Letter to Minerva: Yes, let's talk socialism

 Dear Minerva,

You might not remember me, but you and I got into a bit of a tussle a week or so ago, a few days after the 2020 presidential election, on Facebook. We were talking on a thread posted by a guy named Erik, with whom I have the loose connection of having graduated many years ago from the same private, religious high school, a year later than he.

Erik is part of a group called Common Ground Committee. His objective is to bring non-like-minded people together to search for things they agree on.

But that day, people weren’t having it—especially you. Understandably, among the libertarians and Trump supporters, tempers were running high.

And then you said this:

A few people tried to point out that places like Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, etc. aren’t exactly totalitarian hellholes, and also that you were making absolute claims. I tried to argue that saving the planet is not an extremist position, nor is making sure everyone has health care, but you weren’t having it.

The thread devolved from there into a convoluted conversation that conflated freedom, God, religion, free markets, natural rights, climate change denial (Minerva: “our planet is just fine”), health care, and social security, among other things. It was fun. Or would have been, if the fear and anger I was seeing hadn’t been quite so palpable.

I ended my part of the conversation with a cheery suggestion that probably, I admit now, sounded condescending:

Frankly, your response startled me. I found it a tad hostile. So, because I wasn’t sure how to answer, I didn’t. I decided to mull for a while as I figured out how to answer not just your accusation of ignorance, but the fear behind it.

I’m seeing this a lot, this fear of “socialism.” People on my side of the aisle seem to be largely laughing off the memes or images we see circulating, such as this (IMHO frankly ridiculous) one:

But I’m not sure shrugging it off is such a good idea. The fear is real; I get that. I am aware that you and 70 million other people voted for Trump, and now you truly believe that “Mama Tyrant” (Cute. Not.) will eventually take over after Biden succumbs to the COVID or senility or whatever and turn the United States into an authoritarian hellscape where the socialists control and dominate your every move, take all your guns, give your money away to people who don’t deserve it, and destroy “The American Way of Life.”

And I want to respond to that.

But first, Minerva, I’m going to answer your accusations.

So to start, I want to apologize for my tone. I sincerely do hope you will protect yourself (and others) by wearing a mask (which, alas, is everyone’s business now), but perhaps it didn’t come across that way.

I also do think you need better news sources. It’s not just that Fox News makes you stupid—it now makes you dead.

As to my ignorance, well . . . you don’t know anything about me, either.

You don’t know, for example, that I lived in a high functioning European social democracy, Germany, for thirteen and a half years. So yeah, I’ve seen up close and personal, in my own lived experience, some of the differences between socialism, social democracy, and capitalism.

You don’t know that I traveled in East Germany before the Wall came down. You don’t know that I vacationed at an idyllic little country hotel on the border to East Germany a week before it fell, where I railed to my German father-in-law about the razor wire and watchtowers on the other side of the creek. (My memory of that trip: machine guns and cows.)

“It won’t be long now,” he told me. A week later, it was done.

I was in Hamburg when the Wall came down. It was a Sunday night, and the streets were so flooded with newly-freed East Germans in their little plastic cars, honking and waving in a startlingly un-German-like display of emotion, that the drive that normally took us 15 minutes that night took over an hour.

So I think I have some idea, at least, of what I’m talking about. I’ve lived in two different systems. I have a basis for comparison. I’ve also done a lot of research, formal and informal. One of my first projects in grad school was a series of interviews with Germans whose parents and grandparents had lived under Nazis, or even been Nazis, to varying degrees.

You don’t know, either, that I wrote my dissertation on the U.S. and torture, and that project led me straight into the heart of authoritarianism.

So I won’t lecture you. I know you’re afraid and angry. I’m not sure I can reach you, but I’m pretty sure I won’t persuade you.

Still, I am answering your post with the small hope that, when you’re able to hear me, you will at least consider that if you’re not right about me, there might be other things you’re not right about, either.

I promise to do the same. To question my assumptions about you, and other people who supported Trump, and try to get a bit better at listening, and a bit less sure, always, that I’m right.

Sincerely,

Dani

P.S. Oh yeah—and I’ve read Karl Marx in the original German. Have you?