taze them? Is that what you want at a tea party protest? America is finally waking up, both sides of the aisle, I blame the uprising from both parties on poor television. Bread and Circus has worked for thousands of years.
After watching that video do you honestly get the impression that they are waking up? LOL. Please, watch the video first, then comment. It helps.
They are not liberal. They are statist. There is nothing liberal about their viewpoints. Sure, they try to say they are liberal because that makes them feel good, but they aren't. They are statist. I also refer to them as statists or leftists, because thats what they are.
Communism will not happen in the U.S. The communist and socialist parties here are a joke with no representation. Despite all of the right's claims that Obama is a Marxist, Wall St. bankrolled his campaign, Larry Summers was his first Director of the NEC., he used public funds to keep Wall St. solvent, and liberals will vote for him all the same. A spectrum of socialism has existed in Europe with varying degrees of success -- none have resulted in communism -- and the U.S. will always be to the right of those nations. It's fun and exciting to issue wild-eyed predictions about the end of the world. Eschatology and victimhood is addicting. But getting on the right-wing crazy bandwagon (the crazies Cristie laments) is not good for anyone's ability to understand the issues the country is really facing.
Of course we won't have communism as you understand the word. The world changes, it evolves. Case in point China. China is still a communist country but practices capitalism in a very controlled way. As societies evolve, so do the definitions of capitalism, socialism and communism. There has to be an endpoint. All I'm saying is that at some point, government is going to get more aggressive in bring equality in this country and that force will not be voluntary. Call that system whatever you want. I'm not looking forward to it.
It's worth it to visit China (and much of Asia) to see how fundamentally different people there are, due to their historical conditions. Proletarian and peasant revolts were a constant occurrence throughout history along with a culture of top-down issued uniformity of thought, which was powerfully co-opted by the CCP. The U.S. started with a mercantilist revolt, and with our separated powers and religious traditions, we've always been more immune to that kind of cultural revolution. I don't doubt the future of the U.S. will be somewhat like China's, due to how capitalism works, not communism. That similarity won't be due to a Maoist-style revolt from the lower classes, Roseanne Barrs and indebted students (who will end up at JPMorgan anyway). Multinationals are now almost superior to sovereign nations, can vest anywhere, and will engineer the right environments within a country's political structure to protect their interests and make money.
Well that goes without saying that the future will be an echo of the past but not a complete carbon copy. The words communism, socialism and capitalism don't even have the same meaning as they did 30 years ago. And like you said, there are cultural differences as well. But it does not please me to here the number of voices growing daily calling for the use of force to bring equality to this country. History has taught us not to ignore these warnings. And you know what, history is usually right.
I think those voices have always been there, they just were sated by Obama's election. You also saw them during the 2003 run up to Iraq and the RNC convention in NYC. I see them as not a new entity, just as the Tea Party to me is simply just the institutionalized fringe of the right that has always been there. To me, frankly, they both have very important things to say and neither represent a fundamental revolution (as much as both sides are motivated by that kind of rhetoric). They're a necessary and pretty mainstream phenomenon in our cultural dialog. What's brewing in Egypt, Yemen, Libya (with our backing), etc. are fundamental revolutions, because authoritarian, rent-seeking governments kept a lid on a ton of disparate groups that could not find true expression. Bottle that up and people will organize. As much as our liberals here are inspired by that, they're not truly a revolutionary force. The U.S. is not like that, precisely because of our institutions and because we let people protest. If they do it loudly enough, our representatives (in theory) capitalize on it and change, in marginal token ways at least -- our foreign policy to control resources will never change, for instance. Once that stops happening <i>then</i>, I think, you'll see a Tahrir Sq. event here.