re: I’m old enough to remember when Democrats got mad if you called them “communists”

It's now a badge of honor to admit you are for taking money away from people who earned it (whether by hard work, luck, inheritance, or whatever) and giving it to people who don't have much or less than they do. No one should be forced by the government to do that. It's your freaking money! I'm perfectly fine with people donating. It's their own free will. Having too many wealthy people is not the reason some people are "have nots". Wealth is grown. Everyone has the opportunity to earn more money, and when you do, it does not make someone else poorer.

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Thirty years ago when I started posting on discussion boards I got criticized for calling Dems communists...by conservatives. They'd say: 'Well, we don't like what the Dems are doing but calling them communists is just stupid.'

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I wouldn’t say it’s stupid, but calling them “communists” is inaccurate. The word “communism” is suffering from confusion with “socialism”, similar to the confusion between “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”.

“Communism” is state ownership of everything. And the government existing only long enough for people to become acclimated to the new paradise, at which time government withers away completely, leaving an idillic people leading idillic lives picking flowers and loving each other. Virtually no one believes that claptrap anymore.

Socialism is still in vogue with the left. Under socialism private property still exists, but the state takes over ownership of many key industries. This is what China is currently practicing. It is far from communism. Another thing that gets called “socialism” is a capitalist economic system with a very robust social safety net. Sweden is a good example of that. As far as I know, they have little or no government ownership of businesses, but they have cradle to grave “free” shite.

Are you old enough to remember the fact that most of our families, friends, and neighbors were Democrats? But back then, the Democrats stood for working folks, while Republicans seemed to take care of business folks.
Fast forward to today...the political script has been totally flipped. Republicans are the ones with common sense approaches to governing while the Democrats have completely gone full left and have abandoned the working men and women of the U.S.A.
As a former union member, I know for a fact that while our higher-ups funded and endorsed Democrat politicians, our rank and file members disregarded the bullshite and voted Republican, since Ronald Reagan. Even today, many registered Democrats do not vote for their party's candidate.
Let's see, what do the Dems stand for? They stand, and fight tooth and nail for illegals who flooded our country under the worst president in our history. They stand for mentally unstable folks who claim to be the opposite sex than the one they were born of, and have no problem with sending them in our kids' restrooms and dressing rooms...and they are okay with biological boys and men competing against real girls and women. They seem to love foreigners who try to take advantage of our country's generosity through fraud attempts. See, Minnesota and California. They say they believe in democracy but their actions tell a whole different story.
I have made a personal decision to never vote for a Democrat again!
I hope many of you do the same!