THE LEFT, AS VIEWED FROM THE FAR RIGHT

     I am a proud member of the political left. I believe that guns are a too effective way for people to kill people. I believe some gun owners are unhinged, when those gun owners identify with the right wing, most of those gun owners are unhinged. I believe universal healthcare is a social good. The Covid 19 pandemic should be proof of that statement. I believe climate change is an existential threat and we have waited too long to address it because the rightwing has called it a hoax. I believe we are close to viewing coal, oil, and natural gas in the way we viewed whale oil at the turn of the 20th century. I believe the solution to these and many other social dilemma's is to tax the very rich. We did it after WWII and it worked pretty well. In addition, the people who have such large fortunes that they can purchase elections for compliant legislators, are using a small portion of those large fortunes to take away the consent that we, the governed were bequeathed in the Declaration of Independence. 
    I am not the problem. The rightwing refers to anyone left of Atilla the Hun as far left. This is from people who have veered so far to the right that they are afraid to be seen left of the very tightly controlled right. Given the unobservable mental acumen of the rightwing base, I doubt if they could describe the difference between the center, left, and far left. As Mark Twain once said: "The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts." 
     Now that I have established my bonafides, let me establish, for those with the intelligence to understand, that I am farther left than most of my party. This is one of the many things about the Democratic party and democracy, that rightwingers don't understand, that it is okay to disagree with your party or your government on one or many topics. Democracy, you see is not democratic when it is restricted in its practice. While we on the left have adjusted to having differences among ourselves, the rightwing has become intolerant of anyone who steps out of line. This should not surprise anyone capable of rational thought (which excludes most of the rightwing). Extreme conservatives sooner or later find themselves butting up against totalitarianism. Power to them, is an amphetamine. 
     Could the same be said about socialism, whom many on the left get accused of being? Perhaps. Communism was an offshoot of Marxism or socialism, so in that respect, yes. The Soviet Union had a legislature, The Congress of Socialists. Its successor body, the Federal Assembly is the legislative body today. These bodies were rubber stamps for the ruling executive branch. There is an election for these bodies but the candidates are selected by the leadership before they are allowed to run. It is not unheard of for dissidents to meet mysterious ends. Elections are not a fair representation of the electorate in these bodies, somewhat like the way Republicans prefer to hold elections in the United States, though even harsher. Socialism and Capitalism, in other words, can be autocratic. Most of us on the left prefer Democratic Socialism, that is a representative body elected freely in fair elections. For a while we had Democratic Capitalism, but that has been chipped away by the rightwing over many decades, because the New Deal, put in place by FDR was so wildly popular. It was also wildly successful in rebuilding the economy after the Depression. The Democratic party has long held a reform wing. At one time that was the Northern Democrats, who integrated the party. More recently it has been the Paul Wellstone wing until his untimely (and suspicious) plane crash in 2001. The latest iteration is led by Alexandra Ocasio Cortez and her colleagues on the squad. They give us leftist Democrats hope for the future and make Republicans squirm everytime they respond to one of their insulting tirades with a successful bon mot. The farther right the rightwing moves, the more extreme the centrists of either party seem.

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