“Democratic Socialism will kill you, take your pets and kill your doctor too! Bernie Sanders wants you in a gulag!” That’s basically what sitting US senator Marco Rubio was trying to say in a truly bizarre cell phone video posted to Twitter today. In the video, which was filmed in a moving car somewhere, I assume, in the barren wilds of Florida, Rubio decries the looming threat of democratic socialism and the terrible ways Bernie Sanders and his ilk want to take away your freedoms …
Democratic Socialism sounds benign. It’s not. It’s built on Marxism. pic.twitter.com/VoFZlkSIgT
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 24, 2020
First off, dude. Calm down. You couldn’t wait to, I don’t know, get to your office? You couldn’t make an ad or tweet with words like normal politicians do when they want to spew useless platitudes or engage in some good old fashioned fear-mongering? What’s worse than the method of this though is the stupidity of the content.
Now, Marxism and socialism and communism have been dog-whistle buzzwords for the right for nearly a century. Extremists from Joseph McCarthy to Ronald Regan have used the threat of Marxism in various forms to attack detractors and consolidate power. America fought proxy wars and shadow campaigned against communism across the globe—and at home—all in the name of “freedom.”
But the thing is … democratic socialism is not marxism. It is not communism or fascism, it is the simple idea that the government should support people fully. We already live in a society where the government takes our money to do things for the public good, things like … roads and transportation. Most of that social safety net that the government provides is generally accepted as good, and yet the boogieman of “marxism” is resurrected whenever politicians advocate for extending that safety net to do things like, IDK, make it so people don’t have to choose between going bankrupt and dying.
(Also that same social safety pays for the cops that would be well within their rights to pull Rubio over for distracted driving and using his phone in a moving vehicle, which is not allowed in Florida.)
Here’s the thing, Marco. You have no right to whine about Marxism taking away freedoms so long as you support a President who continually threatens the freedom of the press, as long as you fail to enact meaningful run reform and cling to the second amendment at the expense of children’s freedom to attend schools without the fear of being shot.
No Republican has the right to scare their constituents with the threat of someone or something “taking away their freedoms” when there are still children in cages on the border and while the state has weaponized incarceration and thrives on our military-industrial complex.
So with all our hearts, we say to you, Marco Rubio: please put away the phone and drive responsibly.
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