In the modern American political sphere, our contiguous borders have been shaped to symbolize capitalism, corporatism, and a faded image of democracy, masked by freedom from terrorism and oppression from ‘The Other’ infiltrating the American way of life. This current state of affairs has formed after nearly a century of propaganda combating foreign ideology from entering the bounds of the country, from the red-stained image placed on communism and socialism alike to basic social change, like universal healthcare or environmental protection, that still seems so revolutionary. The modern American’s mind is stunted at a young age to think of foreign ideology in general, like communism and socialism, as bad simply because they are not ‘American ideals’.
The problem with such a way of thought is that one forgets, or even has never been taught, to examine and challenge one’s own government and/or society. The political mind must be impartial to party and completely devoted to equality and liberty, things that America has always preached but the populous has overall never put into practice.
The main issue that surfaces is the American battle against communism. The communist ideology has always been revolutionary and never actually put into practice, only used as a vehicle for radical revolution because of its appeal to the working poor. Since the Russian Revolution, the first large-scale communist uprising, American politicians have worked to stain the ideology itself with images of bloodshed and the label of ‘Anti-American’. (Not to mention the fact that, in the United States, socialism tends to be misinterpreted as communism, and though they have similar ideas, they are not the same.) These actions have numbed the American people into believing that every aspect of communist theory is evil without actually studying communism. This has become the American way; looking at things through one perspective and never truly comprehending that other ideologies can exist without being inherently bad.
This is not to say that America is the only country with an uninformed populous, propaganda, or that Americans necessarily have to be communists or socialists or revolutionaries or that they cannot be capitalists; but the main goal of a democratic, free-thinking society is to grasp the whole picture through different perspectives in order to formulate an opinion. And especially since America is a nation with a very large influence on the world, it is paramount that Americans begin to open their minds to other possibilities.
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