The fake popularity of socialism

As I've asserted previously, the election of Donald Trump to the office of president in 2016 was a popular mandate against socialist policies. Specifically, it was a mandate against the socialist policies of Barack Obama, but since it has become quite clear that voters at large had such an affinity for the former president that they were reticent to associate him with his abysmal policies, we'll leave him out of it for the time being. For the purposes of our discussion, it's actually just as well that the issues at hand remain impersonal.

Since Trump's election, we have seen a doubling-down (if not a tripling-down) in the advancing of socialism by those most dedicated to its implementation, these being hard-left activists, congressional Democrats and elements of the establishment press. Now, these groups represent a distinct minority of Americans, yet through their vociferousness, they tend to impart the impression that half the electorate is screaming for a socialist America.

As an aside, they've also used the same methodology to give the impression that at least half our population self-identifies as part of the LGBTQ community, despite this group accounting for less than 4 percent of the population.

While voters may not have been able to qualify their distress in the above terms when they voted for Trump in 2016, the referenced distress was sufficiently severe that for the first time in our nation's history, Americans voted for a president who was completely outside the political establishment. This fact cannot be overstated.

Oddly enough, during these renewed calls for socialism amongst key leftist operatives and groups, the only individual of prominence speaking out against socialism as such happens to be President Trump. During his State of the Union address on Feb. 5, Trump vowed that "America will never be a socialist country," much to the dismay of congressional Democrats who had been vigorously advancing a hard-line socialist agenda for weeks prior.

An assertion such as Trump's was definitely well in order, and while it was well-received by congressional Republicans (they gave the president a standing ovation), it does lead one to wonder why the outcry against socialism on the Republican side pales against the vigor with which Democrats are promoting same.

My answer to this (as I've also said before) is that the majority of congressional Republicans are just as dedicated to the socialist ascendancy as are Democrats and that the Capitol Hill battles staged for us are pure theater. Encroaching socialism means an ongoing transfer of power to the federal government, and nearly all players hold allegiance to that.

Why, then, the theatrics? To give the impression that socialism ultimately won out fair and square, with those on the Republican side having fought the good fight against it.

Recently, I read an op-ed by Fox News' Justin Haskins entitled "5 things Bernie Sanders doesn't want you to know about socialism." Essentially a primer for those who are pretty sure socialism is bad but aren't quite sure why, the column lays out precisely what socialism has represented to those who have embraced it over the last century.

The most fundamental conviction of socialism, as Haskins indicates, is that it's just another political con that's been used to amass power. Now, it's a very attractive con, in that it has perennially promised "to create a society in which all people share wealth equally," but it inevitably results in tyranny.

The pie-in-the-sky, rainbows-and-unicorns promises of socialism and communism would seem to appeal to the ignorant and under-informed, since they do tend to smack of the sort of "perfect world" one would hear framed by a 7-year-old. This bears out in practice; Haskins points out that we find socialistic policies appealing widely to younger voters, such as millennials.

Well, for the most part, millennials are morons. This is not to say that this age group is manifestly stultified in intellect, but due to their lack of practical experience and the disadvantages of a corrupted educational system, unless they have independently sought diverse sources of information, most of them lack the proper data to make informed decisions vis-à-vis public policy.

Haskins does lay out in simple terms the worst aspects of socialism and, indirectly, some of the best reasons for standing against it. My personal favorite is the nearly half-billion people who were murdered, enslaved and oppressed under socialism during the last century and the tens of millions who continue to be at present.

At this point, there is far more in the public record condemning socialism than there is evidencing the fact that ingesting household cleaning products is bad for toddlers, yet socialism is still widely represented as not only innocuous, but as the panacea for America's woes.

This above all other things indicates that socialism is not a viable system in which significant numbers of Americans see salvation, but a deeply flawed product that demonstrably unethical but very well-resourced marketers are pressuring us to purchase.