The wrong forum, but maybe the right audience and needs to be said.

[rickgthf]

This is wrong forum but maybe the right audience and needs to be said.  Two months ago when it looked like Sanders might just be the Democratic nominee, trump, the trump campaign, the GOP and Fox News embarked on a very concerted deliberate campaign to villainize  "socialists".  It was so blatant, so obvious and so vicious that it was almost comical.

  Now, suddenly, two months later, for the second time in ten years, this republican government is totally embracing a "socialist" response to an economic emergency.  It's literally breathtaking in scope, the government is going to just hand out money to both individuals and companies.  Heaven forbid we have socialized medicine until suddenly we do.

   I understand why it may be necessary, but the dishonesty of these people is simply amazing.  Meanwhile, trump is deliberately villainizing the Chinese for the virus, blaming it on their culture.  Come on people, was our culture responsible for the 1918 flu which originated in Kansas?

  And it turns out that back when trump tell everybody that this virus was going to peter out in the spring, Rep. Senator Frist, a doctor with experience with H1N1 was telling his private audience of campaign contributors that it was going to get "bad, really bad".  What's a matter, Senator Frist, you couldn't walk down Penn. Ave and tell trump the truth, make him listen?

  I'm not a socialist but I think it important to point out just how disingenuous some of these people can be.

[sdholloway56]

I commented on the same in Forum a while back.

The hypocrisy, mendacity and general bad faith of those people knows no bounds.

[WCMO]

They are looking at what was done 2008-2009 and post 9-11, perhaps not as much looking at what actually worked or was actually necessary, and then whatever happens needs to get thru the House of Representatives.  It's like asking for $2 billion to fight covid19, and the House passing $8 billion, or whatever it was.

[sw363535]

First point.  Honesty  In the US the 1918 flu epidemic was first discovered among military personnel--- my wifes father was a military MD working in europe in 1918.  They treated it there before he came home to Kansas.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm

CDC documents ---Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919.  In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918.

The US had an estimated 650K deaths,  The world had an estemated 50 million deaths.  Lets not blame kansas for the start of that epidemic when the rest of the world was a war torn mess of refugees and death.... without antibiotics a pandemic had an open door.  Not to mention the US had just immigrated millions of poor from europe.  The worlds population turnover was massive.  But I can see that you just have a need to blame Trump.

2nd point  Dishonesty  --  The US has been Solidly Socialist in practice for several decades...  Probably from the point of the civil rights act of 1964, we have been working on solving social problems from the federal level and bloating the bureaucracy while ignoring responsibilities that shaped our country prior to that time. (Monopoly Laws being most obvious right now.  Congress has been facilitating the concentration of wealth in international Corporations.)  Get big or we will crush you in regulations.  the demise of small town main street businesses.

2016 was the revolt of the voters against overbearing socialism.......... .. This is the 4th attempt by socialism to overthrow the will of the voters since 2016.  This time riding on a virus.  Socialism won out in Russia during the flu epidemic.  Maybe history knows where this is going.  Where will we immigrate to?

I don't like it when you and I (we) are pigeon holed by the handcuffs of appropriateness.  I dont think this forum was intended for deeper thoughts...... but there is no other subject affecting farming more now than the clash of ideologies in the political world highlited by the inefficiency of socialist bureaucracies ---- ours and China's are carrying some serious responsibility, and should.

I appreciate your call for accuracy.

[sdholloway56]

Objectively speaking, the decline of the middle class has a perfect curve fit with the decline of "socialism" since 1981- a couple of centrist D POTUSes (with R Congresses for 12 of 16 years) notwithstanding.

We have- or did until very very recently- the highest level of wealth and income in out history. But there has been a giant sucking sound as it has headed to the top.

A funny kind of socialism?

[sw363535]

Congress spends and makes the laws and is more intrusive on personal rights--- that has not peaked........ not presidents..... socialism always needs a scapegoat.

[rickgthf]

From:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6218637/ , The influenza of 1918 Evolutionary perspectives in a historical context, US National Lib. of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

Quote: "The influenza epidemic occurred in at least three waves, as visualized in Europe and America. The first wave appeared in the spring of 1918, in a well-documented outbreak at a military base in the farm state of Kansas. From there it spread with American troops throughout the nation and overseas on crowded trains and troop ships. It moved quickly through the congested military camps of Europe and on to east and south."

The genetics of the 1918 influenza have been investigated pretty well,   Whatever your cousin's wife said, it started in Kansas, most probably due to the mixing of influenzas from strains circulating in the rural South and urban North in the  military training camps. 

[rickgthf]

Not to belabor the point but I was being cynical,  the kind of socialism practiced by the republicans is not a real "socialism;  rather capitalism with the trappings of "socialism" when it suits them.  In that sense, the current republican capitalism is more like the  capitalism of the USSR during the '50's and '60's, a capitalism of the Communist Party with the trappings of "communism".

[sdholloway56]

privatize profit, socialize loss

[lsc76cat]

Kind of depends on which source you want to believe.

It is what makes the internet a 2 edged sword.  Multiple info sources are a must!!

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-scienc...

https://www.history.com/news/why-was-the-1918-influenza-pandemic-called-the-spanish-flu

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/1918-pandemic-history.htm