone: education and health care as two prime examples. Otherwise the Euros loves them some free markets and being rich.
Brian J
If it didn’t work in the campaign, I don’t see why it’s going to work now.
And if it does somehow work now, it’s only because there’s such an anger in this country, Obama would be able to get away with anything. But that would mean he’s actually trying to implement socialism, which is a ludicrous claim.
Rick Taylor
The trouble the Republicans have is that they’re railing against soc ialism and how we’re being forced to pay money to "losers" who can’t keep up their house payments when we’re currently paying hundreds of billions to companies like AIG. And of course that money is being used to support payments to other companies, losers who bet the housing market would go up forever, and bought insurance from AIG pretending that made their investments AAA safe, who we get to save from their bad decisions.
Can this line of attack really hold up? Can the Republican party gain power or even stay in power by telling people Acorn welfare recipients are stealing their hard earned money, when not a week goes by when we hear about how the bailout of the banks is going to cost even more billions of dollars? Of course I’ve been wrong before, but I don’t see it.
But anyway, if conservatives really want to exploit populist feeling, they should talk about soc ialism for the rich. No more bailouts for the banks! Of course that would be pretty much the end for them.
Comrade Kevin
@cleek:
Of course you realize, this means war.
DanF
In all seriousness, this tarring Democrats with the soc ialist moniker is much more dangerous than their attacks on liberals. Not politically. Politically it’s a complete joke. But soc ialism/communism invokes the red menace and it will prompt self-described "patriots" to take violent action to "save the Republic". The rhetoric coming out of the leadership on the right is incredibly incendiary. Fortunately, conservatives aren’t too good at revolution, but I’d be surprised if we don’t see a rise in domestic terrorism.
I’d go with: Soc ialism = One World Government (Oh noes!)!
Eric U.
Abba still scares the hell out of me. My family lied to me and took me to their musical without telling me there were Abba songs involved. First movie I’ve ever been close to walking out on.
ChrisB
Reminds me of the old "Soviet Fashion Show" commercial for Wendy’s. You know, "swimwear" for those of you old enough to remember.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAKtYGJZSM
(Feel really inadequate for not learning how to link but at least I didn’t trip the filter by using the word "socialism." Oh, shit!)
Mike in NC
Obama is the anti-Bush, which is why he brought in Shinseki to fix the VA, which was a national disgrace under the last administration. But you’d probably disagree.
jrosen
I saw Soviet-style $ocia-lism first hand in 1965, and although I knew it was bad I was still somewhat shocked (and coming from an Old Left background made it yet more poignant).
But in 1965, scars of the most destructive war (yet) in history were still visible. They had lost 27 million people (equivalent today to losing 51 million Americans), and had had their main industrial areas (Ukraine and Leningrad) flattened.
And Russia was a backward country to begin with in 1917, mismanaged (as usual) and losing a major war. Communism in Russia was a completely un-Marxist idea (which is why Lenin and his people struggled so mightily to revise the theory) and the excesses of Stalinism had as much to do with the structure and sorry history of Russian society (essentially feudal with an absolute monarch, an oppressive church, and a large mass of miserable peasantry…hardly the advanced proletariat that Marx envisioned).
So while there is every reason to reject the rigid model of a command economy in principle, a little context might make the whole fiasco more comprehensible.
We need to rehabilitate the notion of the common good, the spirit of barn-raising and communal action, and realize that our government is one of the ways (and sometimes the only way if the problems or nation-wide) of realizing that notion.
Marshall
How about this as an insult to aim at Republican ?
Bourgeois puppets of foreigners !
Lest you think that this sort of talk is obsolete, I took it right from the New York Times :
Now, the New York Times would doubtless say that they are only reporting the news, but I think that it is clear from such language that their reporters are being groomed to serve as the vanguard of the coming revolution !
PattyP
@ bootlegger
Selma Hayak wrote a bible?
Woodrowfan
I never understood the fear of Western Europe among the RW. OK, I’ve never been there, but family and friends have and I have American friends who have lived there and live there now and frankly it seems like a nice place. The impression I get is that some things tend to be better here (the USPS for example) and cable TV, and some things better there. The worst complaints I ever heard was about the dog poop on the sidewalks in France and that it’s harder in Europe to avoid tobacco smoke (and, OK, English cooking). But cripes, it’s not North Korea for heaven’s sake. Even when a right-wing government comes to power in Europe they don’t gut the social safety net and if the Europeans hated their system so much you’d think some party would come to power on the promise of gutting it?
So what’s the bleeping big deal?
