Terminology Gone Wild #402
By Hank Silverberg
Commentary
The mid-term elections are in full swing. The traditional Labor Day start to such congressional elections is a thing of the past. And this year, the election has higher stakes than at any in recent memory.
But the rules have changed dramatically. While congressional candidates still pound the pavement attending rallies and events to drum up votes, much of the campaigning is done on the internet, unfiltered and often out of control.
We are all used to the lack of facts in internet posts by average people and fake news produced by third parties to deceive us, but this year even the candidates have started to misuse terms.
With that in mind, I thought a quick review of what terms mean might help you, the voter, sort through all the rhetoric and make good decisions on how to cast your vote.
Some of those terms are often misused.
Let's start with the two terms abused most often:
1) Communist Communism was born in the early 20th century during the Russian Revolution of 1917. Marxism, a political theory of the 19th century, was applied by Vladimir Lenin to rule Russia and solidified by Joseph Stalin's iron fist rule in the 1930's.
Characteristics included government takeover of ALL industry run by the workers themselves, collective farms, and a centralized government in the hands of a few people, and no private property. In China, Mao Zedong adopted the same theory after winning the Chinese Civil War after World War Two drawing on his own charisma and creating a cult of personality that has taken decades to evolve.
Today there are a few communist countries left, notably China and Vietnam, which have also adopted some capitalist ideas on international trade and a more open economy, but remain Communist in practice.
North Korea is more Stalinist communism because unlike the other two, it is lead by a murderous dictator and is closed to the rest of the world.
Notably, Communist countries ban the free press and control expression of ideas from public speeches to the internet.
If you want more, go to a history book, but to be clear, there is NO major party candidate in this year's elections that espouses Communism.
2) Socialism began as an economic system, but it is not an all or nothing concept. It has emerged as a blend of public and private responsibility. It centers on the idea that some services and key resources should be publicly controlled and should be used for the benefit of the general public and not simply to make a corporate owner rich.
While some socialist ideas have been incorporated into the United States like Social Security and Medicare, no purely Socialist agenda has ever been adopted in the USA, nor has any pure Socialist ever been elected.
No government anywhere in the world will call itself Socialist.
3) Democratic Socialism It is here that things get a bit fuzzy. Some candidates will be labeled or even call themselves Democratic Socialists because they propose greater government regulation of industry and more government-run programs like universal health care. But the key word there is Democratic. The agenda still involves popular elections, open debate and a free exchange of ideas, including a free press.
4) Progressives are members of the Democratic Party who may propose new ideas that are different from mainstream and can incorporate some concepts that originated with Socialism. But they stand by the current political system as a means for change.
I will skip mainstream Democrats and mainstream Republicans because they are now an endangered species, and often move one way or the other to get re-elected.
To the right of the mainstream:
5) MAGA Republicans This began as a populist movement fed up with the lack of focus by mainstream politicians for decades. It turned into what amounts to a cult of personality surrounding Donald J. Trump. MAGA Republicans don't seem to have any agenda, except following Trump and getting re-elected.
6) Fascism This political ideology evolved in the 1930's in Italy and Spain under Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco. It is basically focused on the leader and his cronies who control everything from how private industry operates, including the judicial system and a government-controlled press. Example: Mussolini was praised for making the trains run on time. (Fascism as an ideology was defeated in World War Two, though technically it lasted until Franco died in 1975.)
7) Nazism Created by Adolf Hitler as an offshoot of Mussolini's Fascist state, it fed on hatred of religious, ethnic and political minorities and led to the direct murder of 20 million people, including six million Jews. (Today's right will often point out that the party's official name was the Nationalist German Socialist Workers Party, but that name was used to counter the rise of real Socialist parties in Germany at the time. There was nothing Socialist about Nazis.)
What Communists, Fascists and Nazis all have in common is a centralized government with one or just a few people in full control of the government, including the courts, the legislature, and the media.
So the bottom line of what I am trying to get across here, is watch out for the fake, misleading labels often used as rhetoric in the current campaign for Congress and focus on what the candidates say they actually want to do if elected.
Congress has been relatively chaotic in the last decade. That needs to stop.
News You May Have Missed!
Mission Cancelled
NASA has cancelled a mission to rescue an aging spacecraft. As I wrote several weeks ago, Katalyst Space Technologies LINK was supposed to pull
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| (Swift Observatory, Courtesy NASA) |
NASA's Swift Observatory into a higher orbit to extend its mission for several years. But that was called off for what has been described as an "ongoing commercial spacecraft attitude control issue". Two weeks after LINK was launched, the spacecraft began spinning in orbit and could not rendezvous with Swift. It was a $30 million mission.
The Swift Observatory was launched in 2004 to watch gamma ray bursts, black holes and other cosmic events. It was designed for a two year mission and lasted 21 before the orbit started to decay.
https://www.wired.com/story/nasa-cancels-its-rescue-mission-for-the-aging-swift-telescope/
New Rules For Mail-In Ballots?
There are more efforts to control mail-in voting. The United States Postal Service is proposing that states be required to collect and report basic voter information like name and address and attach it to a unique barcode on every mail-in ballot distributed.
State elections authorities would be required to input the information into a "federal ballot mail portal" before the ballot is accepted into the mail stream. And the Post Office says they will not deliver ballots not in compliance with the changes. This is the latest attempt by the Trump Administration to collect voter information in the name of election integrity, but it's being labeled by several groups as an attempt to suppress the vote.
The U.S. Constitution specifically leaves the rules on voting up to the states unless otherwise instructed by Congress, and Congress has not taken up the issue.
A federal judge has issued an injunction to prevent such moves after a number of states filed suit. It was the third such injunction after the Administration tried several other ways to collect election information from the states, including an Executive Order.
Dumbest Decision Of The Week
No dumb quote this week. Instead, we have the dumbest decision of the week . It belongs to the U.S. Navy/Trump Administration for an apparent decision to rename a new aircraft carrier that is still under construction. The ship had been christened the USS Doris Miller after a Black sailor who was a hero at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Miller, who as a cook on the USS West Virginia on Dec 7, helped move the ship's mortally wounded captain to safety before taking control of an anti-aircraft gun he had not been trained to use, and firing at the Japanese planes, shooting down at least one. He was awarded the Navy Cross for that action.
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| (Courtesy youtube) |
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