Different Day, Same Shit.

"America has got the equivalent of the stage three cancer of socialism because the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in," Akin said, according to the Columbia Daily Tribune.

In the ongoing War on Student Loans™, which itself is an offshoot on the GOP War on Everything That Isn't Laissez-Faire Capitalism or Fundamentalist Christian Conservatism™, House Rep. Todd Akin compared federal student loans to a terminal cancer coursing through the veins and lymph nodes of a bedridden America. As one of three GOP candidates vying for the chance to unseat Senator Claire McCaskill, Akin needs a memorable sound bite for the low-information set to remember him by.

Akin's attack on federal student loans as a socialist device led me to wonder about the genuine meaning of socialism and how conservatives are using the word to tar and feather any remotely helpful federal program that doesn't feed kickbacks to the right conservative interests. The ever-helpful Merriam-Webster dictionary has three definitions of the word for us to work with:

1. Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.
2. A system of society or group living in which there is no private property, or a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.
3. A stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

I'm not a scholar of the works or ideology of Karl Marx, so I won't attempt to delve into the intricacies of Marxist theory or how it relates to economics and so forth. All I know is that the man's mug tends to get conservatives in a tizzy. Ditto for the whole concept of socialism. Seems that anything that involves sharing or doing for everyone else's good gets conservatives all fired up. Republicans play on the fear of Democrats putting paid to the second definition by forcefully expropriating private businesses and properly a la Atlas Shrugged or a shoddy second-tier dictatorship to gain loyal conservative votes. Most Americans don't have that good of a grasp on what the above really means to genuinely understand how they're being played.

Republicans are masters of taking otherwise innocuous words and converting them to four-letter epithets -- just about anyone can see what they've done to the word "liberal." It's gotten to the point where many Democrats are scared shitless to even appear as a dreaded "liberal," instead preferring to trend as close to GOP-lite as possible without changing party mascots. Using "socialism" as a four-letter word to discredit government programs is just one of the many tricks in the GOP magic bag.

It's gotten to the point where "socialism" can be readily defined as any government action that benefits the poor, disadvantaged or minorities. Exceptions include programs that funnel taxpayer money to corporate interests and traditional GOP pork projects -- that's helping out "job creators," "standing up for America," etc,. Basically, anything that does not benefit conservatives can be written off as being "socialist."  Even entire people can be tarred and feathered as being "socialist," as the "socialist Marxist communist Kenyan Usurper in Chief" himself can attest to. In short, if it's against conservative interests and helpful to liberals, it's deemed "socialist."

We've been through this before with the "Red Scare" and communism, but that was only because the Soviet Union was locked at the hip to those words*. Still, it worked out pretty well for Joe McCarthy until he was asked if he had any decency left. "Communism" as a four-letter word hasn't worked as well against China, which practices a nominal name-only form that's closer to what some conservatives really want, which is unfettered capitalism on steroids and beta blockers. Americans were thoroughly conditioned to the binary response of "communist = bad" and today, it's the same for "socialism."

One of the biggest mistakes that liberals and Democrats make is fighting against these transmogrified words, as it only adds credence to how "bad" these words are. When insults are hurled at Republicans and conservatives in general, they go so far as to use them as a badge of honor or a term of endearment. When Dems twist themselves up explaining how their ideas are not "socialist," they wind up buttressing the new meaning given to the word. Not saying that the Dems should accept being "socialist," but it would help if they would just sometimes say "so fucking what?" every once in a while.

As an aside, let's take a closer look at Akin accusing the federal government of getting all up in America's Kool-Aid:

....the federal government is tampering in all kinds of stuff it has no business tampering in...

Of course, until you get to abortion, gay marriage and basically anything that has to do with morality. The federal government is free to mess about in that business, but it must most definitely fuck off when it comes to doing anything that's actually noteworthy, like regulating businesses or making sure rent-seeking corporate interests not have free reign over the nation's economy. You know, that kind of business.

