We need to really talk about why people like me have a problem with Democratic Socialism and its adherence.
For the sake of some brevity, I'll actually, strangely avoid the actual Democratic Socialist policies and how much they get wrong about Scandinavia. That's just a can of worms.
When you look at the history of either leading Democratic Socialists of today or their heros of the past, although they insist that Democratic Socialism is just "Socialism light" an they're not talking about going full Soviet Union or Cuba, there's no dearth of apologists.
Rexford Tugwell, who became a leader in designing FDR's failed New Deal, visited the Soviet Union. Tugwell was disgusted by the waste of American capitalism and was enamored by the lack of Soviet waste.
Of course, just like anybody who knows anything about the history of Socialism knows, these were all closed nations. They didn't let very many outsiders in. Those who were let in were highly restricted in terms of access an were often wined and dined and shown the best that the nations had to offer.
Tugwell's experience in the Soviet Union was like that. So, it's not surprising that he didn't know about the atrocities that were happening to create the facade of prosperity that Tugwell saw.
I also can't really blame Tugwell for not knowing about The Holodomor. It didn't start until a few years later and it took Gareth Jones risking his life by sneaking into Ukraine and documenting that the Soviets had turned the entire nation into a concentration camp, which was where Russia was getting its grain while starving the Ukrainians. We can blame the New York times for turning a blind eye to the genocide. They knew. But, the correspondents in the Soviet Union were having too much fun getting wined, dined, and sexed whenever they wanted to and the people at home were sympathetic to the socialist cause.
Tugwell, however, can be blamed for never, to my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong and I'll be happy to issue a retraction) ever saying a damn thing of substance about The Holodomor. He didn't die until 1979. He knew at some point.
More recently and more relevant is the most popular American politician among young Americans on the left, Bernie Sanders. Bernie visited the Soviet Union in 1988, during the end times and the Gorbachev era. Similarly to Tugwell, Sanders was given high class treatment. He was shown the best of what the Soviets had to offer. Like most of us wouldn't, he didn't dig deeper.
Sanders said that, through his tours of the Soviet hospitals, that they admitted that their equipment was about fifteen years behind most countries with market economies; but, he felt compelled to point out, it was available to everyone.
Only, it wasn't. He was shown the best hospitals that the wealthiest, most well connected people got to go to. The hospitals available to the general public, as reported to foreign doctors throughout the year, were about eighty years behind. Namely, if you got sick, you had a better shot just staying home.
It seems like we see this with every American of prominence who decides to see these failed experiments for themselves. Michael Moore showed the elite hospitals in Cuba rather than the rat infested hell hole in his asinine movie Sicko. Oliver Stone visited Venezuela and, surely enough, spent the whole time hanging out with Chavez.
Everything looks great when you're rich.
I'm not faulting most of these people for being momentarily taken in by this stuff. It's in our nature to try to make things that we like into good things even when they're clearly wrong in practice. It's also easy for our brains to go to, "Well, that's not what I saw." when images come out which are contrary to our personal experiences.
Still, just think about the absurdity of somebody saying, "I'm a Democratic Nazi." "No, we shouldn't do the Holocaust again; but, Hitler got a lot right." That's the absurdity of Democratic Socialism. So many of these people brand themselves as benevolent Socialists; but, they'll apologize for murderous dictatorships like the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela in a way that no conservative of prominence would apologize for Nazism.
It goes deeper than that. How many people have just taken China's reports about COVID-19 at its word? How many of you have been taking Cuba's reports on life expectancy at its word?
To this day, the death toll of The Holodomor is still estimated between 2.5 and 7.5 million. Think about that. We know now that the genocide happened; but, the Soviets lied to the world so effectively that we have to produce a range of five million people from which we're guessing. The high end would exceed the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. How many of you have even heard of The Holodomor before today? College students are learning about the gulags for the first time, never having been told about them in K-12. At least 20 million people died in the gulags. How about Mao's famine?
So many of you people who are on the Bernie/AOC bandwagon assume that those of us who are damned opposed are only damned opposed because we think that they want to turn the USA into a new Soviet Union. I don't think that that's their goal for a moment. They do--clearly--want to move closer to that. But, what I find nefarious about them and their ilk is their sympathy for such regimes.
People demonize the Koch Brothers because of specious allegations that their father had business ties with Nazi Germany. Namely, having a family member who is accused of once having dealt with the Nazis is enough to get you excoriated by the left. Being a libertarian now doesn't matter a jot to those people. But, visiting a regime reasonable for more death and human misery than Hitler couldn't have drempt of in his most intense wet dream and saying that they're doing things alright is--apparently--perfectly fine.
It shouldn't be. The word "Socialism" should be viewed the same as "Nazism."