{"id":151,"date":"2016-03-11T07:40:52","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T07:40:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/?p=151"},"modified":"2016-03-11T07:44:26","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T07:44:26","slug":"the-truth-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/?p=151","title":{"rendered":"The truth matters."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"sanders_2016\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I commend Brendan Trainor for the talent he exhibits\u00a0in his article, \u201cBernie Sanders, fascist<\/a>\u201d in the March 10th edition of RN&R. He has mastered the spin, hyperbole, and half truths by which progressive ideals are regularly slandered. Bravo! What ever he\u2019s paid, it\u2019s not enough. Such a stupendous effort deserves a proper analysis, and I hope I am equal to the task.<\/p>\n

To lend an air of authority, he begins by providing a textbook definition of Socialism. But that definition isn\u2019t Sanders\u2019 platform– I suppose I could\u2019ve stopped reading right there, but there were still more words in his article. We learn that Sanders visited the Soviet Union! And he got out alive? Obviously he\u2019s either the Brooklyn James Bond or some Soviet agent. Trainor then expresses his concern for an entire class of Americans, \u201cthe wealthy,\u201d and that Sanders wants to \u201cgenerally make their lives miserable because they rigged the economy\u201d and \u201crestrict their rights to be involved in the political process.\u201d \u00a0Unwrap that for a second. All these aggrieved wealthy folks did was rig the economy and political process so that millions of people lost homes, freedoms, savings, jobs, livelihoods, and even lives, and for expressing their American freedom in this way, Sanders wants to prevent them from doing it again, restore the siphoned off wealth to the people, and– Heaven forfend!– hurt their feelings? That\u2019s not fair! Tyranny! Hell, a real fascist would line \u2018em up against the wall! If only there was some street with a big beautiful, wall… oh wait. That\u2019s a different candidate.<\/p>\n

No attack on socialism is complete without the list of \u201cfree stuff.\u201d Health care, tuition, food, rent… wait! They get free food? What, do they think food grows on trees? We should put those moochers in prison, so the government can pay \u00a0some corporation for their health care, food, and rent– you know, job creation! We\u2019re told Sanders would double the minimum wage, and no business owner would make more than 4 times the lowest paid worker. Let\u2019s do math. New minimum wage times four yada yada… all wealth would be confiscated over $132,000.00 per year? What maniac proposes such a policy? I\u2019ll tell you. His name is Brandon Trainor, and he writes for RN&R. How did we get here from a 52% tax on income over $10 million? Easy– Trainor is lying. If a poor man could afford to go to school, perhaps he could start a business and not be poor anymore, and not end up at the free food\/rent place. If he were really clever, he could make $133,000.00 per year and pay his employees $17.00 an hour. That actually sounds nice. And, under the Sanders plan, their taxes would be less.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re a liar, words don\u2019t have to mean things anymore. Let\u2019s make a new definition for Fascism. What fun! \u201cFascism replaces free[sic] market production for consumption with production for state dictated outcomes.\u201d But we already established that Sanders doesn\u2019t intend to seize the means of production, he just wants to hurt rich people\u2019s feelings and build roads and schools and stuff. This new Fascism also \u201ctakes many property rights away.\u201d You mean, like, owning people? A cap on personal yacht ownership? Trainor doesn\u2019t go into detail, but does say this new brand of Fascism fails to condemn discrimination against \u201cwhite heterosexual males and Asians.\u201d Presumably, Asians of all genders, but not the gay brown Asians. According to Trainor, these Fascists coerce people by disingenuously promoting equality of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Say what?How clever to redefine the defense of the liberty of disenfranchised groups as an affront to the liberties of someone else. When the government steps in to help \u00a0underrepresented, disenfranchised Americans, the victimized wealthy cry foul (and their wannabe poor white supremacist rubes), but when some white guy punches a gay hippie in the face, shoots a black kid in the back, or steals a fortune from millions of tax payers, that\u2019s just a damn shame.<\/p>\n

The rest is pretty much standard mudslinging. Trainor holds Sanders responsible for delays of care at the VA while he was chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, without a word about the bill he put together with John McCain to increase transparency and provide expanded care at outside facilities. Inaction is incompetence, but a self-proclaimed democratic socialist crafting bipartisan legislation and passing it through an obstructionist Republican-led Congress is not worthy of mention. Next, a quick tour of Europe, where we can ponder which countries are more or less socialist, and decide without much evidence that the ones flourishing are more capitalist while those languishing are socialist. None of them are Socialist, as Trainor so thoughtfully defined for us, but why quibble. It\u2019s interesting that the four \u00a0countries with \u201cdebt, high unemployment and social unrest\u201d all have better health outcomes than the US according to the WTO. The causality here is weakly implied, but good enough for the true believer.Then, the obligatory jab at the Socialist states in our own backyard, Cuba and Venezuela. Venezuelan Socialists must squander all the wealth they get from the \u201cbillions of barrels of oil\u201d the US buys from them, right? That sounds great, except it was only 280,000 barrels in 2014, down 50% from 10 years before. Oil represents 95% of the country\u2019s export income, and oil prices have dropped sharply in part because of expanded US production. Voila! You have a depression.Words and facts don\u2019t matter when you just feel you are right. Strangely, not a word about the reasonably stable economy in democratic socialist Evo Morales\u2019 Bolivia.<\/p>\n

Trainor would have us ignore again that Sanders is not proposing to nationalize the means of production in the United States of America. Sanders is not stripping you of your rights. He is not coming with suede-denim secret police for you r uncool niece. Sanders is talking about raising taxes on the wealthiest individuals and corporations, who will still be stinking rich, and whose wealth is ultimately derived from the resources of our planet and the efforts of us all, in order to alleviate the suffering among the most vulnerable Americans. The beneficiaries will be our children and our child care providers, our veterans and our elderly, our neighbors and friends– and ultimately, all of us. The truth matters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I commend Brendan Trainor for the talent he exhibits\u00a0in his article, \u201cBernie Sanders, fascist\u201d in the March 10th edition of RN&R. He has mastered<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/metric.cc\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}