NOTES ON THE RIGHT-WING MISINFORMATION MACHINE

by Richard Aberdeen

It is historically preposterous and an absolute lie to pretend that what Obama and the Democrats have proposed for health care reform represents “socialism”.  When I was a kid, my father was in the Navy and so my entire family was treated by actual government doctors who were hired and trained by the government and who worked in government-owned military hospitals and clinics.  And who apparently, provided as good of quality health care as private enterprise, in spite of Republican lies to the contrary.  Isn’t it more than just a little at odds with Republican propaganda, that military doctors, hired, trained, tightly controlled and paid for by the government, are often some of our best doctors?  But even that wasn’t really socialism, because medicines and equipment they used were mostly researched, manufactured and supplied by private enterprise.

A “socialist” health care system controls and hires all medical, scientific and other researchers, doctors and staff, provides medical care in government-owned hospitals and clinics and, performs medical research and develops new medicines and manufactures medical equipment in government-owned facilities.  Governments that attempt to regulate commercial enterprise, which the United States has always done since the beginning of the American revolution, the outbreak of Shay’s and other rebellions and the instigation and consequent revolt against whiskey taxes, are not “socialist” governments.

There may have been more “socialism”, as defined by modern right-wing pundits, instigated under Republican President Eisenhower, than at any other time in American history.  Under Eisenhower, upper income tax brackets were raised in excess of 90% and it was his administration that rammed through the largest government backed-and-paid-for commercial enterprise in American history by far, that being the national highway system, which literally dwarfed such boondoggles as the Trans-Continental Railroad, Roosevelt dam construction and other mega-projects.

And which incidentally, many in his own party strongly opposed as being, you guessed it, “too expensive” and would unfairly “raise taxes”.  Try and imagine what would have happened to the United States in relation to the rest of the world’s economies, without our national highway system.  That is what the same right-wing pundits who oppose single-payer universal health care today, opposed under Eisenhower.  Some environmentalists might consider that would have been an improvement, but I’ve never met a conservative capitalist who would agree.

Imagine trying to stock modern supermarkets, fast food joints and shopping malls without a national highway system and you get the idea of just how absolutely crazy and entirely hypocritical and self-contradictory, the modern Republican Party propaganda machine truly is, which has repeatedly opposed funding for you guessed it again, improving our crumbling national highway system.

According to the Britannica (and my own experience), there are many different kinds of socialism and socialists do not at all agree with each other.  However, this according to the Britannica, is what most socialists agree to in general, although it should be noted that they by no means all agree with this general definition:

“To each according to his need” has been a frequent battle cry of socialists, but many of them would in fact settle for a society in which each would be paid in accordance with his contribution to the commonwealth, provided that society would first assure all citizens minimum levels of housing, clothing, and nourishment as well as free access to essential services such as education, health, transportation, and recreation.

Unlike conservative Republicans pretend, the New Testament is skewed to the extreme left side of socialism, very clearly teaching that sharing all things in common and distributing “to each according to need” is the preferred lifestyle of all followers of Jesus.  And by extension, all advocates for human rights, equality, peace and justice, which are strongly held and supported New Testament goals.  The lesser preferred lifestyle is what the rest of this definition and perhaps most modern progressives advocate, which is creating and endorsing political and social realities that insure fair and equitable wages, living standards and fulfillment of basic necessities for everybody willing to contribute as they are able.

As again is clearly seen in our modern American society today, where many upper middle class and wealthy people are going bankrupt or otherwise, severely diminishing in their overall net worth, because the middle class, working class and poor can no longer afford to purchase goods and services.  Ill-cared for workers also remain a major threat for the spreading of contagious diseases and the fomenting of violence and anger erupting into violent revolution (i.e., note Shay’s Rebellion, French, Cuban, Russian, Chinese revolutions and a great many other historical examples).

Thus, when houses, automobiles and goods in shopping malls are no longer purchased due to lack of a fair and equitable distribution of the wealth, EVERYBODY suffers significantly, from the wealthiest on down to the poorest members of society.  This is the historical legacy of de-regulated unbridled free market capitalism, which invariably leads to ever greater wealth being concentrated in ever fewer hands and consequently, ever more government control by the wealthy at the expense of the general masses.

At no time in American history, have the wealthy practiced such overt open public bribery of high government officials or, earned as much in public grand larceny mega-disparity to the poor, than they have since the modern era of de-regulation beginning with Ronald Reagan forward, which is why the global economy is on the verge of sinking into a world-wide economic depression.  A slight temporary reprieve due to a trillion dollar plus bailout of those least deserving a government hand, is by no means a guarantee against future economic disaster of unparalleled proportions.

NOTE:  I do not personally believe in defining people in terms of race, class, sexual orientation, as “progressives”, “conservatives” or any of the other absurd notions of division found in the modern 21st Century, thus such terms are used above only for purposes of clarity and are not intended as being literally accurate.  I do not agree with Marx, that history represents a class struggle but rather, history very much represents an individual struggle at the root level, forming upwards into extended families, tribes, city-states, nations, unions, associations, corporations, political parties and other units of collective social and political action.  Human problems, at the root level, stem from human beings failing to live up to what our own conscience dictates, which is to love our neighbor as our selves and as such, it is very historically wrong, foolish, irrational and just plain ignorant, to blame humanity’s problems on religion, atheism, intellectualism, nationalism, capitalism, socialism, communism, liberalism, conservatism or anything else, which are merely cosmetic “colorings” of a much deeper problem.