Burn the Witch!

And so it has begun, another witch-hunt reminiscent of the fifties 'red-menace,' where to openly admit being a communist was as close to professional- and social-suicide as you could get, and to be accused of such was pretty damn close. It ruined many careers and reputations back then. Now, the menace seems a bit similar and all-too-familiar, but the reasons are radically different, as I see it. After the end of the second World War, Russia began looming up behind its Iron Curtain, a red shadow that was the perfect piece of propaganda to keep people afraid and in line, a specter that had infiltrated our country, even to the point of American citizens like the Rosenberg's being executed for selling atomic secrets to the Red's. The Cold War was going quite well until the U.S. government went and threw their collective greedy hands into Vietnam, and got people all riled up and angry instead of staying quiet and afraid. The last remnants of that 'war' effectively disappeared with the crumbling of the Soviet Union in 1989, but by then there was the AIDS scare and the War on Drugs and soon Iraq to keep the mind of John Q. Public occupied.
Okay, enough of the history lesson. Today, socialism is the new word-of-warning being bandied about, at least by the republicans. They are trying their damnedest to get everyone nice and frightened of the idea of socialism, since the general population knows as much about socialism as they to about nuclear physics, or democracy, for that matter. That it has its roots in communism and is practiced in 'liberal European' countries is enough for them. They hear O'really or Hannity utter the word daily in connection with the Obama administration and persons connected to it, and about any attempt at universal health care. Why don't the Repub's support this? Mostly because it doesn't support their political ends, most important of which is to make sure large corporations keep making money hand over fist at the expense of the general population. They aren't afraid of our country turning socialist, it is too steeped in capitalism for that to happen. The men in power do not want the working party to call the shots, because that means they don't get to anymore.
There are already a multitude of 'socialist' programs in the government that have been there for years, ever hear of a thing called Social Security? It's in the damn name, people. Or how about Medicaid? You know those welfare checks your lazy-ass neighbor with six kids and no discernible job cashes every month? Yeah. I would be more worried about the Federal Reserve than I ever would be about the idea of universal health care if I were you. It isn't even a government institution, and it lends the money it creates to our government with interest, every single penny of it. We create money with built in debt, now how fucked-up is that?
I don't have health insurance. If I got hit by a car and was out of work for two months, I would basically be screwed, and send my family spiralling back into debt. Even if I had some insurance, whatever I could afford as a mid-twenties working student, it wouldn't be enough to cover a traumatic injury. Last time I went to the hospital for an injury, I had insurance, and I still had to pay sixty dollars for a tetanus shot, and they wouldn't stitch me up because it had 'been too long' since the injury. Just remember, every time you hear the word 'socialist' or 'socialism,' someone is most likely trying to scare you, not inform you of anything. The longer the drug companies and private hospitals can keep you paying five dollars for an aspirin, and 120 dollars to sit in a waiting room for 45 minutes, on a cold table for 30, just to have five minutes with a doctor who tells you that it's probably nothing and wont even prescribe you anything, all the better for them. Universal health care? Bring it on. I wont dodge the 'socialist' bullet.