Report from the Socialist International Conspiracy

Surely you have heard by now of the imminent socialist takeover of America, and if you find the prospect unlikely, ask yourself: How many socialists do you know who lost millions in the recent stock market crashes? Just as I thought -- none -- and that's not only because you don't know any socialists. The truth is that we, the Socialist International Conspiracy, not only saw this coming, we are the ones who made it happen.

The plan took shape during a particularly intense criticism/self-criticism session at our 2000 annual convention in a booth at an Akron IHOP. We realized that we'd been recruiting no more new members per year than the Green Bay Packers and that, despite all our efforts, more Americans have been taken aboard UFOs than have embraced the historic promise of socialism. So we decided to suspend our usual work of standing on street corners and hissing, "Hey, how'd you like to live in a workers' paradise?" Instead of building socialism, one worker at a time, we would focus on destroying capitalism, hedge fund by hedge fund.

First, we selected a cadre of crusty punks from the streets of Seattle, stripped off their Che T-shirts, suited them up in Armani's and wingtips, and introduced them to the concepts of derivatives and dental floss. Then we shipped them to Wall Street with firm instructions: Make as much money as you can, as fast as you can, and as soon as the money starts rolling in, send it out to make more money by whatever dodgy means you can find -- subprime loans, credit default swaps, pyramid schemes -- anything goes. And oh yes: Spend your own earnings in the most flamboyantly gross ways you can think of -- $10,000 martinis, fountains of champagne -- so as to fan the flames of class resentment.

These brave comrades did far better than we could have imagined, quickly adapting to lives of excess and greed punctuated only by squash games at the Century Club. But we could not have inflicted such massive damage to capitalism if we hadn't also planted skilled agents in high places within the government and various quasi-governmental agencies. When all this is over, Phil Gramm, for example -- the former senator and McCain economics advisor -- will be getting a Hero of Socialism award for his courageous battle against financial regulation. That's the only name I can name at this moment, but I will tell you this: If you happened to have been in a playground in the suburbs of DC any time in the last few years, and noticed an impeccably dressed elderly man poking around under rocks, that was a certain Federal Reserve Chairman, looking for his weekly orders from the central committee.

Things were going swimmingly until about a week ago, when the capitalists suddenly staged a counter-coup. We had thought that the nationalization of the banks would bring capitalism to its knees, but instead, the capitalists were craftily using it to privatize the government. Goldman Sachs, former home of Henry Paulson, has taken the lead, planting its agents so thickly about the erstwhile public sector as to earn the nickname "Government Sachs." Among the former Goldman Sachs operatives now running the country, in addition to Paulson, are the president's chief of staff, the chairman of the New York Fed, the man appointed to take over A.I.G., and the 35-year-old boy wonder selected to oversee the bail-out program.

According to the New York Times, "Goldman supporters" insist there is no "conspiracy" and not a black helicopter in sight -- just a bunch of public-spirited investment bankers sacrificing their normal 8-figure salaries for the good of the nation. But we socialists know a conspiracy when we see one, and some in our ranks are complaining bitterly that as capitalism began to collapse, the bankers seized the life raft that was intended to save the laid-off, the foreclosed-upon, and the exploited masses in general.

Ah well, we socialists still have the election to look forward to. After months of studying the candidates' economic plans, we have determined that one of them, and only one, can be relied on to complete the destruction of capitalism. With high hopes and great confidence, the Socialist International Conspiracy endorses John McCain!

Comments

[Tommy Miles]

I'm a member of the Socialist Party USA, sister organization to Barbara Ehrenreich's Democratic Socialists of America. Are you still a member? of DSA? While I'm happy to see the McCain parody (cause he's just evil), it would be nice If DSA folks at least occasionally mentioned socialism in a context other than parody.

If you are a socialist, this is a prime opportunity to point out that it is a reasonable ideology, with a long storied history in this country, that people around the world are building right now, but which US elites have demonized for the last 70 years.

Merely using this focus to point out the obvious -- that Obama is no where NEAR being a socialist -- seems a wasted opportunity, especially cause everyone at Huffington Post knows this already.

