By Steve Hunley
For a person of my generation, it is particularly upsetting to witness so many people living in this country who hate America and everything about our country. The history of every country in the world is flawed with instances of injustice, strife and tragic events. The people who run around in today’s America spouting off about “Nazis” and “fascists” and squealing about authoritarianism under President Trump are too ignorant to realize there was NO dissent under such regimes. It was not permitted nor tolerated. None of those squealing about the modern-day Gestapo aren’t doing it from concentration camps or before a firing squad. That is where protests took place under authoritarian regimes. Ironically, the very same people squalling about “fascism,” “Nazis” and the like are against all free speech but their own, tolerate no divergence from their own beliefs, and want to destroy those who don’t agree with them by any means necessary. Those are the people in this country who constitute the great majority of those who could best be described as Democratic-Socialists. By and large, they are illiterate when it comes to history, devoid of understanding, and long ago stomped on reality and embraced delusion.
Everybody knows New York City elected a Socialist mayor last year, and Zohran Mamdani is well on his way to ruining what’s left of NYC. Clearly, socialists don’t understand math, much less economics. The root of socialist math is the notion of trying to trade off much lower incomes for much higher taxes. That is a formula that not only doesn’t work but will eventually bring about disaster and collapse. The fallacy in calculating socialist math is that there is no such thing as “free” stuff. It might be free to you, but be assured someone is paying for it, and it’s not some faceless billionaire or corporation. The bubblehead in the mayor’s office in NYC apparently thinks it’s a good idea to close the natural gas plants, which supply residents with reliable energy. The planned retirement of those plants was extended during the winter due to the fact that the city would suffer blackouts in the freezing cold otherwise, which would have created numerous other problems aside from allowing people to freeze to death. Europe is already finding out that woke is making them broke. Germany had to buy up and import coal to keep the heat and lights on. Just to be clear, if Germany hadn’t imported that coal, there would have been no power whatsoever for the people there.
We all know self-styled “progressives” change the meaning of words to suit their purpose and needs. One big example is “gender affirming care.” As I have said in previous editorials, the definition of gender affirmation would be affirming and accepting the gender one was born with. Gender altering care is what progressives are pushing. It is the height of irony that the progressives are, in reality, anti-progress. Let’s call “progressives” what they really are: socialists. They are anti-capitalist, anti-progress, always ready to expand the welfare state, anti-American, anti-Christian, pro-open borders, and ever ready to defy reality and adopt pretense as fact, all the while raising taxes in the name of “affordability.” It defies logic and reason but some people believe it. They never admit the failure of what passes for their ideas, even when it is as dead as roadkill. We have it here in Knoxville, too. Many people are now struggling to pay their mortgages and balance their household budgets because Mayor Indya Kincannon and the Knoxville City Council raised property taxes – and not just a little bit. Kincannon and her minions on the council cried “affordability” and “affordable housing” while jacking up property taxes 40%. Every time property taxes rise, rents rise with them. When the costs of maintaining properties, whether a rental house or an apartment building, go up, so, too, do the rents. Renters almost never have to pay for the normal maintenance required to keep up the property they are renting. When the roof leaks, the landlord has to fix it, even if it means putting on a new roof. If appliances fail, the landlord must replace them. When the heat and air unit goes out, the landlord must have it fixed or replaced. It is a sad fact of life that maintenance isn’t free to the landlord. Nor do landlords exist to charge nominal rents to renters in need of a place to live. Landlords pass on the costs of maintaining their property, as well as the cost of property taxes, to renters. Socialists seem to have devolved into yet another moronic delusion that anyone who is well off should simply subsidize others less fortunate, which we already do abundantly. The United States spends trillions of dollars annually providing health care, housing, food, and other necessities to individuals and families – helping those who genuinely need it. Unfortunately, however, that money also enables a lot of people who simply choose not to work and who continue to produce children and create more need for others to pay. The staff at the Washington Post gripes that Jeff Bezos should continue to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually to keep the newspaper afloat so that they will have jobs. They also think they should dictate the tone and decide the content of the newspaper to suit their socialist beliefs.
When Democratic-Socialists in Congress won’t stand up for Americans, refuse to speak the names of those raped, maimed or murdered by illegal aliens, all in the name of politics, it’s a disgusting display of their hatred of our country. That hatred fuels their politics, ironically, just as it did the Nazis. We see that hatred all too well as we witnessed average Americans actually celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk, who fought for free speech and dialogue among those who disagreed. It is why we have seen nurses – people who pledge to help patients – say vile and unspeakable things in wishing tragedy and trauma on those with whom they disagree politically. Hatred is a cesspool that will engender even more hatred and division.
Class hatred is part and parcel of the Left’s solutions in their quest to grow the welfare state and make people utterly dependent upon Big Brother government.
As California is considering a 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires, we see many of them leaving, and of all the names I’ve read in the exodus from the state, I’ve not noticed a single Republican amongst the fleeing billionaires. In fact, most of those I’ve seen running as fast as they can are well-known donors to the Democrat-Socialists. Now, some are trying to make that tax retroactive.
New York City is one of the most highly taxed cities in the country and the public services provided are woefully lacking considering the high tax rate. That is becoming true in Knoxville as well. Our city mayor’s 40% property tax increase brought no new services, nor did it restore the much-needed service of sending police officers to the scene of auto accidents without serious injury. It was a money grab in the name of affordable housing while increasing rents and mortgages for people who work for a living.
Abigail Spanberger in Virginia is marketed by the corporate news media as a “moderate” Democrat, but that’s how they labeled Joe Biden, too. Currently, Spanberger’s Democratic legislators are introducing a bevy of new taxes to spend, all in the name of “affordability.” The new taxes include new income tax brackets, a dog walking and grooming tax, a dry-cleaning tax, a home repair tax, a storage facility tax, and a gun and ammunition tax. Doubtless, those would be on top of the sales tax and in addition to the state income tax Virginians already pay.
Socialism has never worked anywhere in the world; socialism has never developed a cure for any disease, innovated any business, nor created any jobs outside of bureaucracies that have done nothing except fail those who should have been served. Letting these people decide everything will return people to caves, gullies and holes in the ground, rubbing sticks together at the cost of $10,000 per twig, if we allow it.
As the old-timers used to say, never buy a pig in a poke. “Affordability,” as conceived by the Left, costs everybody more, every day.
