Democratic Socialism - 20151016

Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist.  The other S-word…  America paired Christian capitalism against Agnostic communism in the 1950’s.  Communism in reality turns into fascism and military despotism; see Cuba, North Korea, or Stalin’s Soviet Union.  A democratic socialist is not a communist.  The S-word tends to overshadow the D word thus Sanders has been the only open Congress person attaching the word socialist to confront the crony oligarchy capitalism that is at the root of the wealth gap that is hampering economic progress, health, security, education, and infrastructure maintenance in post 1980’s America. 

In reality a democratic socialist pairs a democratically elected political system with a socialist economic system.  In America we already have this except most of the socialist tax dollars go to corporate welfare in major industries like: national defense, healthcare, education, infrastructure maintenance, and energy.  The word socialist is not uttered out of old-world fears imbedded into the marketing endeavors of everything from the Chamber of Commerce to the one party system betrothed to Wall Street since the 1950’s. 

There is a reason Bernie Sanders is treated the way he is by the publicly traded media companies and both parties are afraid that the American public might actually have a say to usurp the agenda of profiteering at the heart of first-world power.  A democratic socialist does not seek communism.  A democratic socialist seeks a decentralized authority of the people.  Modern devices of free internet communication, input, transparency, dissemination of information and ultimately the potential of proxy voting by the public for elected individuals through advanced web technologies could bring a true voice of the people into a democratic government prospering public control and prioritization in the areas currently rampaged by corporate welfare: healthcare, energy, and education being chief among them. 

The marketing of a welfare state, Soviet red, and Chinese totalitarianism, argue the idea that under any form of socialism there will always be an elite who truly bear the power.  The people can never really have it; it is too risky, too enticing to those capable of extracting personal gain, too easy to be corrupted by the ego.  Democratic Socialism is a shift, not full public ownership, but partial in appropriate areas.  Just as in capitalism any system must have checks and balances, the ultimate balance to any system is uprising and the ability of a free people to voice and enact a plurality while respecting human and civil rights.

Maybe democratic socialism is a philosophical idealism, but it is one in my opinion that displays the evolution of humanity to foster empathy through the web-based tools to communicate, care for, and govern ourselves on a global scale.  Maybe democratic socialism was not feasible without the check and balance and mass input the internet provides, but this is where humanity is heading whether Bernie Sanders is elected president of the U.S. or not.  See the Occupy, Arab Spring, pro-planned Parenthood, and Black Lives Matter movements founded in the internet.  This is why Putin put the cork on the bottle to perestroika and men like Al-Assad are panicking to the Arab Spring.  This is why the people of Iran live double lives.  This is why the Republicans of the red-state South are still humming Dylan’s Only a Pawn in Their Game under their breaths barking about the Bible’s God trying to deny how institutional racism, the patriarchy, and the fundamental economics of the one percent affect the health, prison, education, and employment systems of the United States.

It is not capitalism that is the problem; it is the repression of the voice and wellbeing of the people under systems which are capable of greater exploitation than ever before due to the erasure of global borders, but also subject to a global scrutiny more than ever before by the processing power of computers.  We will determine our fate in the balance of how humanity wields this power.  We suffer anthropogenic climate change producing water scarcities and ocean rise.  We suffer totalitarianism inspiring terrorism and conflict commensurate with a beast thrashing as enlightened hunters come to hunt for its head with contraband Iranian rooftop satellites dishes.

Democratic Socialists have included: Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King, Salvador Allende, Albert Einstein, Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, Cornell West, Nelson Mandela, and yes Bernie Sanders.