BY FRANK SALVATO
Not too long ago, a new “media” platform emerged on the Internet. Medium promised to be something of an equalizer for new media writers. Someone who took the art of communication seriously (but lacked the indoctrination certificate of the ideologically-bent journalism schools) would have the chance, if diligent, to make a reasonable amount of profit for their knowledge and efforts. But just like anything that shows even a modicum of promise where the information sphere is concerned, Medium has fallen to Progressives and Leftists.
A list of recent article titles says it all:
- If You Think Socialism’s Unaffordable, You Don’t Understand Capitalism
- The Quislings of the American Collapse
- As QAnon Goes Mainstream, Trump’s Rallies Are Turning Darker
- Fearing a Trump Return to Torture, Phycologists Keep Ban at Guantanamo
- If You Want More Capitalism You Should Want More Socialism
- Evangelicals, Catholics Attack LGBTQ Children
- Selling the Idea of Empire to Americans
- Can White Liberalism Save America
- Protests Are Not Enough. The Trump Resistance Needs Money.
- The Ethical Collapse at the End of Capitalism
It goes on and on for as far back as you care to stomach it.
First, it needs to be said (as if the aware don’t already know) that Capitalism is under attack by the Progressive Left in the United States. Ever since the election of Barack Obama, Progressives have believed they had the “goal line” in sight. They saw – and rightly so, a dysfunctional Republican Party leading a fractured Conservative Movement far behind them on the race to the finish line. The prize at the end of this finish line: transforming the United States from a Constitutional Republic to a Socialist Democracy. Progressives were racing for the goal line while the Right seemed to not even know what game was being played.
But Progressives misjudged their time “came out,” racing for the goal line thinking victory was at hand. Then the country swung back to the center from its misguided surge to the ideological Left.
The intellectual argument in If You Think Socialism’s Unaffordable, You Don’t Understand Capitalism, represents the still Progressive wing that still believes the country can be duped into believing the false promises of Socialism. The argument in the article not only doesn’t hold water, it is arrogant in its simplistic view of Capitalism. To wit:
“Yet in America, the prices of all the basics of a good life…have risen by hundreds or thousands of percent. Perhaps you think I exaggerate. Very, well, let’s review the evidence. Healthcare has risen by two thousand percent. The price of education has gone up by 1000%. Food, 300%. Rent and house prices, 400%. Childcare, 500%. Those are all conservative estimate, too, from what I reckon…
“…Predatory capitalism. In industry after industry, consolidation has been the norm. Huge monopolies have been built. Those monopolies have raised prices relentlessly every year, because that is what monopolies do — because capitalism demands rising profits, no matter what the cost to human beings is….”
“How are Americans overpaying? Obviously, there’s the direct cost — they’re broke! But then there are the indirect costs, too — the “opportunity costs”, as Americans say. Americans live five years less than Europeans. The suicide rate is skyrocketing. They don’t trust their institutions or their society. Their kids can’t afford to move out. Mistrust, despair, loneliness, rage, futility, depression — right up to life itself. These are costs, too, that American pay predatory capitalism. They are massively overpaying capitalism for the basics of life, not just with money, but with their potential — their time, energy, minds, bodies, and lives…”
“Socialism” — minor-league social democracy — just as in every other rich country, will lower the prices of the basics of life massively, systemically, and permanently. It reduces the price of all the basics of life, which American faces severe eudaimonic hyperinflation for now because capitalism keeps jacking it up…”
A cursory look at every pure Socialist Democracy proves all of this to be a load of horse shit. Venezuela, Greece, Cuba (a Communist country masquerading as a Socialist Democracy) and the usual suspect despot nations in Central and South America and Africa, prove beyond doubt in their economic demises that Socialist Democracies always – and without fail – crash into full-blown Communism or the economic upheaval of revolution; their people crushed beneath the jackboot heel of poverty and oppression.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is the only economic system – in the history of mankind – to create a Middle Class. In Socialism, Communism, Oligarchies, and Monarchies there are only the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Capitalism, even at its most flawed (yes, even with predatory Capitalism and the disingenuousness of monopolies like Google and Facebook), is a system of opportunity where one can work to elevate his or her financial situation; thus the absence of serfs and lords, and a Middle Class that spans the economies.
Perhaps what Medium should do, if the powers that be there want to salvage their publication from the jaws of the propaganda monster, is to explain why colleges (who get federal and state tax dollars, donations from Alumni and corporate America, grants from philanthropic organizations, and who still charge outrageous tuitions) are turning out liver-damaged and indoctrinated masses of uselessness at every graduation. Maybe Medium should talk about some of the shocking salaries and benefits unions force employers to pay to employees thus forcing the cost of food and housing through the rhetorical ceiling. And childcare? How about making it easier to have a one-income family so that a parent – rather than a village idiot (read: Hillary Clinton and her ilk) – can raise a child?
These are topics that should be explored by the new media (the mainstream media is too far gone to have credibility in discussing these issues), but Left-leaning and Progressive propagandists – like those who make the decisions at Medium – are more interested in social engineering and ideological indoctrination than the truth about society and economics.
Until there are people with spines enough to speak without fear; to jettison political correctness and have the courage to brand an idiot an idiot, we are doomed.