Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
I LOVE contradictions. They make life fascinating. You make a good point--maybe that's why I love Bernie.
(One of my favorite books that survived The Purge was Living with Contradiction by Esther de Wall: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Contra...0819217549--as a Catholic, it might interest you.)

As for socialism.. socialism is a broad term. You can have failures (Cuba, Venezuela) and you can have successes (Scandinavia). Sanders' difficulty was/is explaining what American Democratic socialism would look like. If it wound up looking in America like a bigger version of the city he led, Burlington, it would be a success. The younger people get it. They are not hog-tied to past perceptions. They are more open to a world where the few don't benefit at the expense of the many. They realize "Trickle-down economics" only trickles down so far. They feel that uncoupling health insurance from employer benefits is good for the employer and the employee. Justice is still not served in large swaths of our citizenry.

Bernie has survived the generation gap and the status quo and has gone very far in both campaigns to point out that as great as we are, we can still do better.
I doubt Cuba would have been such a failure if we hadn't relentlessly sanctioned them over everything possible. We treated them like the scourge of the universe instead of the minor player they were.

In my opinion, Democratic socialism combines the best of two systems into one that works for everyone. Unlike our current kakistocracy.