Tag: TrumpSocialism

“Far-Left, Radical Socialist Policies”

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Under the influence of a primitive demagogue, the Republican Party leadership continues to feed its base with whopping lies.

After Trump’s presidency, many Americans believe that the current administration is destroying cherished American values and drives the U.S. toward socialism. In this context, Elise Stefanik, chair of the Republican House Conference, uttered a phrase that makes a person who had lived involuntarily in a socialism for almost thirty years cringe:

She called the agenda of the current US-Administration “far-left, radical socialist policies.”

At this point it should be noted: Whoever uses dull slogans exposes himself to the suspicion of wanting to take others for fools; he also reveals that he might be unable to contribute any conclusive arguments for the solution of real problems. By no means for the first time in its history is the GOP summoning the specter of socialism to scare Americans away from any acceptance of policies other than its own.

In contrast to Stefanik, this writer experienced socialism firsthand, opposed it in the GDR (“East Germany”) with modest means as much as possible, put up with personal disadvantages in the process, and experienced with millions of others the fall of the Berlin Wall as a result of a peaceful revolution.*

I can say with certainty: this woman has not the faintest idea what she is talking about when she mouths the word “socialism.”

I repeat here what should be easy for even the average person to understand: Socialism is when the means of production are not in private hands, but in the hands of the state. Period. There is not even a hint of a precondition in the USA that can bring the country toward socialism.

What the country lacks are accompanying governmental measures to curb social injustice, which cries out to heaven in the United States. Previous presidents have already denounced this and/or used government power to fight social injustice: from John Adams via Teddy Roosevelt (by the way: a Republican), Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman to Lyndon B. Johnson.

None of them was a socialist because of it.

Whoever manages to compare a policy of social justice with socialism, and in doing so also falls on open ears among the population, is in my eyes an unscrupulous populist. A person who has a minimum knowledge of history and is still of sound mind, will not follow these pipers.

By the way – anyone who fobs off his own base (de facto: his own family) with cheap, propaganda-ridden phrases should not deserve to be elected to any responsibility whatsoever.

What has the Republican Party turned into?

Notes:

*I was born in 1961 at the junction of the Cold War, just 21 miles from the deadly border that once separated Germany. Bear in mind that I grew up behind barbed wire not because of a non-functioning socialism (which we did not want), but as a direct consequence of World War II sparked by Germany. In the further historical development, the inner-German border was built by communists in the midst of increasing tensions and the collision of interests between the U.S. and its erstwhile ally, the Communist-Bolshevik Soviet Union, which eventually morphed into hostility. – Without this illegal, impenetrable border, millions more people would have fled from the Soviet sector to the free West than had already done so before 1961.

The Shameful Failure of the Churches

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From my Writing Room
Copyright © 2021 by Uwe Bahr

Hardly any media in this country describes it in depth, because the subject is probably too hot a topic to bring forward to American society: The United States has a huge problem not only with guns, racism and polarization, but also with religious obstinacy, emanating in large parts from white evangelist institutions whose leaders have no interest in a God, but ostensibly in self-sufficiency on the local level and in political influence on the big national stage.

Such a phenomenon is by far nothing new in the history of the Church over the past centuries, considering that oppression, exploitation, extermination, and conquest for self-interest have always been the true motives of Christianity behind a facade of pious faith. In the more modern perception of our time, especially the evangelical orientation seem to take on the most perverse forms, namely to an extent which one would not necessarily expect from a religion practiced in the Western world.

For those who never suspected that the Churches would ever decisively support a perverted wacko like Donald Trump and continue to do so, have long since been proven wrong. Facts speak for themselves: Without the active participation of evangelical Christians, without the influence of evangelical organizations, churches and pastors, an intellectually and morally degenerated figure like Donald Trump would have never made it to the presidency of the United States of America. The incontrovertible fact that the vast majority of evangelical Christians in this country – or those who fancy themselves as such – have been at the forefront of the Trump-mania, will cling to the Christian claim of this country in the history books for the next hundred years.

The heinous lackeys largely responsible for the disastrous development in their communities is the majority of profiting local pastors, ministers, and preachers, who not only perfectly know how to make money with the gullibility of the masses, but are also talented to push impudence and absurdity to the limit – Sunday after Sunday and also in between all possible occasions. The so-called pastor can blurt out whatever he likes, even what his preferences are in his spare time; be it shooting including the killing of animals or whatever else pleases him: he need not expect a reaction of disgust. As always with such constellations, the mass of alleged Christians trot docilely like a flock of sheep in the desired direction of the mindless propaganda, all taking place in the name of their Lord.