[ohmercy]

It always blows my mind that people call Obama the most liberal member of Congress and that no one ever challenges this myth. I've been amazed throughout the primary and election at those supporters who seem to believe that he is some great far left liberal who will bring us into liberalism. He is a left leaning centrist- fine, certainly better than a right leaning one. What I thought was very ironic was that HRC, while being castigated and called every name in the book, accused of being a neo-con and a Bush clone and just generally demonized--- according to independent watchdog sites that analyzed voting records, bills supported, legislation brought up etc. is more liberal and considered far left! Don't people do research?

Socialism seems reasonable to me--- As it is we have a hybrid but the only ones who really benefit are the wealthy and the corporate capitalist structure.
YIKES- That needs to be turned around.

[USAFree1]

It's not socialism; it's fascism. Check your dictionary.

[degenerate1991]

Neocons are actually fairly liberal (domestically speaking). McCain is just a grumpy old corporatist; Obama is a more sophisticated corporatist.

Socialism sounds reasonable but the reality is: there will always be elites, be they of the party or the corporation.

Capitalism simply gives people more incentive to be productive.

[BillCarson]

>Don't people do research?

It's been my experience that for the most part the answer is, NO.

[ohmercy]

PS
Can you give me a quick tutorial on the DSA and the Socialist Party USA?

or point me to a site?
Since I've been calling myself a Progressive Socialist for some time now maybe I need to look more deeply.
And do some of that research I keep talking about.
;-)
Thanks.

[suec03]

Wikipedia has some good information on different socialist groups and tendencies.

[AxelDC]

We have a Republican President nationalizing the banks and buying up Wall Street, and we are supposed to be afraid of the OTHER party as socialists?

Republicans seem to be offering us socialism without national healthcare or affordable university educations.

[redsongia]

All this criticism that Obama's tax plan "redistributes wealth" over looks an important fact:

There's no wealth to redistribute. The small hike on the wealth is going to go directy towards paying for the last 8 years.

[ohmercy]

HA!
Love it.

I thought it was Hillary's fauult---

It's always a Clinton's fault.
;-)

[MatoSka]

It is good to have a good laugh in the middle of the disaster that we find ourselves. It is better to recognize the political and economic impacts of what we re living through. "Socialism" is not on the horizon. Neither is world peace or economic security and prosperity. Hopefully, after Obama's election, people with the insight an intellect of Barbara Ehrenreich will provide similar reviews of the tasks needed for the reconstruction of our public infrastructure and the development of a green decentralized economy and not continue to be dazzled by the brilliance of a first rate campaigner.

The left has been sacked of its historical social base through its own ineptitude and presumptions. Writers and scholars can provide critiques, but they can never deliver change by themselves. Obama will make a difference, how much of one remains to be seen. There is little that the model of he New Deal can provide for the path forward. After all, we also now face peak oil, global warming, a huge budget deficit and globalization. Increasing New Deal programs like Social Security Incomes and Unemployment Comensation are a FIRST step in addressing loss of retirement funds and joblessness.

I will be looking for how these issues are addressed by President Obama, not as a critic, but as someone who is already falling through the cracks and will not be caught in any safety net as it stands.

[nemosnemesis]

Don't believe this tripe... It was 1999 at the Waffle House!

[JTyroler]

LOL - great article. Akron IHOP, huh?

[redsongia]

I was taken aboard a UFO...does that make me a socialist?

wait...I don't get it.

[KansasWrangler]

It is interesting that McCain has decided to take on Obama's economic policies calling them "socialism" when one of McCain's heroes is the Progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt. George Will has an interesting slant this in a September Washington Post column

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/03/AR2008100303306.html

Teddy Roosevelt was himself derided for promulgating socialist ideas such as income taxation and wanting to introduce programs to help the poor. By 1912 he was almost a pariah for advocating ideas regarding Nationalism and Socialism. How many of these ideals does Mr. McCain adhere to? I know I have a few problems discerning them since he has changed positions so often in the last 26 years. or as analytical Marxists know, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullshit.

