It’s what you don’t know that leaves you stuck in neutral

“Fear is incomplete knowledge” - Agatha Christie

In Wednesday night’s Democratic Debate in Nevada, perhaps the cheapest shot of any candidate was taken when billionaire Mike Bloomberg referred to Bernie Sanders position as a Democratic Socialist as communism.  “We’re not going to throw out capitalism”, Bloomberg said. “We tried that. Other countries tried that. It’s called communism, and it just didn’t work.”  It was the same message that Donald Trump has used against Sanders and in a very real since it gives credence to Elizabeth Warren’s claim that if Bloomberg gets the nomination we might be swapping “one arrogant billionaire for another.”

Sanders retaliated with a quote that in various forms has been used by Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, Gore Vidal and Joseph P. Kennedy II.  “There's socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for everyone else,” Sanders retorted, explaining how it’s the corporate welfare in this country that threatens income insecurity, not the policies Sanders proposes that will enable the lowest income earners to rise above the debt created by low wages and rising health care costs

Other wealthy individuals like JPMorgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon want  to portray Sanders as someone that undermines our freedom when the truth is that wealthy capitalist like Dimon want a form of socialism that solely benefits the wealthiest people in this country.

“Jamie Dimon wants socialism for himself”, says Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Open Markets Institute and author of Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.  “[He and his wealthy friends] want to use the government through lots of different ways to create a legal framework where he is in control, his friends are in control, and we the people are not.” 

According to Stoller, Fortune 500 companies are trying to create a narrative that portrays these wealthy capitalist as a means to solve the countries social problems as opposed to government and democratic institutions.  Stoller says that this narrative “creates a soft autocracy underneath the happy rhetoric” of these wealthy corporations and private financial entities.

The other criticism by Bloomberg, Dimon and Trump on Bernie’s own millionaire status is a weak criticism that ignores how Sanders earned his wealth.  Bloomberg and Trump have yet revealed their true wealth, while Sanders’ Financial Disclosure Report is on file for all the public to view.  Unlike Trump who inherited his wealth from daddy or Dimon who helped rigged the system with other members of an elite financial sector, Sanders got “rich” by proceeds almost entirely from the sale of 3 books that raised serious concerns about how the income inequality in this country arose and how it threatens to replace our democracy with an oligarchy

The concept of a free market espoused by laissez-faire capitalist is pretty much a myth in today’s world and one that is propagandized by wealthy individuals to create that illusional American dream that leads people to believe they too can be a millionaire if they just work hard and play by the rules. It’s that starry-eyed illusion that fostered John Steinbeck’s observation back in the 1930's  that "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

Sanders and others who have exposed the income inequality in this country scare people like Jamie Dimon because as Matt Stoller notes they want to use their influence now to offset the momentum Sanders has generated “by acquiring and centralizing more power where they can take away what freedom we have left instead of letting us take away their liberty to control us.”