And to prove it, I have decided to become a militant, rather than just a passive Socialist.
I have just joined the Democratic Socialists of America—that's Senator Bernie Sanders' affiliation—and I am making it known as widely as possible. Although their program accords almost 100% with my ideas, I have hesitated to take this step. With all the wingnuts who seem to have captured the fancy of the American people, I believe there is a real risk that I may lose my Social Security and even my U.S. citizenship if they succeed in taking power. I am especially vulnerable to such demagoguery because I live abroad for most of the year.
If you think that I exaggerate, then perhaps you are too young to remember Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the anti-Communist reign of terror he almost succeeded in imposing on the U.S.A. This struck my family directly, when my cousin, Roger Wolcott Richardson III, a brilliant mathematician and older brother of Ham Richardson, the tennis player, emigrated to Australia, precisely because he could not tolerate the stifling academic atmosphere of that era.
Some of you may have hoped, as I did, that Barack Obama would live up to his fine speeches, and at least bring the United States back to the middle of the road. Instead he has compromised the country into the hands of the wingnuts, and taken America farther to the Right than Richard Nixon. I guess we should have known we could not expect more from one who got his start as a community organizer.
Although the Democrats have become almost as hopeless as the Republicans, I may have to join you and my hero, Bernie Sanders, in voting Democrat in 2012.
But why not give Americans a real choice? Surf over to the Democratic Socialists of America www.dsausa.org and help give them a membership surge.