*Funny how the German National Socialists escaped that ignominy. Of course, it helps to have a catchy shortname ("Nazis") and not visibly identify one's self to Marxism. 

I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. [...] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You don’t have it dumped in your lap.

The above quoted belongs to House Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who probably didn't notice (or care to notice) how student tuition has risen over the past decade. Still, you have to admire someone who has the brass ovaries to deliver the most viciously polite form of "fuck you, got mine" to date. Very brassy for a woman who has a minimum of $500,000 in mortgages on two houses, according to her 2010 financial disclosure statements.

States have cut their higher education funding. The federal government's considering cuts to Pell Grants. Colleges everywhere are raising their tuition rates and employment opportunities remain scarce. Unless you luck out and get a scholarship or have your parents/endowment/inheritance/sugar daddy/corporate sponsor helping you out, student loans are your only port of entry on the voyage of college education.

Virginia Ann Foxx graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill back in 1968 with a bachelors degree and attained her Masters degree in 1972. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average cost of a four-year university during 1968-1969 was around $1,245 per year. Adjusted for inflation, that amounts to $7714. Today, it'll cost you $20,660 for a year of full-time study (including room and board) if you're a N.C. resident and over $41,000 if you're not. Meanwhile, Harvard tuition costs add up to $53,000 per year, $36,000 if you cut out room and board. Little wonder some people are walking around with over $200k of student loan debt.

Foxx says she worked her way through school. With the average cost of tuition and the wages offered by most part-time jobs, students who go at it that way will be lucky to pay for food and books. It's possible to cut corners here and there, but it doesn't add up to much. I lucked out with Pell Grants, cheap in-state tuition and cut out the room and board costs by staying close to home for the last two years of college. I also had a part-time job that didn't do much against my overall tuition bill, but it helped with food and books. If you split the apartment rent with roommates, eat beans and rice and refrain from silly shit like iPads, spinning rims* and the like, you'll be able to survive. Barely.

You'll still need student loans for the vast majority of your tuition costs, unless you find spending five years of less-than-part time matriculation at a community college for a two-year associates degree to be more your thing. Not that there's anything wrong with that**.

If Foxx thinks having $200k of student loan debt is unacceptable, then perhaps she could do her part to help lower the cost of college tuition around the country. After all, she happens to chair the House Subcommittee on Higher Education.

* I've seen students take the leftovers of their student loans and buy some of the silliest shit imaginable.
** Most jobs require a bachelors degree, at minimum.

The national economy is still suffering from a failure of balance. Attempts are on-going to make banks and other major players within the financial sector "whole" with billions upon billions of dollars in financial aid. Meanwhile, most Americans find themselves unable to cover a $1000 emergency if need be. Profits are going up while wages and benefits are going down. This is becoming less of a failure of balance and more of one end of the balance scale being cut off with a pair of bolt cutters.

The blame could be laid directly at the feet of the bankers and the government, but more than enough's been done on that end by so many others that it would just feel like an effort in duplication, if not outright plagiarism. Instead, focus will shift onto the average Dick and Janes of America, most of whom seen the economic damage done by a highly unregulated and insanely well-heeled force and perhaps felt it first hand, but can't quite or don't want to comprehend the need for outright revulsion against it.

"Outright revulsion?" No, it's not some commie/socialist/marxist tactic that exhorts equal redistribution of income according to one's need or such tripe. There are a vast number of Americans who can get pissed off at a multi-faceted corporate entity for taking their money, but go doe-eyed the moment they see the CEO driving the latest Reventon or living it up on the yacht with models in tow. This is very much the country of MTV's "Cribs" and "Real Housewives," where people live vicariously through the voyeuristic displays of other people's wealth. Americans may hate their banks, but they still love their money.

