Political Memes

[WCTU has entered the chat.]

A lot of firefighting company actually used to be private, owned and operated by insurance companies

I think that they're implying that people likely to argue that state-controlled stores are socialist are also likely to conflate any service or good offered by the state is socialism.

In the US, "socialism" is both demonized and the actual definition is obfuscated by right-wing (read: most) media in the same way other terms are, such as "woke". This alienates the average person in the US from movements, policies, organizations, etc that would benefit them, from free school lunch programs to socialist representatives running on taxing the wealthy.

Yes, my comment was very US centric.

First, the Homestead Act gave land to a lot of people who were tenant farmers. It enraged the rich folks who saw their profits go down, and it was a boon to the ancestors of a lot of the MAGAs. They'll crow about how their great grandparents came in covered wagons and ignore the fact that they couldn't have afforded the land if it wasn't for a government program.

Second, in my opinion, all political labels are meaningless outside the classroom. There are billionaires in the Chinese Communist Party and North Korea calls itself a Democratic Republic.

I've literally had this conversation with some of my fellow americans.

Them = All Socialist states fail!

Me = What about the Scandinavian countries?

Them = They aren't really Socialist.

Me = So, we can have their health care system?

Them = [Usually silence, sometimes and explanation that it only works there because the population is not as diverse as america.]

the theory is that lawmakers keep rejecting it until it’s federally legal because they want to make tax money on it just like they’ve done with liquor.

Um... that is really odd. I used to live in Illinois, which has had legal weed for years, and they've been taxing it and raking in the dough all along. In fact, a lot of states with legal weed collect tax on the sale of it.

Tremendous amounts of alcohol were involved in the creation of the Confederacy as well.

The first few battles were basically bar fights.

For PA, you can get beer and wine in a lot of places

When I first moved here nearly 20 years ago, this was not the case. You could only buy beer at special stores where you could only buy it by the case, or you could buy individual six-packs to take home at bars and taverns. Wine was only available from the state-run stores along with the hard liquor (and this is still the case for the hard stuff). Coming from a state that had fucking drive-thru daiquiri shops, this was hard to accept.