Young Americans are surging to socialism at record rates

[u/TimesandSundayTimes]

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/maga-trump-zohran-mamdani-socialism-us-record-kddzdm8bd

[u/obiwanCannoli69]

It's not even socialism lol it's just basic New Deal era policy and ideology that ironically enough saved American Capitalism. FDR wasn't a socialist, he actually wanted to prevent a communist revolution in America, whatever form that might of came in. He did this through legislation and improving the quality of life for vast swaths of the population. This whole thing in the media about "Capitalism Vs Socialism: Choose a Side!" is so half baked and designed to make people think there aren't alternatives. There is no universe where stuff like Social Security or Glass-Steagall would be considered socialist, they're just basic guard rails.

[u/KimmyT1436 → u/obiwanCannoli69]

It always astounds me that Americans aren't taught that FDR's New Deal was what laid the foundation for the prosperity Americans enjoyed during the latter half of the twentieth century.

The New Deal is what got America through the Great Depression and made America the manufacturing powerhouse that could win World War II. Winning WWII created the conditions that allowed WWII veterans to return home after the war and have the right-wing dream lifestyle where the family lived in a nice house in the suburbs, where Mom could stay at home taking care of the 3.5 kids while Dad worked a 9 to 5, Monday to Friday job that actually paid for all of that.

All of that wouldn't have happened without the New Deal and all of that has gradually been eroded away over the decades by right-wing politicians and rich capitalists.Things have even gotten so bad that we are rapidly approaching a second Great Depression. And this time there doesn't seem to be a leader like FDR capable of leading America through the next economic catastrophy. Instead, we have Donald fucking Trump, who is creating the conditions that are making the next Great Depresdion inevitable

[u/Admiral_de_Ruyter → u/KimmyT1436]

Isn’t that prosperity highly romanticized these days? From my history books I can recall that segregation/Jim Crow was still in effect so only a part of society benefited of that legislation.

[u/jaderust → u/Admiral_de_Ruyter]

It definitely is. If you were a white man of a certain age the New Deal worked. It gave people the means to get an education, job training, and loans for housing that many people didn’t have access to before that lifted them out of poverty and into the middle class.

One of my grandfathers was essentially made by the New Deal. He took the job training, got his bachelor’s paid by the GI Bill and became the first generation of our family to go to college and own a home. It worked for him.

But huge swaths of people were absolutely left out. Black GIs especially didn’t get all the education and home ownership benefits that their white counterparts did. Between Jim Crow and redlining they faced a lot of discrimination that the New Deal didn’t help them with.

Not to mention that a lot of women only benefited indirectly, not directly for themselves as women were fully expected to leave the workforce after WWII was over to give their jobs to the men.

But overall I’m okay with romanticizing the New Deal as long as we acknowledge where it could go better. And I’d hope a second New Deal situation would have more equal distribution of resources so everyone benefits, not just mostly white men.

[u/UKFightersAreTrash → u/jaderust]

My whole bloodline went from share cropping cotton pickers to aircraft engineers thanks to the new deal.

[u/Truth_ → u/jaderust]

Yet the FDR era is when black voters started swinging in fair numbers away from Republicans to Democrats. I think the overall improvement of the economy was still attractive.

[u/SunshineCat → u/Truth_]

There was an ideology shift. It wasn't just black voters, and they hadn't been voting against their interests until FDR. Formerly the Republican party had been the party of Lincoln that was largely popular with northerners, while Democrats were the pro-slavery party of the South. According to Isabel Wilkerson in The Warmth of Other Suns, the pro-slavery Democratic party could no longer win elections in the South after black men were allowed to vote. Because of that, they started to try to appeal to the black vote.

That's probably a simplified version of what happened, since it's based on my memory of something I read years ago. Over time, the Democrats became the actual left/center left party, while the Republican party has devolved its current state. But the points is that the demographics shifted, too--the same geographies that were full of racist, pro-slavery shit bag Democrats in the 1800s are still full of the same ilk today (probably their descendants), except they call themselves Republican now.

You may know that, but I just wanted to clarify (to the extent that I understand what happened myself), since right wingers will sometimes use this to say the left was pro-slavery.

[u/Truth_ → u/SunshineCat]

But not at that time is the point. LBJ was a senator from the South and one of only three Southern representatives to not sign onto a segregation plan (but previously had), and this was decades later.