oh no! not the "s-word"!

well, they've done it...very quickly the description of obama's tax plan evolving from "sharing the wealth" to "spreading the wealth" to "re-distributing wealth" to mccain's ultimate enunciation: that this proposed tax plan is congruent with one of the basic tenets of socialism.

ah, the s-word. suddenly all the rage, all over again. the anxiety-inducing, fear-provoking, pinkie-tinged s-word.

...pretty catchy, because now mcpalin supporters are expressing anxiety over the inevitable freefall down the slippery slope to socialism that an obama win would launch. from a north carolina diner stop where a woman yelled "Socialist, socialist, socialist -– get out of here!" to a congressional representative from minnesota suggesting that obama holds "anti-american views" and that members of congress should be investigated to ascertain their level of patriotism to mcpalin rally attendees saying they don't "want to go socialist" and that "that one" is "steering us toward socialism"!

never mind the fact that for all the mcpalin fear-mongering, obama is really more of a centrist politically than a radical leftist. below, chomsky explains well the narrow band within which u.s. politics operates -- not exactly earth-shattering revelations here, because we know/have known, after all, that the u.s. spells big business. i guess this serves to underscore further my general belief that, in some/multiple ways, there is no difference, but, that the differences that are do hold potentially fairly significant implications (supreme court justice nomination(s) in the next four years, continuation of the war in iraq, etc.):

Sometimes I have the feeling that the two terms of Bush were in a context of the changing of the global order, trying to maintain power using force and in contrast Obama could be a way to have a kind and polite face to renegotiate the world order. Do you think this could be true?....

Remember that the political spectrum in the United States is quite narrow. The U.S. is a business-run society, somewhat more than Europe. Basically, it is a one-party state, with a business party that has two factions, Democrats and Republicans. The factions are somewhat different, and sometimes the differences are significant. But the spectrum is quite narrow. The Bush administration, however, was way off the end of the spectrum, extreme radical nationalists, extreme believers in state power, in violence overseas, in big government spending, so far off the spectrum that they were harshly criticized right within the mainstream from early on. ....
Whoever comes into office is likely to move things back more towards the center of the spectrum, Obama probably more so. (Interview by Simone Bruno, 13 October 2008)