2016-03-04, 05:51 PM
Silvarien Wrote:Gary Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster said yesterday that Bernie Sanders is what he's been hearing about all his life. He grew up in the USSR and was run out of the country when Putin's thugs beat the pomegranate out of him in an opposition rally. Being Russian myself, I totally agree.We are a small country so you might not know much about the history of Finland, but we're very familiar with the horrors of communism. My grandfather had to leave his home at the age of 8 when Soviets invaded and ravaged his home town. His father was shot dead by soviet troops. His mother was young and couldn't afford to feed my grandpa so he was given to foster family. Back then Finland was VERY poor and there was no middle class to speak of, in fact this "robust middle class" you talk about is relatively recent development in this country.
Countries like yours have a ridiculously powerful and broad government, and ridiculously high taxes. You're also forgetting to say that the reason socialism is even remotely feasible in countries like yours is a robust middle class, which has been eroded to near-nothing in the United States and which is a prerequisite for socialism working at all. America not only has a ton of poor, it has the politics of the gutter by which the poor are saluted for sitting on welfare while people who earn a living for hard work are labeled as "privileged" and thereby "oppressors" because they happen to have a good job and have saved up money from working at it. That is not only communist politics, that is WHAT COMMUNISTS USED IN THE 1930S TO ROB MY OWN FAMILY AND SEND THEM TO THE GULAG. My great-granddad died in prison, his wife died in the gulag, and my grandma and her sister were on their own at the ages of 5 and 6 respectively. The "crime" for which they were sentenced was being small business owners. That is what Bernie Sanders really is.
Americans don't want the government deciding everything, Americans don't want ludicrous taxes, and Americans want to keep their earnings in their own wallets. You got Obama parading around Warren Buffett, who is moaning like a whore that he shouldn't pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. Then, the Republicans notice that OBAMA is paying a lower tax rate than HIS secretary, and obviously Obama immediately refuses to donate the difference to charity. Then, Buffett has Burger King buy out Tim Hortons -- so he can dodge taxes easier.
Socialists ARE very very very VERY generous -- with other people's money. You guys don't like your own earnings tanked, but when it's other people being robbed, you're totally fine with it
Keep your Finnish politics in Finland, and don't pretend we don't know. We're not as stupid as you think.
However, it's not just communists Finns are familiar with. My great-grandma was a little girl in 1918 when there was a civil war in Finland. One day she noticed that her parents did not return from work and had to survive on her own for 2 days. Both her parents had been arrested by "white guards" (wealthy ruling class with support from Germans) and taken to a prison camp simply because they were working class and spoke Finnish. My other great-grandfather was nearly executed for the same reason at the age of 17. He survived but many were not as lucky.
Heck, the annexation of Finland (which thankfully did not succeed completely) and much of eastern Europe was something that the NAZIS AND SOVIETS planned TOGETHER. We ended up having to fight both the communists and the nazis. In the end our stolen land was ceded to Soviet Union in a "peace treaty" orchestrated by the winners: communists AND their capitalist allies Brits, Americans and French.
There's extremists on the right and left, older generations in Finland have experienced both. If you're playing the communist card, you should show some evidence that Sanders is supporting communist ideas.
I'm actually more of a classic liberal (but I don't like labels, I just support what I feel seems right) and I think the taxation and public sector in Finland is way over the top. But I believe that people should have a right to health and education regardless of what kind of family they're born in. I believe in equal oppurtunity. This is what Bernie stands for, not gulags.
However, The BIGGEST reason US and the world for that matter need Bernie is because big corporations and billionaires should NOT be able to buy elections. I think that's a travesty of democracy and ultimately it has terrible consequences. Lets take take oil lobbyists for instance, they're trying to destroy the climate of this planet for their personal gains and making sure that US continues to support tyrannies like Saudi Arabia, no better than the communists that killed my and your relatives. Different ideology (Islamic Wahhabism), but extremist and undemocratic one either way.