Go Big Or Go Home
Tags: Socialism, Big Problems, National Debt, Propaganda, Small Government

No one would deny that The United States is a big country. It would be stupid to claim that we don’t have big allies, big enemies, and big trading partners. It would be the height of stupidity to imply that we do not have big problems, or that those problems do not require big solutions…

And yet, since at least the time of Ronald Reagan, we’ve been brainwashed with this mistaken idea of “small government”. The neoliberals, on both sides of the partisan divide as well as the entire mainstream media keeps perpetuating this farce, and far too many people have bought into it. At this very moment, we have self-styled “patriots” rioting in our streets, in support of an incipient dictator, because, somehow, they believe an authoritarian asshole that gives huge breaks to corporations and his authoritarian buddies is going to give them “freedom”.

It’s not about big government versus small government at all; it’s about who the government works for. We need a big government if we are going to deal with big problems, but what we do not need is any government that caters exclusively to the “big interests”.

It is part and partial to the media propaganda demonizing “socialism”. Most older Americans are frightened, unnecessarily, when anyone even mentions the word socialism, because years of propaganda have trained them to equate socialism with dictatorship, as if they have anything to do with each other. Socialism is an economic system, just as capitalism is. Dictatorship and democracy are political systems, these are not the same. There is, or can be, some crossover between them, but only because unscrupulous politicians and financiers want it that way. And the authoritarian forces can use either economic system to wreak their damage. We have seen in recent years that everything we were warned would come true under evil socialism, has actually come true under our vaunted capitalist system of “free trade”. A small number of elites reaping all the benefits while the masses fight over table scraps? Check. Government and business taking homes, health, food, childcare away from the working poor? Check. Erosion of your rights and freedoms? Check. Increased surveillance and control of your daily life? Check.

Who really cares if it’s “Big Government” taking away everything worth living for, or if it’s “Big Business” doing it with the approval and direct assistance of the government? Are you any less free if you have to bow and scrape at the feet of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, than at the feet of a Clinton, a Reagan, a Trump, or a Biden?

No, it is time we got over our fear and loathing of “Big Government” and started looking at the real problem…who is the government working for? And fake populists like Trump are not the ones who will bring you your freedom back. (unless your idea of freedom is freedom to be a bigot.)

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Pelosi and Schumer, all the “big names” have to stop playing the “small government” and “evil debt” games. Any business man will tell you you have to spend money to make money, and yet the pro-business people are the first to decry “government spending”, but only when that spending isn’t going into their pockets.

You want a real representative government? Stop being fooled by catch phrases like “evil socialism” and “big government” and “unsustainable debt” and start fighting for your own voice to heard… otherwise, we’ll all drown together when our “big problems” are met with with “small solutions”.