Chairman Donald and the red scare

Donald Trump and his followers are crying wolf again, trying to scare Americans that Democrats are communists. They’re even trying it out on Rob Sand and Josh Turek, Democrats running for Iowa governor and senator, respectively. That might have meant something 60 years ago, but today most people have no idea what he’s talking about. The Big Old Bad Soviet Union fell in 1991.

The other problem is that Trump is trying to equate communism with socialism. They’re different philosophies. Communism is the state owning everything and the people work for the state. That’s North Korea and the old Soviet Union. Socialism is the state providing basic needs like healthcare, education and housing while leaving people free to live on their own through free enterprise. Socialism is popular in Europe, particularly the northern countries of Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. Surveys show they are the happiest nations on earth.

The United States is capitalist, where you’re on your own. Over time socialism has integrated Americans’ lives, and most of us like it.

Social Security, after all, is probably the most popular government program in American history. It was devised in the 1930s by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his New Deal that rescued the nation from the Great Depression. It gave senior citizens like yours truly the opportunity to live respectable lives in our golden years after a lifetime of work. We wouldn’t be a burden on our families — at least financially.

Socialism is woven into rural life in Iowa. Farmers couldn’t exist without it. They formed grain cooperatives to market their crops. Power cooperatives brought electricity to the farms and telephone cooperatives brought communication with the greater world. Farmers formed county mutual insurance associations to lessen the risk from fires and floods. Federal crop insurance at reduced rates saved them when drought, bugs, disease and weather threatened to wipe them out year after year. Government payouts rescued them when they were used as pawns in international trade disputes with those nasty old Soviets 50 years ago and the Chinese today.

Socialism doesn’t just help farmers. King’s Pointe was built by the citizens of Storm Lake as a community-owned waterpark resort to provide us recreation as well as revenue. Alta, Spencer, Algona and hundreds of other communities across the Midwest are powered by public electric utilities that flourish alongside private generators like Mid-American and Alliant.

So when Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist mayor of New York City, advocates for public ownership of grocery stores in parts of his city that are not served by supermarkets, it’s not much different than Storm Lake opening up a resort in competition with other hotels in town.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the most well-known socialist in America, espouses such wild ideas as everyone deserves a good job with good pay, and all Americans should have the right to healthcare. Crazy stuff.

Folks are attracted to socialism because some of these ideas seem pretty good. And because we keep getting told that if we vote for regular old politicians, they will solve all of our problems on “Day 1.” And they never do. We get the same old lies and the same high prices and the same old wars that kill and maim our young people.

Communism in its pure form doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Some of our greatest institutions are communist. Take the Catholic Church, for example. The current pope, Leo XIV, is a member of the Augustinian order of priests, who turn over all their earthly possessions to the order when they join. As did Leo’s predecessor, Francis, a Jesuit. You may have heard of the Jesuits, an order devoted to teaching. They run some of the top universities in the world. Creighton in Omaha is one of them. So are Marquette in Milwaukee and Georgetown in Washington, D.C. They produce great scholars and great basketball players. Religious orders take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. They’re communists, living in a community that owns all property jointly.

So are the Presentation Sisters who taught us Cullens at St. Mary’s. And the Franciscans who taught at Fonda OLGC and Early Sacred Heart schools. Yeah, Sister Pauline, our third grade teacher, was quite a radical.

Iowa’s Amana Colonies and Amish are woven into the fabric of Iowa culture.

Communism and socialism are only bad when the leadership is bad. That happened in places like Russia in the 1920s and North Korea in the 1950s. Eventually they crumbled under their own weight of greed and oppression.

Ironically, while Trump and his minions rail against communism, they are taking ownership of private property themselves. Trump demanded 10% ownership of computer chip giant Intel and got a 15% cut of revenue from another chip maker, Nvidia. After the U.S. overthrew the government of Venezuela earlier this year, we seized that nation’s oil industry. I’m not sure that’s how capitalism is supposed to work. We’re supposed to be championing the free market system, not government control.

We’ll talk some more next week, Comrades.