Maybe the next president can shoot Trump in the dome and say it was an official act to protect national security secrets.

Joking, obviously, but it’s fun to fantasize.

Seriously. If all of Western Europe ganged up on Russia, it would fold instantaneously. Bullies isolate their victims. Don’t let them do that and they show their true colors.

No, that sounds pretty on-point to me. The only additional thing I’d mention is that when you’re working, you’re paying into social security through your taxes, which—if you do it for long enough—sets you up much better for retirement than you will be if you’re still reliant on disability when you’re 65. So, that’s an additional incentive to work, which I tell my clients all the time, but for most of us, planning that far into the future is actually kind of difficult.

Socialism’s critics believe that people who receive government aid become reliant on it and cease making an effort to become self-sufficient.

As someone who works in community mental health, I sadly have to admit that those criticisms aren’t entirely false. Ironically, I think the fact that the government organizations that implement these social safety nets being underfunded contributes to the problem. Because it takes so long to obtain benefits like disability (SSD/I in America), people don’t want to risk getting a job, potentially losing it, and having to go through the long, arduous disability application process again. So they just learn to be content living on disability pay and food stamps.

But that’s disability. I don’t think the same applies to just public assistance (which you can’t live off of) and SNAP.

Anyway, despite there being a kernel of truth in said criticisms, they’re largely off-base. I think a lot of the critics also confuse socialism with communism, and don’t realize that all most socialists desire is a system like European countries have, which is proven to work and not threaten capitalism. Then there are the really sick fucks who believe in social Darwinism and genuinely think poor people deserve to be so, and that it would be just for them to die off. But thankfully, those are in the extreme minority.

Communism mandates a single-party government, which inevitably becomes a corrupt dictatorship that does not follow the idealized plan. But that’s the problem: the plan is too idealistic and doesn’t account for human psychology. So, you can’t just say, “oh, that society isn’t communist because the outcomes aren’t right. Name one example of a communist country that actually produces the results you expect to see.