Frank Greenall: Signs of sanity filter through

IN AMONGST the freak show antics that characterise the present American primaries, a rare ray of hope and intelligence has reared its head.

The head belongs to the Democrats' Bernie Sanders. Probably as unlikely a candidate as you'd ever expect, he's an energetic septuagenarian who also happens to be the senator for Vermont. But what he does have is the courage to call "enough" on the excesses and hypocrisies of corporate oligarchism, and put forward a platform that encompasses and acknowledges the realities that underpin civilised societies.

These realities broadly fall under the banner of a label usually known as Democratic Socialism. This is a brand to which all Western-style democracies already subscribe in varying degrees - including the United States - but which in inverse varying degrees they seek to deny. It is a branch of the political spectrum, not comprised of cadres of ranting Marxist and Trotskyist firebrands, but simply intelligent responses to the pressures imposed on societies by rampant technologies and divisive corporate power blocks.

In essence it's an eminently sensible survival tactic that looks to mitigate the proliferation of extremes that - if left unchecked - have the potential to turn societies into self-destructive dystopias. And Bernie's unlikely - for America - message is striking a real chord, as evidenced by his recent win in the New Hampshire primary over Hillary Clinton. As I've touched on before, going back to the New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt, the US is awash with the trappings of what is generally known as Socialism. Yet perversely, possibly due to all the brain-washing better-dead-than-red mania that accompanied the Cold War, many Americans would rather chew glass than admit to harbouring a shred of it.

Joseph Heller's masterpiece novel, Catch 22, has a character that perfectly illustrates the hypocrisy of the US' reluctance to acknowledge this key component of American political and social life. Heller describes Major Major's father as a "God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good living out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow".

This, of course, was pretty much the case up until a few decades ago in the whole US agricultural sector. And while perhaps not so blatant as previously, the sector still bristles with all manner of subsidies and protectionist measures. This ingrained hypocrisy remarkably still manages to pervade the ideological high ground at such negotiations as the TPP agenda, which is ostensibly underpinned by the mantra of "free market" forces. But Bernie's The Man. He may be a bit wrinkly, but he's still got the cojones to stand up and pronounce to one and all that the emperor not only has no clothes - he's got a really unattractive pimply bum as well. On a national stage, he's pointing out a few very unpalatable truths, such as the way rampant corporate hegemonies under the guise of supposed all-American red-blooded capitalism, are leaving vast swaths of society marooned in hellish no-man's lands. "The economy is rigged," says Bernie, pointing out that the US has now the most unequal distribution of wealth and income since 1928. The top 0.1 per cent have greater wealth than 90 per cent of fellow Americans. Just 20 individuals own more than the bottom 50 per cent. The Walton family alone, who own Walmart, are wealthier than the bottom 40 per cent. Jonathan Freedlander of the Guardian describes the Waltons as the nation's biggest welfare bludgers, as the slave wages they pay their employees have to be topped up by taxpayer-funded living allowances.

Socialism is the dynamic from which civilised society gets its very name. Society is made up by the social dynamics and works of the people who comprise it, and who are hopefully striving to make it a healthy, desirable entity to be part of. For those who are challenged by the term socialism, simply replace it with the term society-ism. They're one and the same thing.