Internet message boards, especially mainstream ones, like Yahoo!, are breeding grounds for trolls. This is not anything particularly groundbreaking or newsworthy. Click on an article about the discovery of a new star, and there will be comments about how atheists are all going to hell. Click on an article about a child being kidnapped, and there will be comments about how Blacks are lazy. Click on an article about U.S. foreign policy, and there will be comments about how Muslims are all bent on killing Americans.
One common troll activity is to attack the president- and sometimes, the attacks are topical to what the article is actually about! That’s not to say that criticizing the President of the United States is something that should not be allowed. In a healthy system, any and all people and groups should be fair game to be criticized. There is a pretty large difference between saying that the president is wrong about a certain policy because of X, Y, and Z, and saying that the president is a secret Kenyan Muslim who isn’t legally qualified to occupy the position he was elected into, who is also the Anti-Christ and doing his best to ruin the United States. Criticizing the U.S. President for his policies, such criticisms have merit and substance to them. Criticizing the U.S. President for inane nonsense doesn’t have much merit to it.
One criticism of the president that I see/hear a lot is that Obama is a socialist, and/or that he is turning the United States into a socialist state. It’s not just the internet trolls on random and often unrelated articles who claim this. ‘President Obama is a socialist’ is a talking point that has been encouraged by the National Republican committee and their state subsidiaries, that has been parroted by FOX News, other conservative news sources, such as radio and blogs, and by the those who listen with any regularity to any of those aforementioned sources. The manufactured epithet has stuck, to some degree. This drives me crazy because, generally, the people who say it believe it to a degree. To believe that the policies President Obama has pursued this far in his presidency demonstrate his socialist tendencies demonstrates a lack of understanding of what socialism actually is. To be honest, in today’s age of sensationalized media and talking points, I don’t begrudge anyone who does, though I find it annoying. It has been hammered into people that “socialism = government” for so long that I can understand why people might find it true.
Generally speaking, socialism is an economic/political system in which workers control the means of production, and that goods and commodities are produced on an “as needed” basis. The United States lacks this most basic foundation for socialism. Capitalism is firmly entrenched as the economic system of choice in the country, and good and commodities are generally produced only on a “for profit” basis. The only kind of socialism that exists in the United States is corporate socialism, and corporate socialism is an informal term, far from the actual principles that socialism actually entails. As Senator Bernie Sanders frequently makes note of, the United States is only a socialist in the idea that there is “socialism for the rich” while “free enterprise for the poor”- in other words, governmental policies ensure that resources flow to the rich, and that their losses are minimized, as opposed to the poor, who are more-or-less on their own save some token gestures.
Ah, you say. Rich, poor, there you go sewing discord and conflict between the two. That’s class warfare, a hallmark of socialism, a notion that Bernie Sanders (a self-avowed socialist, the only one in the Senate) and President Obama both support. Does not this claim apply for politicians or media personalities who would not ordinarily be thought of as ‘socialists’, because of their political affiliations and positions? Michele Bachmann supports eliminating the federal minimum wage, a proposition that surely benefits producers rather than workers. Is this not class warfare? Bill O’Reilly is frequently critical of federal welfare programs, and has lent his voice to supporting ending various ones. Is this not class warfare? Why is it only class warfare when the downtrodden seek empowerment, and not the other way around?
What about proposed or actual legislation that has nationalized different industries, to varying degrees? The nationalization of private assets into the public sector is a strategy advocated by political scientists and philosophers to transition a capitalist state into a socialist state, but is not the hallmark of a capitalist state. Was George Bush a socialist, or seeking to turn the U.S. into a socialist state when he signed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act into law, that federalized airport security, which had previously been provided by private contractors?
So, all in all, yeah- saying that President Obama is a socialist, or that his policies are socialist are a little annoying, because such claims are not particularly true. Even more annoying for me, as I’ve written about in the past, is because ‘socialist’ is used as a condemnation, with negative connotations.
