You're probably the only person in here who knows I was being facetious without having to use the green font goop. But, to answer your question, no, I don't speak Portuguese, but our extended family is planning to take a nice long trip there within the next year. My Niece's boyfriend is from there, so we'll have a great tour guide.
Nah, you thought I was actually moving to The Azures. You have to read between the lines with @barfo. His wit/humor is delicately coded within otherwise innocuous posts. He's really a lot of fun.
Yeah, right....so let me alter my previous statement...Bovine Excreta. I'm quite familiar with barfo's wit...but it was not his comment I referred to, it was yours.
Was the part about comparing Rastapopoulos to cup a personal attack intended to insult because it sure looks like it?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...8266a4-5280-11ea-929a-64efa7482a77_story.html ONLY A HEART ATTACK CAN STOP HIM NOW!!!!
No. Just no. The kind of "class war" anybody but a very tiny number of people actually talk about in the US is just "increase the taxes on the rich". It's not literal "storm the gated communities and put them to the sword". If Bernie was really a communist he wouldn't be part of the American system of government. And even if he was a deep cover communist, he would have zero chance of getting the other two branches of government to comply in ripping up the constitution. He doesn't even advocate a dictatorship of the proletariat while the state withers away, for God's sake. Bernie is what we in the political theory world refer to as a liberal, in that, like Locke and Mill, he sees the individual as the basic unit of value, and individual rights as paramount. As such he is not a Communist. He's a self-styled democratic socialist, and the "democracy" part is the tell - you don't need democracy if you speak with the voice of the people as one unit. (Another clue: he's a bit of a protectionist. Communism is international.)
Or he's just smart and realizes he can't jump in and do it all at once. Communism's long term goal is international, but does that mean there are no communists since we don't have one world order yet... So many of Bernie types say how amazing he'll be for international relationships so yeah some of the goals of his fans are international. He is advocating for taking away the power of the ultra-rich and redistribution of wealth, both socialist agenda's. If you read most communist authors they say that communism is just a more advanced form of socialism. He can and you can call him whatever the heck you please but like I said most of that is semantics, his ideologies ARE on that side of the political spectrum whether you want to admit it or not.
I am kind of messing with you by the way. Though I think there is a lot of changing of the meaning of words and labels to get what we want to sound good going on and I think while he's not a straight-up commie like say @barfo heh. His ideologies do in fact lean that direction on the political spectrum, and it's only this kind of "American" thing where communism is a bad word that has caused politicians to flee from that label at all costs. We're arguing different things though, you're arguments are look there are differences between him and a communist (in the traditional political definition) - which I would grant you that there are differences. I am arguing that his political leanings do in fact come way closer to the edge of communism than most. Without the negative stigma's around the word communism, I think his fans would be more ok with that, instead of trying to point out each and every way he isn't a "true communist", it's all politics. If culturally the word communism didn't have the negativity surrounding it, most of his supporters wouldn't have an issue with the word being used. Yes, words and semantics can be important, I'm probably downplaying it too much, but to many, he represents big government, big government spending, redistribution of wealth, hate for the rich, and giving the government more power over us. Which I think in the minds of many is a scary thing, even if Bernie wouldn't be able to act on all of his ideas, I think they see it as a gateway for going that direction. In fact, I think that's why many young people like him, they think it's a gateway to getting the country to go left. Politics at the end of the day really is just a means of garnering power over others.
The very term "big government" is a Reagan-era, Ayn Rand-influenced invention. No president seriously doesn't agree with the power of the presidency. Trump is using it more than any president in decades and decades. Bernie is perfectly right that the right is AT LEAST as "socialist" as the left in terms of "government intervening", it's just that it's in favor of agribusiness and big business generally. There is no genuine "small government" party except the actual Libertarian party, and you can see how popular they are. The Tea Party was SUPPOSED to be that, but as actual True Believes like Justin Amash keep pointing out - it turns out they were just waiting for an authoritarian they liked. "Giving the government more power over us"? Please. I grew up in England, where even MARGARET FUCKING THATCHER, who made Reagan look like a wishy-washy centrist, couldn't lay one clawed talon on the cherished institutions like the NHS (ooooh! Socialized medicine!!!) and the BBC (oooh! State propaganda!), so she had to settle for destroying the unions instead. I even got a 100% free university education, as did everyone in my generation, Tory government or not. Nobody in the UK is saying "relieve me from the oppressive yoke of my free healthcare and free education!" any more than people in the US are saying that about "big government" programs like, oh, public education, Social Security, Medicare. I'd love to know what TANGIBLE freedoms we lose when we gain the very obvious freedom of "being healthy and employable" from those programs.
Himself. So: shit. Having said that: there's obviously a gaping void at the center of that man's being that cannot ever be filled, and we have to suffer because of it.
