mwguy

Think about it like this. Most people think boy scouts in the US are a good thing right? Let's say we didn't have boy scouts. And some guy said, "Hey, Nazi Germany had boy scouts and that did a lot of good things, and some bad things. Let's make something like that, but not do the bad stuff". Using your logic, you would say, "This guy is a Nazi because boy scouts are a Nazi thing and this will lead the US to become fascist and authoritarian"

What if the guy trying to set up the Boy Scouts regularly called themselves a fascist? Bernie, AOC and others in that sphere have "leaned in" to the Socialist label. Using your logic if a Fascist was like those "Nazi's Boy Scouts did good shit we should do that same shit." Would you consider it reasonable to worry about that movement becoming more widely fascist?

I mean, if you can explain how single payer health care and literacy programs lead to authoritarian outcomes. I am very interested in hearing about that because I can't see it.

Remember when Bernie was the Senate's overviewer of the VA, the largest Single Payer Healthcare system in North America? And he called reports given to his office of the wait list scandal (where the VA would internationally and systemically let vets die without care to avoid caring for them) a right wing conspiracy and dismissed them. Which prolonged the time before the scandal was dealt with.

That immediate belief that "things that go against my world view are anti-socialist conspiracies" is exactly the pattern that causes the societal decline in Socialist societies. And that's the mindset that causes those societies to jail and punish people bringing complaints or opposing views rather than attempting to improve their societies.

So it's not, single payer healthcare causes authoritarian societies. It's centralized control of formerly private production administered by people with a Socialist mindset causes increasingly authoritarian societies.

Biden won 92% of the black vote last time. The question is will this change the minds of the last 8% to vote Harris or the next 8% to flip to Trump.

So your argument is:

Yes Bernie, the defacto thought leader of the "normal" left wing in the United States, has offered wide support for the USSR, Venezula, Cuba and other Socialists dictatorships; but he's never explicitly said that we should become authoritarians; he's just supported the policies, outcomes and goals of the nations that left wing authoritarians have built. So it's completely unreasonable for Centrits in America to worry that he'd support a left wing authoritarian?

Movements don't rise from nothing. His first supporters were card carrying members of the Italian Socialist Party. "Kicked out" of a party you replace is a weird way to say it.

Here's one of many stories discussing his 1980s era praise of the USSR. I suggest working the google for more, plentiful links.

Sander's support for the USSR was pretty broad, full throated and unqualified. And he was very vocal about it for a long time. It wasn't until a decade and a half after the USSR fell as he became a Presidential candidate that he started to walk back his support.

In the modern era he has had similar support for Casto era Cuba and Chavez era Venezuela.

Listening to the far left to see if you like leftist ideas it like listening to the far right to see if you like conservative ideas.

I don't know if listening to prominent politicians like Bernie Sanders who is the defacto leader of the left wing movement in the US qualifies as talking to someone who is "far left". He seems pretty representative of that movement.

Yet here you are equivocating.

Even if they WERE all guilty, torture would still be cruel and dehumanizing treatment that is never acceptable under any circumstances.

So take hostages is your conclusion?

This is literally the playbook definition of an autocracy. He should be judged by the actions he took and shouldn’t be above the law like the supreme court decided but judging the voters is crazy

He's not above the law. Congress Impeached him for it and 57 Senators (less than the 67 needed) voted to convict (including 7 Republicans). But the Democrats rushed it for political reasons. The Nixon Impeachement process took 9 months and it had several hearings evidentiary and others that gave Republicans who didn't and couldn't support impeachment at the start of the process justify impeachment to their constituents. Impeachment is a political process, and Dems politicked like morons.

Almost like Fascism was a branch of Italian Socialism.

Evaluating groups based on their goals rather than their methods is a problem. The Far Left wants everyone's needs met, but historically (and even today in places like China) end up putting a bunch of people in camps and gulags to achieve that goal, squashing dissents to meet that goal, and banning the practicing of religions to meet that goal, kill political dissidents to meet that goal.

If the Left wants to win those Centrists they need to assert their belief in individual rights; they need to disavow the Socialists and Communists of the past and present who implemented those horrible things. When you have prominent American leftists like Bernie on record praising Venezuela; praising the USSR etc... it makes them appear equivalent.

We're not morons. We don't have to pretend that people held by Israel are universally innocent. I'm sure there's an innocence rate just like any justice system; but a significant portion of those people did criminal things.