The right wing in America has used the term Socialism as a scare tactic for decades, but it's not working anymore. The American economy has functioned with a mixture of Socialism and Capitalism for many years i.e the hundreds of billions in free money the American government pays out to corporate America as subsidies, grants and other corporate welfare goodies are a pure form of Socialism. One could also make the case that tax credits, automatic rollover defence contracts and Federal Deposit insurance are also forms of Socialism. Millennials now associate Socialism with Scandinavia, and not the old USSR.
America has cooled a little on capitalism. This is hardly surprising when you consider how the American form of Capitalism has failed ordinary Americans. The poorest men in the US have the same life expectancy as men in Sudan. Maternal mortality more than doubled between 1991 and 2014. The middle class has shrunk. People are desperate for an alternative to an increasingly dismal status quo.
Sorry Republicans - Your Socialism boogeyman is not scaring people anymore.
The S-word is something of a red herring – what many voters want is a change from the dismal status quo, writes Arwa Mahdawi
www.theguardian.com
They used "socialist" for a long time, and finally realized that, not only did it no longer scare anybody, but it probably backfired and made many people more interesting in hearing about socialism. Too funny.
They stuck on Marxism for a time, and now they're pretty much stuck on "commie" and communism, like modern-day Archie Bunkers.
I've also seen them say that the devil himself is involved, and I very much wonder where they take it from here. I mean, where the hell (no pun intended) can they go from here?
Of course, all they're doing is scaring themselves and each other, as usual, while the rest of us smile and roll our eyes.