Well said ! Written in a concise, yet enjoyable, hopeful ,thought provoking style.

Certainly an interesting conversation. Free Market Capitalism vs. Mother State Socialism seems to be the way the current political season is taking shape. And, as one writer pointed out, this divide is more in the interest of some other nations rather than our own.
Those proposing some form of socialism need to recast the term socialism - if it is not to late. Socialism is to easily tied to Communism and to the failed economic systems such as is currently playing out in Venezuela. The Nordic countries, which have proven the worth of a regulated capitalistic systems that focused on the whole rather than few, do not redeem socialism as it is becoming defined. So dropping the term socialism for something like "Inclusive Capitalism" might turn the political conversation into one more difficult to associate with the bogey man of socialism.

It may be that a third party is needed to break through the current pandering to monied interests by both of the established parties. But there is no impetus to form another major party by voters today. There are issues that may stir the younger voters to become dissatisfied with the current political parties that would provide opportunities for the development of another / other political party(ies). But few leaders have surfaced with the organizing acumen to build such a party or parties.

The struggle for our Republic may be at a tipping point. Are we going to march down the path to authoritarianism or the path laid out by our founders. We have seen our courts stacked with judges who support a unified Presidency. We have seen a Congress willing to surrender it's independents to the Administrative branch. We have heard the current President praise our adversaries and demean our allies. He sows division in our nation while proclaiming to be a Nationalist and beating the drum of white privilege. And his followers cheer.

I don't know where this will end. But it seems that if we pursue a capitalism vs socialism political argument it will add to a division that we can not afford.

I agree that is why I voted for Jill i2016

!Mass Conditioning! Here in the US, we are essentially the only mass population unwilling to any longer stand up against the oligarchs. Vietnam. "We have kicked the Vietnam syndrome"--- a quote from GHW Bush as he successfully entered and left Iraq after an illegally waged war, that drew no concern to the public. While people around the world go into the streets and protest as their governments reach into certain degrees of austerity and crimes on its people. The outcomes in those countries are often horrific, we live in fear of that. Conditioning. That's because we are often never shown or told about protest in other areas where it may be beneficial to those people. They are today going on around the world at a rate never known to man kind. Controlled Conditioning, via the MSM. They, the MSM, also rarely speak of protest here in the US anymore either. You probably see them being planed on your social media often. But do you ever hear your forth estate giving notice of them?

Problem is they are all secular protest for this or that, never really reaching into substance of our problems as a whole. Because we have been condition to a point we no longer are able to connect all the issues that are problematic to us to a core entity. And our problems are indeed due to a singular entity. And today our main problem is the death of our home. The home of all mankind. And if you take the time to really think this out, this problem, the death of our planet as a source of life, goes back to only that singular entity. All the issues we are dealing with today have played a part in some way to creating the collapse of an ecosystem all life depends on. The functioning of this ecological unit, and of society, have been purposely conditioned to benefit a very few. Those few are willing to sacrifice any and all of us to reach the levels of riches and power in which they greed over.

The chain of MSM to intelligence agencies, to the establishment politicians, to corporations, to the oligarchs/deep state, successfully waged a program of perception management over the westernized world decades ago to reach this conditioning that holds most of the worlds population at bay. The rest of the world has been its victims in the manor of wars. To steal their resources, make slaves of, and to stop any country of producing a successful socialist government. A society that benefits all its countrymen will not be tolerated for the world to see. !Venezuela! The newest target of the westernized world. That chain was developed for the purpose of conditioning mass populations into a sense of slavery. The slaves in the westernized world just happen to live more comfortable and have more than those who have brunt the wars where we needed their resources live. But conditioned slaves we are none the less.

What will it take for us in the US, anyways, to see this whole picture? For those trapped in the corrupt 2 party establishment voting system that will never really allow you to produce candidates in any of our governments who hold you, our society, and our planet as a concern. With roughly 52% of our population still playing their game within their system, we have no chance of leaving a living planet behind for our families after us. The planet will be fine without us, able to regenerate. That entity might even survive. But what do we leave behind for our families. Our planet has reached a tipping point. We must act fast!!!

Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity - A Pentagon Video

True

Okay, soapbox coming: A huge concern I have, though not my only one, is how much we seem to keep ignoring the massively disruptive role V. Putin has played, and continues to play, in undermining our democracy. I don't disagree with the article, as far as it goes(except the misuse of the claim of a liberal "Deep State," which is utter bullshit), but the problem is more than capitalism vs socialism.
I agree with ToolGuy, the -isms are something of a distraction from the battering ram that has been taken to our society. To be sure, capitalism is corrupt and an obvious setup for the wealthy to exploit to ever further advantage at everyone else's expense, but similar abuses have historically happened in primarily socialist societies as well, where government oligarchy insiders have massively extorted and scimmed off the top for personal gain. There will never in our lifetimes be an end to the tensions between capitalism and socialism. They are not exclusive of each other. They are ideals that exist together within each and every society to differing degrees. In practice they are never "pure." I happen to think the U.S. currently is massively out of balance in favor of capitalism, but correcting that does not mean taking a torch to all things capitalist, as revolutionist pro-socialists would have us do. That would only lead to massive chaos and suffering that revolution always creates, after which opportunists are guaranteed to swoop in and enrich themselves at the expense of the masses and still oppress people. It means instead building socialist projects and protections (social safety net) and fighting hard to build a more caring society. (Obviously I support the evolutionary approach a la Scandinavian examples over a revolutionary one.)
In any case, back to Putin. He is a classic and very dangerous USSR style threat. He is not a socialist, like Lenin tried to be. He is a fascist in the mold of Stalin. He shrewdly studies the cultures of every country he aims to disrupt, finds our divisions, and exploits them to sew further divisions and lead us to destroy each other.
Trumpism is a cancer, but a symptom and accelerant of our problems more than the cause. We cannot fix this mess we are in if we are hell bent on ideological purity, e.g. socialism vs capitalism, because that is precisely the type of division Putin has hacked into and fanned the flames of to aid in the implosion of our democracy.