{"id":112025,"date":"2019-06-03T00:13:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T07:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=112025"},"modified":"2019-05-11T09:29:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T16:29:59","slug":"socialism-for-the-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/06\/socialism-for-the-rich.html","title":{"rendered":"Socialism for the Rich"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Image<\/p>\n

John Steinbeck had us pegged decades ago:<\/p>\n

\u201cExcept for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: \u2018After the revolution even we will have more, won\u2019t we, dear?\u2019 Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.\u201dI guess the trouble was that we didn\u2019t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.\u00a0Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew \u2014 at least they claimed to be Communists \u2014 couldn\u2019t have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The same people shrieking that AOC wants to turn America into Venezuela *love* that rich people receive tons of freebies from the state and, in their gratitude for this redistribution of wealth, cheat on their taxes.\u00a0 They love it.\u00a0 They admire it.\u00a0 Under the opium mind fog of Libertarianism, they have convinced themselves that it is an act of patriotism, as well as being \u201cwise as a serpent\u201d. And they do not mind that they themselves are being robbed when men like Trump do this to them.\u00a0 Because, as the temporarily embarrassed capitalists they imagine themselves to be, they aspire to join the ranks of the those who benefit from socialism for the rich.<\/p>\n

Of course, at some level, they are also aware that what they aspire to is immoral and a violation of \u201cYou shall not steal\u201d. So, as people with guilty consciences do, they turn to those poorer and less powerful than themselves and scold them<\/em> for piddly uses of welfare. They subject them<\/em> to drug tests. They cut their<\/em> kids off CHIP and health care. They fret that some desperate refugee might get a \u201cfree\u2019 vaccination, thereby ruining our economy. They live out the truth of Lyndon Johnson\u2019s observation: \u201cIf you can convince the lowest white man he\u2019s better than the best colored man, he won\u2019t notice you\u2019re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he\u2019ll empty his pockets for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Steinbeck had us pegged decades ago: \u201cExcept for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: \u2018After the revolution even we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[316],"class_list":["post-112025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-you-shall-not-steal"],"yoast_head":"\nSocialism for the Rich<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"John Steinbeck had us pegged decades ago: "Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2019\/06\/socialism-for-the-rich.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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