[Mannock]

I was thinking about that since I heard him laud TR. This is a president who recommended a national health care system, unlike McCain. It would be like me admiring Ronald Reagan because he was in a movie with Ginger Rogers and Doris Day. Like his running mate, does this guy not read?

[HuntedDown]

I guess I'm just confused. What do you call nationalizing the health care system? The banking system? Centralized federal law enforcement overriding state authority? Monopolized media conglomerates in bed with the gov't regulators that are supposed to regulate them?

Great American Socialists:
Bush I
Clinton I
Bush II

Now we have a choice between the extreme leftist Obama and the vaguely leftist McCain.

Yeah...cho­ice...

[ohmercy]

OOPS, I mean humane. (nationalized healthcare)
As well as the Christian/Spiritual thing to do.

It really amazes me how the right wing with their fake morals scream about immorality, want to get in everybodys personal business, limit, find fault, stare and point fingers and shout "Christian Nation" but honor none of Christ's teachings.

"Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in...

Old [lady] judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony."

[HuntedDown]

So just give them all fishes...?

[ijgibson]

If you think of the Bushes as socialists an believe McCain is 'vaguely leftist' you must also believe that Ghengis Khan was a pinko.

I'm surprised that anyone that for to the right hasn't already fallen off the edge of his flat earth !

[HuntedDown]

No, Ghengis was just another "Community Organizer"

[becomingchloe]

it sounds like you're talking more about communism than socialism.

socialism, like capitalism, is an economic system. Communism, like democracy, is a system of government.

Socialism does not necessarily always go hand in hand with communism just as capitalism does not always go hand in hand with democracy.

[degenerate1991]

Communism is a philosophy more than a viable economic system. Socialism is a system of governance which commands the economy for the government's (ostensibly the peoples') purposes. The economy under socialism is merely another branch of government.

[SMAGGIE]

I can attest to the Naturalization of health care as is in Canada. I have many friends who live in Canada, at least in the summertime, and I have known that they do not get the best medical care. If they want to see a doctor and have surgery, they may have to wait for weeks and maybe months. When they come to the US for over, I think it is 60 days, their insurance cost them an arm and a leg. As for me, NO naturalizational healthcare!

[momology]

Naturalization? Oh and by the way it often takes months to get care right now right here. And expensive profit making insurance companies often override the doctor's recommendations and deny care. I had a friend whose newly acquired health insurance tried to claim his burst appendix was a pre existing need . As if he could sit around with a ruptured appendix for 3 weeks ... he would have died of sepsis.Mos­t Canadians wold never trade their system for ours.

[boing007]

SMAGGIE

I can attest to the Naturalization of health care as is in Canada. I have many friends who live in Canada, at least in the summertime, and I have known that they do not get the best medical care. If they want to see a doctor and have surgery, they may have to wait for weeks and maybe months. When they come to the US for over, I think it is 60 days, their insurance cost them an arm and a leg. As for me, NO naturalizational healthcare!

That's because socialized health care has been gutted in the last twenty year or so by successive right-leaning governments that want a two-tier system of health care.

[stayinsouth1981]

Your post gave me a headache just trying to figure out what you wanted to say. WTheck was all that about?

[11907281]

As a Canadian I would like to say, you are willfully spreading falsehoods about something you know nothing about. It's a myth perpetuated by uninformed people like yourself, occasional cases happen but the same goes for the for profit system you have.
Pick up "What's the matter with Kansas" if you want to learn more about why you gleefully vote against your own interests.

[proreality]

Is it irony that the idiots running around shouting about socialism can not comprehend fascism?

[LanceS]

20 years of taking wealth from the middle class and running up the debt to give it to the top 2% of Americans is called free enterprise according to the GOP. They have gone from acting like the pre-revolution French Aristocracy to acting like the Facist party of 1930's Germany.

[RobinLandseadel]

[Voice of Nixon Robot from "We're all Bozos on this Bus"]

"MMMMMMMMany people ask me, 'what about the job displacement situation in the city of the future?'

Well, trust us to be there, because if we are, we won't have to answer questions like THAT anymore."