Seen in this light, it is not surprising at all that even many elderly, otherwise impeccable church persons casted their vote for someone who, long before his election, said that one could grab any woman between her legs if he only is famous enough and has money – an infamous statement dismissed by his own wife as “locker room talk.”

Against all common sense and with open eyes and ears, evangelical Christians continue to follow Trump’s lies, even though the coronavirus he downplayed has cost so many American lives. They still believe his rants about a rigged election, his laughable claims about the assault on the Capitol. They buy his presumed Christian attitude because he staged himself standing like a jerk in front of a church with a Bible in his hand. He could talk about injecting disinfectants into human bodies and blather about airports that George Washington’s army supposedly conquered in the 18th century. He could call himself the “most stable genius” on camera and stir up racially motivated sentiments against people of different origins and different skin color. He could pay hush money to prostitutes and deny scientific proof about the nature of the coronavirus and man induced climate change. What kind of Christians are those who voted for him anyway in 2020? What else does someone have to say and to do before he is met with refusal?

What alleged Christians think about putting such a person on the shield to the detriment of their own country would remain not only a question of the human brain, but primarily a matter of conscience and character. On the other hand, not a whole lot can obviously be expected from people who do not seem to notice how undignified and in principle unchristian their demeanor is – a support for a figure representing nothing more than what any halfway decent person would commonly consider offensive.

If churches have nothing better to offer in terms of moral leadership, then one can only say: it is disgusting.

Political Scientist predicts Biden-Victory

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A look ahead what might come next

From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

American political scientist Allan Lichtman predicted the outcome of each presidential election since 1984 correctly, when Ronald Reagan won his second term. According to Lichtman, Donald Trump will be the first president since George H. W. Bush in 1992 not winning reelection. But, it would be a surprise if any outcome of the 2020 race would allow the country to calm down. Instead, times of even more unrest seem imminent.

In the event of Donald Trump nevertheless winning reelection, the country will probably, if not certainly continue on its wavering course as a banana republic – a circus neither taken seriously by thinking fellow US citizens nor anywhere else in the rest of the world. Four more years of Trump will dangerously amplify social injustice, fume a ubiquitous racism and thereby deepen the divide between Americans even further, making life a horror for many people of different skin color and different thoughts – especially in less educated regions of the United States. The commencement toward a calamitous development of government-controlled deception and encroachments not authorized by legislature but enthusiastically welcomed by the political right, was already observable during the past summer months – not too different anymore from what I have seen in the East German (socialistic!) dictatorship a few decades ago.*

Should Joe Biden come out as winner – and given his advanced age Kamala Harris should be intentionally mentioned here –, the tone coming from the White House, no doubt, will return to a civilized level. Allies in the world will feel relieved and the United States’ reputation will revert to the normal. The country will recommit itself to central problems facing all mankind pressingly and darkly, like the fact of man-induced global warming. The United States will also return as the respected leader to the table of the international community. In other words: It will be back to the status of fact that no country in today’s world is capable of going its own way by sheering out from the global community whenever it seems convenient. There is no America first, as there is no other country first. America needs the world, and the world needs America.

Domestically, Biden and Harris first of all face a rampant pandemic with frightening prospects for the coming winter months. In the presence of a tremendous crises, it remains to be seen if enough room for maneuver is left to tackle other primary problems. If there is, team Biden might move a few things around from here to there. They might even patch up some shortcomings to the advantage of the little guy. In terms of health care, many people presumably should be in better aid than under Donald Trump.

But Biden/Harris will not effectively attack the cardinal American sin that John Adams in his worst nightmares saw coming more than two hundred years ago: They will not curb the super-rich living at the cost of the rest, they will not shift the blatant inequity in wealth toward a more balanced and bearable level to benefit all Americans. They will also not touch greedy corporations decisively, not to mention dare regulating them in terms of workers’ rights – for any such provisions will stand in the way of the ruthless profiteer’s lone interest and their legalized entanglements with the machinations of American politics. Biden/Harris will more than likely not cap the profit margin of Health Care Insurance Companies to leave money in the pockets of the general public, and they will never even think of touching the country’s most popular, upfront bill dodger: the churches.

Aside from that, the worst-case scenario I fear most hopefully will never happen. For that much seems clear: Even in case of a Biden victory, resentments among Americans will not disappear. The United States, with all the guns, racists, denialists, propagandists, and conspiracy theorists out there, is far from becoming a peaceful country. Horror fills the mind if one imagines the unthinkable: that in the sign of a worsening corona crises the country would find itself on the verge of civil war-like conditions.

