Friday, February 21, 2020

BERNIE SANDERS IS A DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST NOT A COMMUNIST, HERE'S THE DIFFERENCE

Worth posting again given how massively propagandized we Americans are. Too many of us remain uninformed about democratic socialism. Martin Luther King was a democratic socialist and we celebrate his legacy every year. Let’s continue this legacy and complete what FDR began!
Otherwise we are complicit with the patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system that has long been destroying our nation and the Earth.
It is truly chilling how the propaganda of the .1%, of corporate republicans and corporate democrats, and of a corporate controlled mainstream media can convince us again and again to act against our own best interests — to fuel the sixth major extinction and the climate and ecological crises; to enable endless wars and worldwide militarism; to continue with drill baby drill and the poisoning of the planet; to justify crushing poverty with 43% of Americans living at or below the poverty line; to collude with the extreme redistribution of wealth upwards and the fact of 3 people owning as much wealth as half the country; to turn our backs on the 500,000 homeless people sleeping on our streets every night; to be complicit with 500,000 human beings going bankrupt and 30,000 dying every year because we’ve been convinced to not join the entire rest of the developed world and ensure healthcare as a human right; to perpetuate a system that makes higher education completely unaffordable and results in our children emerging with obscene immoral student debts; to enable our nation to incarcerate more human beings than anywhere on Earth; and on and on and on.
This is the reality of the domination ideology that is the core of the patriarchal neoliberal predatory capitalist system that we’ve been indoctrinated into believing is the best in the world. This is a LIE!
This predatory capitalist system is killing us and has us on a trajectory heading towards civilization collapse and extinction by the end of the century — unless we radically change Now, embody a profound commitment to truth and to our awakening, embrace a deep transformation in our belief systems and lower our tolerance for the many faces of violence, and together fight for economic, racial, social, and environmental justice.
This is what we need to do to save ourselves and make possible a livable planet for our children and grandchildren and all children everywhere. We’re truly all in this together. Molly 

  
As Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has surged in the polls, President Donald Trump has begun to up his criticism of the independent senator from Vermont.
"I think he's a communist. I mean, you know, look, I think of communism when I think of Bernie," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity for an interview broadcast this weekend.
Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. reiterated the criticism in an interview with Fox & Friends on Monday morning. "I kind of want to run against a communist in Bernie, but he's also got a very motivated base," the president's eldest son said.
While Sanders self-identifies as a democratic socialist, which many right-wing lawmakers and pundits often conflate with communism, the two political ideologies actually have major differences. The idea of democratic socialism has also been gaining support in the U.S., which is evidenced by the recent rise of progressive lawmakers such as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, among others.
"Communism does not respect or esteem formal or procedural liberal democracy," Dr. Jean Louise Cohen, a professor of political thought and contemporary civilization at Columbia University, told Newsweek. Cohen noted that communism in practice, has "embraced the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat" while claiming to "foster social justice rather than political democracy."
"Democratic socialists obviously esteem democracy and social justice and reject a need for a trade off," she said. "They seek to enhance liberal democracy with social democracy and a plurality of forms of participation."
Dr. Eileen Hunt Botting, a professor of political science at Notre Dame University, told Newsweek that the ideology of communism means there would be "no private property, and no class distinctions." Botting explained that democratic socialism, conversely, does not do away with private property or all economic class distinctions.
Democratic socialism "aims to use democratic government to promote a more fair and egalitarian distribution of social goods and opportunities among all people in a society," she said.

No comments:

Post a Comment