What Is A Communist?

Kamala Harris gave her rose to Tim Walz this week.

Donald Trump tweeted “THANK YOU” because, apparently, this duo provides his campaign with a lot of fodder.

Like he didn’t already have enough?

Elon Musk tweeted that Kamala is a “communist”, and I don’t disagree with the characterization.

But I have a question:

Do enough people actually know what that means? Or care?

Gen Xers and their precursors probably do, and our understanding is in contrast to capitalism—also a word and concept not obscene or alien to us.

However, if you, younger, were indoctrinated against free markets, paper money, investing for risk/profits, the “creative destruction” of consumer choices and things like capital, capitalism and competition, you’re not going to take to your fainting couch over hearing a candidate described as “communist”.

We also had the dubious advantage of living through times in which communism was on the march, and in a variety of countries and cultures, we watched as Communist party rule showed itself as authoritarian or totalitarian,  killing political dissidents and demeaning social classes (so-called “enemies of the people”), shuttering churches, ethnic cleansing, forced collectivization and nationalization, and copious use of concentration camps.

If you missed out on that fun, and instead they never taught you the advantages baked into your freedom, but told you that you were a victim of a “rigged system”, then what power does the word even have?

You might ask someone, or Google it, and be told that communism, or its more polite cousin, socialism, is about “equity” of outcomes and even distributions. Which will sound benign, if not plain great.

Elon, to an audience of people awaiting their student loan “forgiveness”, they may ask, ” oh yeah, what’s a communist?”

Who’s going to tell them?