*If there is anything comparable at all in America with socialism that I have witnessed while once have lived myself in a pseudo-socialistic system, it were the scenes of 1 June, 2020, in Washington DC, transmitted via the media. I no longer trusted my eyes when armored vehicles in a “free country” were slowly rolling towards peaceful protesters to remove them from Lafayette Square and surrounding streets, so President Trump in a histrionic gesture could hold up a Bible in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church. On that day and in front of the world, the Trump administration revealed shocking dictatorial traits, in effect similar to a system of government observable in some countries in Latin America, Africa, or currently Belarus.

Worldview of a Local Yokel

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From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

If churches tell people how to vote, then these churches should be taxed. They invest in the stock market from their sheep’s tithing and own property worth more than 600 billion free of tax. At the same time, Joe Schmo toiling for Walmart has to pay his share into the coffers, thereby subsidizing the heavenly phrase mongers and their Sunday morning story time. According to a study from the University of Tampa, poverty in the United States could be eliminated if religious institutions would not be granted a pass on taxes.

“The only way to make any real money in this world was to start a religion.” L. Ron Hubbard, Founder of the Church of Scientology

In the countryside of Guns and God, where church comrades Jim Bob and Joe Bob happily shoot through their neighborhood and a widespread mentality seems out of step with realness, one will wonder no longer how things could change for the better. In lockstep with such obvious backwardness and a meticulously fostered system of “good old boys”-connections, serves a local newspaper in the scenic north Georgia mountains. The provincial paper, distinguished by its perpetual dullness, was capable of publishing the reader’s letter of an alleged Reverend, whose name I do not even want to cite on my blog.

On pages 4 and 5 in the paper’s October 14, 2020 edition, the presumed minister jabbers about a topic he in his perfected bigotry obviously never heard much more about than through dull propaganda widely distributed in the United States. His assertions culminate in the sentence that America is – quote – “on the verge of becoming a socialistic state, which is clearly the work of the great deceiver Satan.” End quote.

I wonder how much time this scriptural genius has spent with lunatic conspiracy ideologists to utter such nonsense. At this juncture, I could go through his absolute baseless gibberish about Socialism line by line and confute him, factually accompanied by verifiable historic facts and first-hand experience. Instead, I would like to refer the reader to my various writings on this blog site.

Apart from that – and probably more importantly – is the rationale that a Reverend as a religious servant should never convert himself publicly into a political ideologist. But that’s exactly what this man does, for he not only uses a poor language in a baseless and repulsive propagandistic style, but rather makes his intention abundantly clear: namely, suggesting to his readers not to vote for the Democratic candidate because the consequence would be nothing but Socialism. This, Mr. Reverend, is not only shameful in attitude and false in itself – it also incapacitates you as your boss’ servant, always in service, whose public rhetoric consequently should be separated from his political bias.1 For what you did, you should change your job.

I am more inclined at this point to express my incredulous astonishment about how in the world, in the United States of America and in the 21st century, a newspaper can publish such horrendous, ultimate mischief without at least labeling a customized warning notice, especially when the personified existence of Satan is mentioned2. This has nothing to do anymore with freedom of speech, but rather with the journalistic obligation to exercise diligence. Or do the protagonists of this newspaper assume that their own children will get educated by being exposed to such ultimate stupidity?

1 And therefore again comes George Carlin’s quotation in mind: “I don’t know how you feel, but I’m pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else.”

2 I am aware of Satan’s central character in the Bible, although the unforgettable, genuine Lutheran Pastor Thoms in his religious instructions never mentioned this horrible figure toward us children. The spook probably would have scared the hell out of us. – I had encounters with Satan in a more appropriate place – in the book of fairytales sent in 1969 over the Iron Curtain by my aunt in West-Germany. It is still on my book shelf.

Americans and their Specter of Socialism

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From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

The closer it gets to the election day, the more the political right in the United States is riding their hobbyhorse of “Socialism” in a desperate attempt to defend a President who not only has proved a lack of intellect and morale, but bullies, lies, and sneers. Followers that are still holding on to him – careless or clueless about the incorrectness of terms used in the heated political language – walk straight into the verbal trap, eagerly abusing the mystic expression themselves. And yet, the strenuous iteration does not make it an inch truer.

This writing comes from someone who – not voluntarily – has lived nearly thirty years in the pseudo-Socialism of the extinct German Democratic Republic (GDR). I would not want to have it back.

Nevertheless, a dose of clarification seems necessary at this point in view of the utter nonsense spreading like a virus in Trump’s America almost every time the term “Socialism” is being referenced.

So, my fellow Americans, hold on to your seats, lean back for a minute, grab one of your numerous dictionaries especially Trump supporters should always have at hand, and look up what “Socialism” stands for. I am for my part quoting for you Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (unabridged), page 2162. A pretty heavy book, by the way – but any other American dictionary will do.

