I jost love this term. I always hear it from people who pretend to sympathize with the "masses" who are being unfairly treated by their capitalist overlords, and yet at the same time disdain those same people they want to pretend they side with because those people don't share their view (how dare they! don't they know I'm on their side? why don't they listen to their betters?). Just like the phrase "speaking truth to power," it's a sure sign that the speaker is just parroting a view they've become accustomed to through constant exposure (like a fish gets used to being wet) rather than arrived at through any rigorous analysis.
What makes you think it is the left wing that are the sheeple? Actually, at the moment, the right wing is the most manipulated by the powers that be. Probably because the right has no reason to question decisions being made by the party they identify with.
But addressing your point, this is absurd. Why should wanting a health care system that works, for example, mean I want charity doled out for everyone? And why because I find the current administration too corrupt for my taste would that mean I prefer socialism to capitalism? And why would the fact that a lack of critical thinking skills exists across a broad spectrum of the population should that matter in terms of the kind of government I'd like to see?
Just who are these "masses" I supposedly identify with?
I happen to think a healthy middle class makes a sustainable society. They consume, making more money for producers. But if the producers continue to allow wealth to concentrate they will be shooting themselves in the foot as their markets dry up.
The current health care system needs an overhaul. Employers don't want to compete with foreign competitors who don't have employee medical expenses. We are paying for the uninsured by inefficiently tacking the costs on to our insurance premiums. And insurance companies bottom lines are not consistent with the consumers' best/most efficient medical care.
Also, some public funded research needs to take place in a number of fields to compensate for the market driven incentives which result in profit over people. Lest you twist that into some socialist nonsense, consider the following example. There is little current market incentive to produce new antibiotics. We desperately need that research but drug producers would have to tie up capital for a lengthy time before earning a good return. So lots of people need to die of drug resistant infections before the market for new antibiotics is big enough to entice private research funds.
And the Iraq war was a disaster, did nothing to stop terrorism was incompetently managed. You don't even have to be a peace promoter to see how badly Bush's decisions on homeland security have been during his term.
Then there is the corporate assault on science the current admin is promoting along with the big oil companies. And there is the religious police and their assault on science trying to shove god beliefs down everyone's throats.
So I may be a liberal, and may see the world differently from you, but you couldn't be more wrong with comments like,
"sympathize with the "masses" who are being unfairly treated by their capitalist overlords". And sheeple are the ones who don't think critically and don't see through the bull. They fall equally on both sides of the political isle.
