But, can we drag him to the horses water through, and shove his head under?

@BirdMan1 hummm as much as I would like to have anything get through... I doubt it would work.

@LimitedLight No, people were not so bloody dumb back then. There was plainly a common enemy and folks got behind the message.
Take Churchill as a prime example. Most will know him as a great orator and leader. Fewer will know him as the enemy of the left. An aristocratic strike buster who still thought in terms of the British empire. Yet his cabinet consisted of socialists and union leaders as well as a press baron and industrialists.
The point of my humourous rant was to show the absurdity of our current situation. The biggest enemy in the US and for that matter, the world right now is not socialism, popularism, China, global warming or even Donald Trump. The biggest enemy is COVID-19 and until everyone recognises that, things will not improve much.

@LimitedLight I get that and our idiot is not much better. We actually have a worse per capita record than you so far. I think we should ignore them both and follow the experts. More importantly, we should get everyone else to do so too. There is nothing to be done about Trump till November and even then he's POTUS till January.

Nah, Putin is far from a communist, very, very far.

@BirdMan1 there is no difference between Putin today and Putin 30 years ago. Everything that matters is the same. The absence of totalitarianism is Just an Illusion.

@BitFlipper I was referring to the idealist Communist, not the Soviet version, but, otherwise, you are correct.

Not Communism. Communism has never had a real chance (for better, or worse) on the planet. whatever regime has claimed is has been a dictatorship, instead. Maybe it would have had a chance in Chile, except for American intervention. Castro may have started out with good intentions, but clamped down on the proletariat that Communism was originally about.

@BirdMan1 i dunno man. Like capitalism, communism needs good leaders to thrive, but only capitalism can survive bad leaders.

Consider this: think of both systems being on opposite side of a spectrum that can devolve into oligarchy or monarchy in the middle. If bad people come into control for either system its bad for both systems.

So what do we do? Lets say we decide to install a democratic government with checks and balances for both systems to regulate both systems.

In this scenario I feel capitalism has an edge because it can be regulated by a government that has a lot of power and limited assets to exert its power. So we essentially have a seperation of power and assets. But if bad people get elected in government that favor companies, capitalism becomes out of control. So we elect people who will strongly regulate capitalism to rebablance the system. So capitalism can survive bad leaders with democratically elected government.

With communism its flipped: the government starts of with assets and the people have the power. But as soon as you have elected leaders, now both power and assets belong to a single government. Even if the government was originally run with democratic elections, It will rapidly slip into oligarchy and eventually monarchy because there is no seperation of power and assets.

This is why communism will never work. There is no seperation of assets and power. If you can fix that, then maybe communism has a chance, but I'm not holding my breath lol!

Did he say "We're with you Ronnie?" St.Reagan?

@BirdMan1 yes, he is referring to President Reagan, the late great Kenny Everett was at the height of his fame in the 1980s, before his sad premature death in 1995 after a long fight with AIDS

Because soviet/maoist communism is as close to a secular religion as you can get and to a godbotherer the level of adherence and devotion it's followers have to something they cannot control or charge for is truly frightening.

Because they aren't real thinkers. Religion does tend to hamper people's intellects and undermine their capacity to think and question in a logical and intelligent way.

Because it is "Godless." We have the "under God" bit of crap in the national anthem, because Eisenhower wanted to amplify the differences between the US, and the USSR. I think there might also be a bit of trying to associate Atheism with the Communist "threat.

@BirdMan1 That's "pledge of allegiance", not national anthem.

It is true that capitalism is the exploitqtion of other peoples labor and ideas.

Communism only works on a micro level, of villages of less than 200 people or so. With any more than that you get anonymity and some people will start to cheat the system to their own advantage.

The best system, in my opinion is Democratic Socialism, as practiced in several countries in Europe You can still improve your situation by working hard, yet employers aren't able to exploit their workers either.