“Asked later if he thought Obama was an extremist, McCain said: ‘His voting record … is more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.’

“Does McCain think Obama is a socialist? ‘I don’t know. All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.’”

My gosh! Is Obama a socialist? McCain doesn’t know…and neither does anyone else. Translation: be afraid! Be very afraid! Because if Obama is a socialist, why, we might get…socialized healthcare! And from that, soul-sucking, life-crushing, boot-in-the-face totalitarian communism!

So let’s abuse famous fictional villains to put a face on this socialism. Let’s illustrate just how eeeeeevvviiilll socialism is. If socialism were…
…the villain from the Usual Suspects: Keyser Social.
…a rampaging monster: Socialzilla.
…a Star Wars meanie: Darth Social.
…Harry Potter’s arch-nemesis: Lord Socialdemort.
…a Star Trek baddie: Khan Noonian Social.

No fictional character can fully convey the evil that is socialism!

Okay, so these are a stretch. I won’t take to the Improv’s stage. But do you see what McCain, et al, is getting at? Socialism is bad! Bad! And, by extension, Obama is bad! Bad! I’m quaking in my boots so much that seismologists in Asia are wondering why their instruments are going haywire.

For the sake of equal-opportunity criticism, I could go ahead and start picking on liberalismo to counterbalance my picking on McCain and conservatismo, but if you read the back-and-forth between Erica Jong and the delightfully snarky Matt Taibbi (see above), I think liberalismo is taken care of quite nicely. So, here are a few questions that arise in regards to conservatismo’s fear of socialism:

Why is it okay for the Federal government to bail out companies like Bear Stearns or struggling airlines or grant huge monetary favours for businesses – what critics call corporate socialism – but not okay to fund social programs that directly help struggling individuals?

Why is universal health care – misleadingly called socialized medicine by its opponents for malicious purposes – such a bad thing? It works under an insurance model, just like private insurance, is administrated by an entity (government) whose members can be fired and replaced (elections) by the public, and faces no conflict of interest by having to pit profit vs care. And individuals all have the freedom to choose the doctors they want to see and get the care they need. But since this is funded by taxpayer money, this is all socialistic nonsense, right? Why should OUR money go to pay for SOMEONE ELSE’s care? Let them get a job and pay for their own healthcare on their own, says conservatismo. Oh, and let the insurance companies turn a profit, too.

But what about military spending, which conservatismo is quite happy to support? Woe to the person who dares question the wisdom of spending billions of dollars on dubious weapon systems and foreign bases! The U.S. spends more than most countries combined, without counting war budgeting that doesn’t get counted in the official tally…but in line with conservatismo’s skepticism regarding healthcare, why should OUR money go to pay for SOMEONE ELSE’s defense? Let them get a gun and defend themselves on their own. Socialized medicine? Try conservatismo’s socialized defense!

In It Together

Oh, wait: defense, like health, is an issue that affects us collectively, like roads, and water, and electricity. It’s like living in a condo complex. You have your private property, but you also have shared property like pools, landscaping, roads and so on. You’re responsible for yourself, but you also share responsibility with other condo owners in maintaining common areas.

To bandy the word “socialist” about, as if Obama were a junior Hugo Chavez, is just more fear-mongering and name-calling. There’s a difference, in the end, between outright socialism and the recognition that while we might be able to “survive” on our own (mmm…twigs and berries!), we can’t have the quality of life we have now without working together. Sen. McCain’s unwillingness to distinguish between socialism and cooperation — what some would call “community” – smacks not only of intellectual dishonesty but of the kind of politics we wish politicians would leave behind.