This has come up in the past, but I’ll reiterate it again: I don’t really care for liberalism.
I have lots of liberal friends, and I care deeply about them. I just don’t believe liberalism is the gateway to a more prosperous, safer, cleaner, better future for humanity. I think it keeps us mired in the LaBrea Tar Pits of capitalism and sinking faster every day we stay there.
That’s not to say I haven’t worked with and won’t work with liberals. Certainly I will, to some degree, because I think many of us have a similar hope for mankind, but you must eliminate capitalism. You can’t have just some cancer and grow healthier, it must be completely excised, and liberalism, intentionally or not, keeps that from happening.
So what is it we want?
Star Trek. We want Star Trek.
Still, to get to that point even in the Star Trek universe required a massive, globe spanning war that killed billions of people. Most of us truly want to avoid what would absolutely be the worst possible scenario.
Then again, if there’s anything I’ve noted over the years it’s that we live in the alternate 1985 (see Back to the Future II), or maybe the mirror universe (see Star Trek TOS, TNG, DS9, and ENT), and if that’s the case, that our universe does *not* bend towards justice even with active effort by millions of us, then our fate is generally sealed to follow the worst case scenario, and that is depressing.
I have to believe that isn’t where we are, though. I have to believe that we live in the universe that, as MLK once said, bends toward justice, as long as we are willing to do our part to make that happen.
It still doesn’t feel good to know that there are millions of human beings out there who see someone wanting to make universal housing, healthcare, and subsistence (food, water, basic clothing) a right and think “wow, what an evil person, we need to stop them before they feed someone else.”
It’s generations of capitalism, of capitalist conditioning, that has brought us to this point. Generations of telling people that socialism is evil, that wanting to help others with no profit motive is evil, that wanting everyone to have the same basic needs met is evil.
Those same people will talk about how communism wants everything to be a dull gray, lifeless, loveless, artless world, and it’s clear these people know absolutely nothing about communism, what it represents, its purpose for human beings, and they don’t really care if I’m being honest, because caring would mean they’ve cracked open a book they weren’t forced to read, or listened to someone who experienced it and decided that person was just deluded or brainwashed, because the US certainly wouldn’t brainwash its own people, right?
(please stand for the flag of the United States of America)
Getting people to listen is the hardest part. No one is more sure of what they know than people who haven’t the slightest clue. The Dunning-Kruger effect is where a person of low intellect considers themselves to be of high intellect, and in that way, no matter what science might tell them, they reject it as not possible simply because they could not consider it.
When dealing with people like that, what do you do? That’s the question I deal with every day. In the US, the literacy rate is less than 60% for adults. When people can’t even properly read and understand what is being written, how in the ever loving hell do you combat that?
Our attention spans are shorter and shorter. When people can’t even listen to a 10 minute video on socialism and how it works because their attention has been stolen by flashing lights and sounds, how do you combat that?
I believe most people are capable of learning, but when their abilities have been dulled by the very system abusing them, how do you get around it? How do you fight back?
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Panther Party fed kids, did neighborhood patrols, and ran clothing drives to help the people. Now, that is just mutual aid but it can go a long way toward getting people to listen. The problem is they only need to listen while you’re giving them food, clothing, or help with their rent. After that, they don’t have to care anymore.
How do you combat a value system deformed by capitalism so that people only care as long as it benefits them, and is then forgotten until the next time they need it?
There are so many fronts that keep learning about group empowerment at bay. Hell, even unions in this country get the side eye, and they exist specifically to keep your employer from exploiting your life for their profit!
I’m not giving up on the US, no way, but I do understand why so many socialists look at the current system and just want to weep. I want to myself all of the time. Che Guevara once said, “I envy socialists in the United States, because you live in the belly of the beast,” and while I appreciate the sentiment, you don’t truly grasp it until you’re trying to help people take back their lives. So many of them are inured with the system as it is that they want to keep being exploited as long as the possibility of advancement is dangled in front of them like a carrot.
We have so much work to do, and we haven’t even managed to gather together in large enough groups to make a difference, because so many of us are still undoing the conditioning done to us.
I cannot yet see a clear path forward for us, unlike when Lenin was planning the Revolution. For us, the same question arises as it has all through history: What is to be done?
.Red
