Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Given that the evils of the communist Soviet Union (whose economic system was socialism) motivated me to enlist in the Army National Guard late in the Cold War, it is disturbing that so many Americans are extolling the promise of socialism. We defeated those monsters in the Cold War. Are we really dumb enough to let the ideology defeat us in the end?

Remember that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics considered that it was only building true communism. The communists didn't actually claim to have a true communist system, which was the end stage of their building project (no matter how many figurative eggs had to be cracked to build the figurative tasty omelet). The end stage was supposed to be a fantastical world where the system of government evaporated as New Soviet Men (and Women) naturally produced according to their ability and consumed according to their needs.

Seriously, that's what they claimed to believe.

Although in the meantime the top ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union conveniently got to boss around other people and skim off the best of what their crappy economic system produced. And every other such system always seems to stall at the exploitation by the minority phase before collapsing prior to the paradise phase.

It boggles my mind that educated people can profess faith in a system that continually promises paradise if you will only trust a small group of people to manage your lives. Is the evidence of failure after failure insufficient to repel you from such unjustified trust in the wisdom and compassion of people given such power? Are the violent masked "antifa" stormtroopers drawn from actual communist and anarchist ranks an insufficient warning of what follows?

I honestly don't think the people now claiming to be proud "socialists" here in America have a clue about what they claim to believe (given the poverty and sometimes death that follow socialist governance when the government runs out of other people's money) and instead use "socialism" as a way to say they are intensely liberal. Recall that the really liberal once rejected that label to rebrand themselves "progressives." I suspect this is another rebranding. I hope that is all it is.

For the health of America, I don't want Democrats to be captured by that kind of far left minority. Democrats who complain that Republicans have been captured by extremists should seriously examine what they are doing. And for Republicans delighted to face a far-left Democratic Party, do they not remember the 2016 election lesson about being delighted in your opponent? How did that work out for Hillary Clinton? I want both parties to be parties that can be trusted to govern without doing too much damage until the next free election even if I don't like the edges of their policies.

And for God's sake, remember that political allies can be horrible people and that political opponents can be good and decent people. Don't treat opponents like enemies and don't trust allies with complete control. Save that kind of thinking about foes for actual enemies abroad like the jihadis who still keep to kill Americans despite our inward Twitter-based self-absorption by the tiny minority of asshats who dominate that medium. There may be a civil war on Twitter, but in the physical world the atmosphere has been far worse in my lifetime and I don't worry that there will be a civil war in America, as uncivil as political discourse has become.

We won the Cold War by defeating our enemies abroad and building a free and prosperous country at home. But there are loud yet hopefully fleeting and small signs we may have failed to win the post-war stabilization mission at home. Americans made a great country through the efforts of many people of competing political views over many generations. Don't think it should be torn down to start over. There are too many on both sides who seem to think that way.

Recognize the victory we have achieved, okay?