Federal Deficit is massive; Obama is using a big socialist government etc etc

[Stephen Colbert]

I dont even know where to begin with some of these people. I sit there and listen to people who have absolutely 0 idea what they are talking about, and I am awestruck.

My uncle's friend said today, "yea and then eventually when all is said and done, we'll live in a communist society".

I was going to open my mouth and kindly ask what his idea of a communist society was(probably lazy laborers, police state, famine etc), but my Dad shot me a look.

I dont even know how to start with some of these people. It's sort of like they need to unlearn American politics to understand any political theory that isnt "Free-Market(lulz)" Capitalism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbyFeFhUTmI

[The Fighting_Crusnik]

I understand you totally... I correct people all the time but only a few listen... apparently, people would rather roll around in rhetoric than in fact.

[#FF0000]

I'd start by ignoring those looks your dad shoots you.

I have fond memories of asking "So why is every cop in the world racist?" at Thanksgiving dinner, with all my cop cousins and aunts and uncles at the table. Good times.

[jake williams]

I dont even know where to begin with some of these people. I sit there and listen to people who have absolutely 0 idea what they are talking about, and I am awestruck.

My uncle's friend said today, "yea and then eventually when all is said and done, we'll live in a communist society".

I was going to open my mouth and kindly ask what his idea of a communist society was(probably lazy laborers, police state, famine etc), but my Dad shot me a look.

I dont even know how to start with some of these people. It's sort of like they need to unlearn American politics to understand any political theory that isnt "Free-Market(lulz)" Capitalism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbyFeFhUTmI
It's tough - you're talking about the hard work of raising class consciousness from the ground up. If it were easy work we would have already done it and we would have already done.

Part of the dilemma is that the US does have serious fiscal problems in the long run and the short run. They have a massive security state apparatus, including fighting a several-front war and maintaining a global system of military occupation. That collectively is the heaviest burden on the American federal budget, by a long shot, and without it the US is more than in line with other industrial countries in terms purely of fiscal health (although that in part because obscenely high military spending is balanced with obscenely low welfare state funding, including the extant lack of a functional healthcare system). Like any other massive state apparatus, they also certainly have some technical problems of bureaucratic overhang, pork, corruption etc.

And of course, the US economy, like that of all other capitalist countries, is severely restrained because so little of the wealth produced is taxed, and instead is kept privately and diverted into often unproductive uses. What is taxed is the slowly but steadily declining collective wages of the American working class - which in turn further weakens the economy.

In other words, the right wing is correct when they say that America is addled by serious long run fiscal and economic problems (although they do exaggerate the case, for example dependency load and debt/deficit challenges aren't exponentially out of line with similar challenges faced during and immediately after the Second World War). But what they fabricate is the cause - blaming, at the end of the day, as per usual, the working class, who are the victims and not the creators of this problem. The working class and socialism aren't the cause of the problem - the cause of the problem is the predictable responses by an imperialist state to decadent capitalism. In fact the problem is those very policies - the massive empire, ridiculous state subsidies to large and still-profitable industries, the systematic reduction of wealth taxing (on the ruling class) and increase of effective income taxing (on the working class) which the right wing advocates. The solution is socialism.

[Adil3tr]

these people are so off the path of sanity, they need a complete political overhaul to understand the radical left.