OPINION: Politicians don’t understand socialism and communism

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words may ruin my political career. Certain terms in our countries current and historic political climate have this effect. Socialist and communist name-calling is being thrown around like poison darts in congress, but this is nothing new.  

Not too long ago, the Senate in the 1950s had infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy. He made his name by twisting truths, spreading misinformation and encouraging a suspicious and fearful public to become more paranoid about communist threats within our government.  

He can’t take all the credit though because he began stirring the Red Scare pot in the middle of the Cold War. But not when we think of communism, we are told to fear China.  

To make matters worse, when someone spits out the word communist as a clear threatening insult, they elaborate no more because honestly, not many people know why they are supposed to hate communism. It runs so deep in United States culture that we hardly even think to recognize how hallow the term has become.  

How about socialism? Yeah, it’s different than communism. I’m sorry if this is a shock to you, but socialism is not a system in which you give all your money to the government and live in the same cookie-cutter home as everyone else. You don’t dress in the same pastel washed-out uniform going to work every day in a cubical. We have a name for that here in the USA. It’s called “suburbia,” yet another gift from the McCarthy era.  

Calling someone a socialist or a communist is not an insult. It’s only perceived as a threat in the USA because no one understands that they are simply ways of running your economy and government.  

Not to mention that true communism has never existed because it is impossible. The closest thing you can find to true communism up-close and personal is another system found here in our land of the free and home of the brave.  

Two words. Worker unions! Yes. Louder for those in the back. Worker unions and labor unions of all kinds are communist ideology in action.  

Simply put, the workers run the show and have the power. Business owners and investors do not get to control the way workers work, interact, their wages, work conditions, etc.  

Socialism, much like its partner in perceived crime communism, has never been truly achieved. Even the United States in all its Texas-sized claims of being capitalist and free market based has not been true across the board.  

Our economy has bits and pieces of capitalism, socialism and communism. We, like young grade-schoolers on the playground, don’t understand half the words we use and throw out insults we don’t understand in any capacity.  

That’s what it’s really about at the end of it all, isn’t it? Hurting the other side so we can get what we want.  

We aren’t learning or growing as a society when we use these pathetic misunderstood jabs to cut each other down.  

If we could just start learning our history and the ideas throughout that history maybe we could avoid throwing these sticks and stones long enough to agree on some things.  

Rebecca Pratt can be reached at [email protected]