[BannedInBoston]

It's no accident that the name of Nixon's closest friend was Bebe Rebozo....

[Krikkit]

OMG, is that Firesign Theater?

[guillotine]

Thanks, Robin!! Where's Firesign been, when we've needed them so?
None of what's happened in the recent past should have surprised us; in certain quarters, it was planned for and worked toward for so long; it just needed the inattention-- the profound distraction and misleading-- of the American public to come to pass.

[ohmercy]

YEP, that is what out of control (deregulated?) capitalism is about- Its also what "spreading Democracy" is about as well.
keep everybody so enraptured with consuming stuff, throwing it away and acquiring more stuff- going into debt to get stuff- working hard to get any stuff- longing for stuff that everybody else seems to have-

Madison Ave. employs shrinks to come up with what keeps people shopping- seems to be the patriotic thing to do now adays... Palin says that paying higher taxes for the rich isn't patriotic?
Why not, they are rich because the citizens made them rich by getting their stuff or by being manipulated in some way into buying into thie "idea of the American Dream which has been devolved into getting stuff.

All this housing garbage is part and parcel. The whole ownership, getting land grew out of spreading across the continent, trying to grab it all and settle it. Who says everybody needs a house?
What is wrong with apartments? (if rent wasn't so astronomical these days- greed-) I remember when I was a kid/teenager and young adult the idea that was the norm, that was taught was 1/4 of your monthly salary went for rent, 1/4 for savings.

now people pay at least half their salary on rent- often closer to 3 weeks for the working poor.
It is disgusting.

What the hell are taxes for if not to benefit the citizens?

Are we not our "brother's keepers"?

[Ohg]

McCain is still playing by old rules. Obama changed the rules two years ago. McCain cannot figure out how to play on Obama's home court. ..........­..........­..........­..

http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/10/21/the-prophecy-of-barack-obama/

[cjgnew]

I liked your piece! But I'm no sure I got it right. So, the real socialists would much rather have McCain elected than Obama since McCain would do more to destroy capitalism than the real socialists could ever do. When put this way, it's clearer to me. And I think you are absolutely right. Who is the better capitalist? The one who used public financing to finance his election or the one who dared to go boldly where no one had gone before. The record clearly shows that the socialists' interest would actually be better served under McCain since as a chief proponent of deregulation McCain has done more damage to capitalism than Obama ever did. If in doubt, check out what has happened to our economy in the past eight years?

Carlos Jean-Gilles
Saint Louis, MO

[ERose]

Here in Portland, OR the local power players just got their cut of the $700,000,000,000 bailout $. It's $19.someth­ing million dollars. The local media, in their wisdom, figure the average defaulted home's asking price is $250K. So the $19 mil is to be used for the City of Portland to buy up foreclosed homes in neighborhoods "at risk" for an abundance of forelcosed and abandoned homes. So figure 70 or so homes, out of thousands. They can also use the money to fix them up. But not one word about what happens to them after the city buys them. Sell them? To whom? Rent them? Make them all half-way houses?

So at this point I'd have to agree the government's been privatized. I am a Realtor, and I am seeing evidence of nafarious dealings between the institutions that administrate foreclosed properties and the few select brokerages who are hired to market foreclosed properties­.....a few elite agents are receiving dozens of commissions per. Gotta know there is money changing hands there.....­and kickbacks are supposed to be completely illegal in our industry. This activity may seem like a small thing until you multiply it by the thousands of foreclosed properties nationwide.

[ohmercy]

Oh yeah, the Government has been privatized, right down to our elections- voting machines! (saw a documentary on the 200 and 2004 voter fraud- amazing-)

We outsource everything that our taxes are supposed to be paying for.
This whole idea of small government the Conservatives talk about is a myth, it costs far more to the tax[payer.
Just look at the Iraq war for instance.
Our troops get paid a pittance, the private mercenaries get paid huge amounts of money, eat better, have better equipment and the owners make a big, big profit- who pays for that disparity?
We do.

So why is "small government" a better way? Who is it better for? The people who get the contracts that's who.
ugh.