You're Fighting the Last War, Pops

Long time readers of my webworld diary risk alienating friends and family but may also recall my brilliant assessment of the previous presidential campaign's race-based strategies. In short, I said I thought the racial "othering"* of Obama wouldn't be the success it had been for Republicans in previous campaigns because the "signifiers,"* when compared to the actual Barack Obama, just didn't stand.

I think the same applies to the use of "socialist" among those lunatics and intellectual cripples trying to tie some vague fear of the misunderstood to Obama's social and economic policies. So just as the clumsy use of racism backfired (in the US, against a black man, of all things), I think the "socialist this" "socialist that" nonsense won't fly and may, in fact, backfire.

First, when one describes any of the present policies as socialism, and means that as an argument against them I think, "This person's a bit silly, they're just not someone I can take seriously on this matter, perhaps I should change the subject to building pigeon traps".

In order for this bit of crazy to carry any weight, I'd have to be of a like-kind of crazy. I'm not, so it turns me off and leads us to something else. It's the kind of point that can only be a point for those who see it as a point, as such it's the kind of thing that builds the walls of stupid higher and reduces the possibility of reaching anyone not already comfortably settled in that garden of dumb.

See. It's self-defeating in its self-buidling.

Secondly, like the "I guess I'm not that scared of black people if Barack is black people" phenomenon that won over enough white folks, the concrete comparisons that may follow from "It's Socialism, BOO!" may have the effect of opening people to socialist policies that the rest of the western industrialized world finds good and helpful.**

There's no Evil Empire, Joe Mc Carthy. Your clicks and clacks invite comparisons to Sweden, Canada, England, and Germany rather than the Soviet Union.

The what?

Exactly.

"You mean socialist like our allies? Okay... That sounds pretty good."

"You mean a single payer healthcare system could be like the fire department? That's not scary. That just sounds like good social and economic policy."

* Wonk wonk wonk
** Though Obama's policies are not socialist so what they're actually open to may be something else cleverly disguised as the socialism they think they're open to. What? Maybe I'll come back to that.