Descending into Marxism?

I regularly receive tons of spurious, unsubstantiated emails riddled with manufactured outrage. Many of the links to opinion pieces like this one, masquerading as journalism but failing to provide facts, data sources or even a semblance of objectivity.

In the style of Hannity, O’ Reilly, Limbaugh and Beck it’s all about characterizing. To hell with the facts, get the people stirred up and fearful and you can convince them that their way of life is in jeopardy. I wonder how people feel when they read that piece. Do they feel that they're living at a turning point in history, with time running out? After investing a bit of time for fact checking, most of these vacuous opinion pieces can be easily dismissed or at least heavily discounted. Once the source can be discounted, you can save yourself a lot of time weeding through the bullshit. In this case it is worthwhile to consider the possibility that Stanislav Mishin may not even be a real person.

Op-eds are not news. The highly-charged rhetoric, that sells papers and books, is distilled from viewing the world through colored, one-way glass. These pieces are typically written in a fashion that evokes an emotional response and reinforces the beliefs of reader AND writer. It’s the old adage “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is already made up.”

In the history of American politics you can find this kind of political paranoia, in the anti-Masonic movement, the anti-Catholic movement, in abolitionists who regarded the United States as being in the grip of a slaveholders’ conspiracy, in Mormon alarmists, in some populist writers constructing a great conspiracy of international bankers, in the exposure of a munitions makers’ conspiracy of World War I, in the popular left-wing press, in the contemporary American right wing, and on both sides of the racial debates. There is a certain archetypal character to this kind of fear.


Cries of Marxism, socialism, etc. etc. are nothing new, but are ridiculous on their face and should be relegated to throw-away status. Fear messages are deserving of no serious discussion or review by objective news organizations, elected officials or the majority of reasonable citizens. Every once in while a particularly egregious example surfaces and we all talk about it for a little while. OK. So we look at it and ask if this one went too far etc. For my money, that’s the extent of the usefulness of this type of propaganda. Yes it is propaganda.

The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought includes the idea of a sustained conspiracy, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by socialists that American policy has been dominated by men who are shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests. Finally, the country is infused with a network of socialist agents so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans. Really? Is there a red under your bed?

To the specifics of this piece. It is strange to blame Wall Street for supporting Communism. It smells funny and raises the sensitivity of my internal bullshit detection system.

The whole premise for the socialism argument has no substance. GM came to Washington with their hand out and now their recovering. Health care reform is not socialism, there are built in choices and the government is not the insurer. Bank bailouts made during this administration are being repaid with interest, unlike the TARP monies that GWB gave away, or as he said it “Putting $700 billion dollars of American taxpayer money at risk.” That was beyond risk, that was truly socialism. Privatized profits and socialized losses. We got ass-raped. Were you outraged by that?

Much of our current economic and financial trouble dates back to deregulation started by Ronald Reagan, followed by the Bush’s and to a smaller degree Bill Clinton. Government control, in the form of regulating bodies, serves a useful and necessary purpose. Deregulation does not come from the minds of bureaucrats, it comes from corporate donors. If you are going to be afraid of something, start with the Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to have the same rights as people when making campaign contributions.