Socialism is a – quote – “System or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.” End quote. Period, that’s it – no more, no less.

Got it?

A socialist command economy – I did not have to see it with my own eyes decades back for coming to the conclusion: Such state controlled, nationalized economy cannot function due to its utter inefficiency. Which makes me wonder: Where in the United States are such circumstances in existence? Is somebody out there who can please prove me wrong?

Hold your politicians, regardless of their political color, responsible for their baseless propaganda trick, don’t let them take you for a fool with an imaginary scapegoat that does not exist. Don’t fall for the catch phrases from political pied pipers who themselves have never lived in Socialism, like no American within the United States has ever even seen a glimmer of Socialism in their country.

For the sake of bettering the conditions for most Americans, it is worth noting here that an accompanying, controlling mechanism – ensuing from the government in terms of checks and balances – must be incorporated in the legal system to protect the little man from exploitation. It’s not called Socialism, but rather: Justice. Those who have – for example – ever worked for America’s largest retailer, W******, (and again, I was there, too), should know what the talk is about. The indiscriminate cut of work hours without any legal regulations versus the corporations own dictates, recurrent bullying, the shortening and eliminating of night shift allowances, the virtually non-existent access to institutions to defend themselves, a broadly lawless work environment in general, as well as a wage which does not allow hard-working Americans to make a decent living – all these facts experienced by the author disparages American citizens to a merely disposable mass of people without rights. The phrase of a “Free Country” becomes a farce here. Not even in the pseudo-Socialism of the GDR have I witnessed human beings being treated like this, which arises the question: Why do Americans, in their very own country with a Christian claim, humiliate their own people that way, albeit the means for a fair treatment and more income justice are available and could be easily arranged? Why?

By the way: If social justice is an interpretation of Socialism, then the pastor in church who commonly calls his sheep all “brothers and sisters”, obviously invoking equality, might be called a communist as well – that is, God forbid, the consecutive comparative of the spell “Socialism.”

Ironically, some 50 years ago, in that very same Socialism I lived through, once a teacher, not exactly convinced of the subject himself, asked his little students what it might look like in Communism. A girl raised her arm, stepped outside the bench and replied with an upright posture: “In Communism they are all brothers and sisters.”

By now we should know what propaganda is. If not – ask your dictionary.

John Adams, the Roosevelt’s – all Socialists?

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From my Writing Room

Copyright © 2020 by Uwe Bahr

Those Americans obsessed with the term “Socialism” and inclined to exploit it propaganda-like for the upcoming election should first of all consult the history books or simply a dictionary to get things straight in their head. Having spent nearly 30 years in the pseudo-Socialism of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), I have experienced history first-hand. Socialism in its definition places the means of production not in private hands, but in the hand of the state. This much is certain: No economy can effectively function under such condition.

I cannot even notice the slightest sign of such development in the United States. Instead, I see a largely absent system of government-controlled provisions which could protect the little man from being squeezed out like a lemon. If you do not know what I am talking about, go – for example – and work for America’s largest retailer and try to make it from paycheck to paycheck while caring for a family. If folks there do get additional “handouts” from the government, it originates from the ordinary taxpayer and not from those shoveling Billions into their greedy gorge. In conjunction with that, think about the unjust distribution of the enormous wealth in the United States. Think about the unscrupulous profiteering of Health Care Insurance companies at the expense and health of the common people.

If any corrective measures to curb the very big money would be judged “Socialism”, then your country in its history has produced outstanding Americans who could easily have qualified as “Socialists” – one of them long before the term was even coined.

He was John Adams, second President and the only signer of the Declaration of Independence who never owned a slave. Adams was already concerned about “the few versus the many” in the young American Republic. In other words: Despite the absence of a nobility like it existed in Europe, he feared that sooner or later the country’s wealth would be concentrated in the hands of few people and institutions to the disadvantage of the working majority.

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, 26th President and a Republican, openly sided with the Unions when coal miners in Pennsylvania took their issues to the street. Try to say the word “Union” nowadays in a break room belonging to that sacred retailer mentioned further above. They will talk to you in private.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt rescued millions of Americans from the despair of the Great Depression by creating Public Works programs. He initiated Social Security, encouraged the formation of labor unions and committed himself to the revival of more equal liberty in his country.

Three great men in American history: Did they leave a smack of Socialism in the history books just because they took a stand for the general welfare?

Sure, America today finds itself in different times with different problems. But to really save the country from further decline, a new type of President combining the attitudes of the three great Presidents would have to emerge. A President with a sense of mission.

I do not see it happen anytime soon. Instead, clueless windbags on the political right parrot dull paroles about Socialism and other brainwashing nuisance, thereby polarizing and dividing the United States of America even further.