The 2008 presidential election was a fun time. I remember when some of my friends updated their Facebook statuses: "If Obama gets elected, we will become socialist. My grandmother lived in a socialist nation and it was bad. Obama better not get elected." Either my friends were doing their best to influence the opinions of others using the stigma of socialism, or else they themselves were duped into believing what they wrote by the Republican designation of Obama's tax plans, health care plans, and his moderate/liberal agenda as socialism. Either way, the Republican designation of Obama's agenda as socialism was a clever (if underhanded) smear. Words, like socialism, and symbols carry stigma, associations, connotations, and allusions that will drive people to think in a certain way, even if they are unsure of what the words actually mean.
Obama is now president. Does the United States now run under a socialist economic model? Or, since some people probably associated socialism with the Soviet Union, has the United States become like the Evil Empire and adopted a totalitarian political model? If the answer to either question is yes, you may want to pick up a dictionary [or use Google] and look up the definitions to one or more of the words I have used, and then you too can begin to pick up on the truth and fiction of political struggles. It should have been obvious that the United States would not turn into the United Soviet Socialist States due to a single presidential election, especially considering that the president is not a unilaterally authoritarian figure in our society. So why were we worked up so much over the word socialism? Because, as a society, many of us don't understand the intricacies of what is being talked about in politics. So when we hear something we understand (or think we understand), like "Socialism," we jump on it. Socialism, evil, bad, hate. Politicians take advantage of this tendency of ours. And so, I am creating this blog to illuminate some of these language issues in American politics.
I am Albert Xiao. I am a senior in highschool. I am not a political genius. I am a guy with a dictionary and the desire to clean up the mud slung in the political rhetoric of today.
