The Trump administration made Intel give the US government a piece of their company, and Trump is pledging many more deals of that sort. The Secretary of Commerce was on CNBC this morning praising this move and hinting at many more ways that the US government should get a piece of the businesses they support. He talked about the huge US investment in defense companies and the large amount of money that the government gives to support research at universities, which end up holding the patents for the work done with that money. On its face, I get the argument. I find it troubling that drug companies benefit tremendously from NIH funding, without sharing the profits with the NIH. I can’t say that I’ve felt that way about universities, but the logic fits there also. All that said, this is a shocking shift in philosophy for the Republican Party.

Part of the problem here, if we want to call this a problem, is that words have stopped meaning the same thing to people who use them. I really don’t like this at all. It’s a huge source of frustration to me that I’ve written about numerous times, including my last post (which was far too long ago, but I just don’t have the time for this as much as I’d like). I honestly don’t know what lots of right-leaning folks mean when they say “socialism,” but they seem to conflate it with communism, or pretty much anything they don’t like.

For me, socialism is on a continuum with capitalism and both are extreme ends. Socialism is total government control with no private ownership or delivery of services and capitalism is total private control with no government ownership or delivery of services. Neither seems to exist anywhere in modern history, and the United States is clearly somewhere in the middle. Personally, as I’ve written before, I tend to subscribe to what I call “capitalism first,” with plenty of room for socialism to fill in the gaps. But where I favor socialism is for things that the private sector can’t (or won’t) deliver, but that we as a society value. There’s not a good private sector solution to national defense, for example. Who pays and who gets the services? If we’re invaded by a foreign enemy, does the private defense company only protect those with up-do-date subscriptions, while the others get their homes invaded? Of course not.

But what the trump administration is doing here is pushing things in the clear direction of socialism, despite hatred of all things socialism being the rallying cry of so many people who support them. They’re spinning it as getting what we paid for, but by taking up ownership stakes in companies, they are clearly moving us in the direction of socialism on that continuum.

As with all things Trump, it astounds me that he can propose something that would be completely against all the past positions of his supporters, but they somehow change their views to stay on the side of Trump. It’s remarkable, and he’s clearly very skilled, but it makes me wonder where things end up when he’s gone. I imagine there are people who will return to their roots, or others who will fill those positions. Where will the die-hard free-market capitalists go? Will the GOP pivot back to embrace their views and get them back, or will it take a new party to claim that position?

Depending on how we get through this period, it seems like it will be really interesting for those that don’t need to live through it. I kind of wish I could look back at it and read stories about it, instead of having to be right in the middle of it.