On Monday, reports came out that President Donald Trump was thinking about having the US government take stakes in various artificial intelligence companies. This means the US government would essentially own chunks of each company, and have significant influence over the companies' decision-making.
Trump claimed such an action would make Americans "very rich."
Putting aside figuring out how government stakes in a few companies can make hundreds of millions of Americans rich or how the government can properly regulate and police companies and industries in which it has a vested interest, this is not the first time the Trump administration has acquired stakes in private entities.
Under Trump, the US government has acquired stakes in various companies, including US Steel, a nuclear power company, quantum computing companies, rare earth companies, and an Intel venture. These ownership stakes cost the taxpayers billions of dollars.
Interestingly, there has not been (much of) an uproar about this, particularly from Trump supporters. You may be wondering: Why would there be? What is wrong with the government owning pieces of big companies so that regular Americans can reap the financial benefit and exert some control over the companies' decision-making?
Well, that is socialism. Not in the way Trump-supporters and many other Republicans use the word to mean government regulation of business, government benefits for the less fortunate, anything the Democratic Party advocates for, or, most commonly, anything they do not like or understand. Trump's actions are arguably socialism according to the actual meaning of the word, in which the general public owns and gets a say in the use of resources, machinery, and/or the entities that own or control these things.
Not sure whether you believe it? Well, the most famous socialist in the US sure seems to like and support it what Trump is doing. And yet, there is no significant criticism or opposition from most Trump supporters. Why?
It is likely a mixture of several things. First, selfish sycophancy. There are educated and knowledgeable people, particularly in positions of power and influence within the Republican Party, who understand what socialism is. Perhaps they truly believe socialism is flawed, or maybe they just say this to earn votes, but either way, they do not dare cross Trump by calling his actions socialist.
Second, slavish support of Trump and tribal opposition to all things Democrat/Liberal. As I have talked about ad nauseum, many Trump supporters have few or no sincerely held beliefs or principles beyond Trump good and Democrats bad. So, regardless of whether they understand what socialism is and recognize Trump's actions as a form of it, they know they support (or will remain mostly unconcerned with) what he is doing. If Trump thinks it is a good idea that will make them rich, well, that is the truth of it and they are on board.
Third, embarrassing ignorance. Socialism (and especially its Communism final form) have been a main political bugaboo in the US for well over a century. Generations of Americans, particularly those raised in the small-government, capitalist political sphere, have been conditioned to reflexively recoil and hold in disdain anything that can be painted as socialist. I would wager that most people of this persuasion do not know what socialism is let alone understand the legitimate rationales one might have for opposing it.
For them, the term socialism has become a catch-all term for whatever issues, whether fiscal, political, or social, that they and their tribe have evolved to oppose. It is the political equivalent of calling anyone in your community who does not conform to community standards a witch that must be denigrated and cast out.
It is these factors that have led us to a peculiar place. A president, who is the head of a party that is ostensibly in favor of capitalism, free markets, and small government, is enacting, with no apparent opposition, socialist policies that would be opposed at all costs coming from Bernie Sanders or the socialist Mayor of New York. While he is certainly not creating a true socialist State, history may look upon Trump as the first US president to enact significant socialist policies.