Some time ago I mentioned in a post how the Democrats and many on the left overused ‘Fascist’ draining the word of its terror and so when a Presidential candidate and eventually President came along who at the very least had proto-fascists in his circle of advisers the warning sounded too much like the familiar electoral noise and failed to gain much traction.

A similar but not exactly analogous sequence dogs the heels of the Republicans and many on the right. For decades the many in the GOP and their supporters have labeled any proposal to their left as ‘socialism.’ It didn’t really matter what the proposal actually did, nearly any government program addressing nearly any inequity was creeping socialism and would inevitably lead the United States to a Soviet future with gulags dotting our Western Deserts. Baby Boomers, of which I am one, seemed congenitally unable to recognize they world had changed, stuck to the script even after the collapse of the USSR and only switched the totem of terror to the latest failed state that worked for their propaganda.

In my morning political reads on the right I see over and over pieces where the authors and editors are quaking in terror at the rise of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and the pronounced leftward push from the Democratic. Socialism as a pejorative insult and warning has lost all meaning joining the background of noise that is for the most part ignored.

Now be sure the liberal/progressive/left policies pushed by AOC, are in no way the equivalent to Soviet totalitarianism and the drive leftward has yet to reach anything comparable to the GOP’s abandonment morality, decency, and loyalty in their election and protection of President Trump.

I do not know if they had kept the term in more of a reserve if it would have helped them at this point in time. Between the party’s protective interference for Trump with his bold blatant corruption and their indifference to the economic turmoil to struggling Americans while playing blood brothers to voter suppression instead of adapting to the nation’s changing needs and demographics they may have painted themselves in an electoral trap that mere words would have proved inadequate as a means of escape. A party governing over peace and prosperity, albeit both serious issues and far from assured, should not have had the House washed away from them and I believe the flood has yet to crest.