[ISiddiqui]

Originally Posted by sterlingice

In all honesty: you have a lot of communist friends? I didn't think anyone really self-described themselves that way and it seems rare to see that. I have a couple of friends who are pretty far left socialist (in the European sense) but I don't think they would even describe themselves as communist. Tho, to be fair, we've never seen true communism in place anywhere- the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc were all just dictatorships pretending to be communist, but we're getting far afield.

Yep. I have a friend who ran for Congress under the Socialist Party of the America, down in Fort Lauderdale. He considers himself a full fledged Communist, but definitely not a Cuba/China, etc Commie. His wife is too. True, I met him online (on another forum), but I have met him IRL as well.

Oh, and European countries aren't socialist either. They are more into the welfare state, sure. But they believe in capitalism unpinning their economies.

I agree with most else of what you've said in this and other posts. But I have a major objection to the claim that we are heading more towards fascism: I think a key part of fascism is control of government over industry. We have the exact opposite where industry controls goverment, for the most part. It leads to a different type of dystopia- one that is neither fascist or socialist.

Well, I think it'd be referred to as "proto-Fascism". And corporatism isn't necessarily all that cut and dried. Industry having power over government means that in times of populist anger (like real, hanging people from lamposts populist anger), industry turns to a strong corporatist leader who would let them keep their money (which happened in Italy, Spain, and, of course, German).

Now I'm not saying we are GOING to be Fascist (I don't even think we are sliding into it, not even on a sliding level). I'm just saying that if you are going to allow people to make a political hyperbole, we are closer to heading towards Fascism than Socialism.

I also think there was a substantial shift between the past administration and this one in that the previous one had more control over industry, primarily using fear, something this administration has been reluctant to do. And that's not to say the previous one wasn't influenced greatly by many industrial figures.

Both parties are pretty intermarried to business. They may be more closely intermarried to different businesses, but the general point remains the same.