On the other hand, I still kind of like ABBA. (shrug) What can I say, I was a teen boy when they were big and the two women in ABBA were CUTE.
Woodrowfan
that was rhetorical, bootlegger explained it quite well. But still, to fear EUROPE?? Becoming like the Soviet Union? Scary. Become a dictatorship like, what, BELGIUM? or, dare I suggest it, DENMARK? eh, not so much scary..
Conservatively Liberal
Just what I would expect from a
Person of CholerBilious Rushublican, We broke it and now it’s your problem. If you don’t fix it we will blame the failure on Obama so we can get back into power and fuck things up some more.IOW, you are a fucking child playing with matches. You don’t give a shit about anything but you and yours. A perfect dittohead, ready to join Rush on his mattress. I am going to love watching you fuckers scream and bitch for the next eight+ years.
Suck it. :)
Zuzu's Petals
@DanF:
You are too right. One only need read some of the comments at few of the wingnut sites (not to mention YouTube) to see some truly frightening "I’ve got my gun" crap.
eyelessgame
To this liberal, the problem for conservatives making their case is that social democracy has always seemed like an obviously and objectively better society than belief in the Laissez Fairy. Every Republican counterargument I’ve ever heard has come across as a scare tactic, except for the disturbingly and depressingly good argument that people who live in fear are motivated to work harder than people who don’t.
I.e. you will work harder if you would actually have to watch your children die as a consequence of losing your job. And they further believe that this is how life works: this fear is required in order for us to be competitive/to avoid a recession/etc. If you aren’t motivated to work as hard as the people who really will starve and die and watch their families starve and die if they don’t do their absolute best, then you’ll lose to those people.
Oh, conservatives write sugar-coated nonsense about taxes and bleat about values and rant about deficits and red-bait and Jew-bait and minority-bait and gay-bait and fetus-bait and atheist-bait and terrorist-bait, but all of those are transparently bad arguments that they make to try to keep their coalition together. I think deep down most of them really do honestly think that if we’re not all living in fear, we are going to fail.
Every once in a while I’m cynical and depressed enough to believe they’re right.
Person of Choler
Conservatively Liberal says,
"IOW, you are a fucking child playing with matches. You don’t give a shit about anything but you and yours. A perfect dittohead, ready to join Rush on his mattress. I am going to love watching you fuckers scream and bitch for the next eight+ years.
Suck it. :)"
Gosh, CL, that’s quite a string of cliche-laden profanity there. You need to improve your rhetorical skills.
Do I have to teach you PermaDamp Wanksocks how properly to swear along with everything else?
frankdawg
I was 12 or 13 when I ran into my first wingnut (back then we called ’em Birchers – we wore onions in our belts cuz it was the style at the time" Abe Simpson) ’64 or ’65.
He introduced me to the insanity that is the modern conservative movement. The flier he gave me referred to (and I have the quote exactly right as it is burned into my memory as one of the most hilariously stupid things ever written) "The International Comm unist, Je wish conspiracy with the black foot soldier" He spent a large amount of time trying to instill in me a fear of the above mentioned. Part of his hector was to ask me if I knew when Comm unism was started. Having read the Bible I knew exactly when & told him about the Book of Acts. He darn near popped a gasket – I had to get my copy of the KJV and read it to him.
It seemed odd to me at the time that, confronted with the evidence that his whole world view was based on a lie, he became louder and more shrill but did not alter his belief an iota.
That behavior is so common today in the shambled remains of the Republican Party but it still baffles me.
Person of Choler
Mike in N C, saith, "Obama is the anti-Bush, which is why he brought in Shinseki to fix the VA, which was a national disgrace under the last administration. But you’d probably disagree."
I don’t disagree, I hope he fixes the VA which (I can attest from family history) was already FUBAR in the Carter years.
I’m just waiting for results. Let me know when there are some on this and other veterans’ matters.
memory
The wingnuts just need to start refering to Obama’s goals as "Mexican-style Soc ialism" that will lead to internal drug wars and we’ll all have to speak Spanish and our nation will be over run with illegal immigrants.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
"Yo mama so fat that under soc ialism, she have her own Soviet!"
4jkb4ia
Soc ialism doesn’t work.
Soc ialism would imply that the government should take over AIG when the federal government has never been in that business and knows less about running it than about the banks.
4jkb4ia
(It’s David Sirota. It’s hopeless)
4jkb4ia
(Bubble Watch does have West Virginia in now)
lawnorder
if you had to find something scary to say about socialism what would it be?
For a CON ?
Today’s TPM headline :)