Most Americans are not only star-struck and doe-eyed by the wealthy and the trappings of their wealth, but they also see themselves as being wealthy one day. As such, they want all the advantages and breaks bestowed upon the current wealthy to remain in place for when they, the average Dicks and Janes, eventually arrive, if they ever. Of course, they never do, as the wealthy are wont to make sure no one else gets a chance to climb the ladders of extraordinary success.

Meanwhile, average Dick and Jane are too exhausted from working 50 to 80 hour work weeks for a declining salary/wage and little to no benefits to comprehend any of this. They're too busy wondering how to stretch their budgets to cover ever-increasing bills and ever-rising costs of ordinary food and household items to give this any thought. Spending hours on Facebook or plopping themselves down on the couch for 30 to 45 minute respites from their immediate reality saves them from dwelling on how well they're being fucked by groups of people who could care less about their overall well being.

In the end, you really can't get rid of the "soon, I too shall be among ye" mentality most Americans share when attempting to commiserate with the wealthy unless there is either an immediate pain or a long, drawn out process that slowly beats or breeds this attitude out of them. The former is a great depression that finally hits enough Americans in the wallet for them to illicit immediate correction of their current circumstances or else. The latter involves Americans spending three or more generations under an aristocratic oligarchy, where all of the avenues for the average Dick and Jane "striking it rich" are coldly and cruelly cut off, full stop. It's a world where the only wealth floating around will be generational wealth at the hands of the new gilded class and corporate wealth at the hands of multinational corporate concerns. Sadly, the small business owner, a.k.a. "merchant class" will still ignore reminders that he'll never be fit to be a part of the wealthy. At least he'll still be wealthier than his utterly impoverished contemporaries, which gives him a nice big punching bag to wail on out of arrogance and vanity.

In my personal opinion, the worst thing George W. Bush did during his attempts to sooth the national shock of 9/11 was to tell ordinary Americans to "go shopping." From that moment on, consumerism became the balm that soothed the nation's wounds, aside from always being a reason for being as far as many Americans were concerned -- it's been that way ever since the late 1940s. In a race to achieve that dream of "arriving," many Americans tried to "arrive" on credit -- it's how you get "$30k millionaires" living in mass-produced $700k houses bought with $0-down robo-signed mortgages, driving $50k Corvettes and taking vacations financed by adding another $200k worth of debt on top of the mortgage. Not enough people understood that many of the wealthy got where they are today either with ruthless business dealings, careful and calculated long-term investing or a flat-out inheritance. Trying to "arrive" on credit only results in your card being declined at the swanky restaurant, to your unending embarrassment.

I'm not here to place all of the blame on ordinary Americans for this current financial clusterfuck, but to highlight some of the attitudes that played a part in bringing us to where we are.

As an aside, a lot of the debt problems people are being faced with should be solved with debt forgiveness, if only to prevent the reappearance of generational debt and the looming possibility of debtor's prisons and bonded labor being implemented to recoup unpaid debts alongside garnishments. Corporations wouldn't mind seeing debt criminalized if it meant a swift and effective way of pressuring people into working themselves to death to pay back their debts, and a way to gain access to extremely low cost labor via prison labor without having to depend on today's criminal statues. Most people in this country aren't criminals right now, but with the criminalization of debt...

Student loans are a pet peeve of mine, if only the fact I'm paying mine off at this moment. Many will argue that changing the non-dischargeable nature of student loans will open the floodgates to intentional defaults and bankruptcies, but that problem pales in comparison to the inability of graduates to pay their loans back in a reasonable amount of time, the inflationary nature of student loan aid on university tuition and the havoc student loans play on peoples' credit scores. The ability to discharge a student loan based on a strict criteria of conditions and the willingness of the loan recipients to abide by probationary conditions set during the discharge period, with the understanding that future options may be somewhat limited for the next few years could go a long way towards getting people from under that debt. Either that or the U.S. finally wises up and makes secondary and continuing education completely state-funded and free for all Americans. I doubt that latter option will ever make it on any legislative agenda during this century.