A government of pure social democracy is vilified and continually cast as an evil (ie, Red scaring) simply because it would reverse the current economic inequality model- empowering and caring for the poor without making their struggle disproportionately benefit those who are already wealthy. Challenging our nurtured, fearful apathetic ignorance of cultural self-defeatism is the Achilles heel of oligarchic tyranny; most of the economically challenged just want enough to enjoy living out their lives with dignity and as little suffering as reasonably possible.
Seeking big piles of wealth is more of an unhealthy, very learned behavior, yet one our sick society glorifies. Ask average people if they'd rather be personally filthy rich, or prefer that everyone has enough, and they would probably choose the latter. Everyday folk typically retain more empathy and humanity than our upper-class out-of-touch, profit-centric millionaires- making us, the citizenry better for ethical ruling, not simply profit. We win by realizing that should never have been the point of representative rule anyway. Fairness and equality was.
The twisted psychological beauty of this mental cage we're in can be summarized thusly: We all follow inherited, unfair rules which none of us agreed to, which keep the many in thinly disguised service to the wealthy few. The rules change and worsen, with token parties ineffectively pretending to represent our interests- all so that we don't have to (and therefore never do). Yet because of this sponsored society of power and money glorification, we're too busy idolizing or trying to be one of the elite to recognize they're actually our masters.
Considering that current artificial legal and financial limitations are preventing the populace from being self-sufficient, awarding them with democratic control over the industries where they work is pretty rational thinking. Hoarding money is a sickness which could easily be diagnosed as cruel, sociopathic, and unpatriotic. Greed is only considered good by those practicing it; the populace, stepped on and disempowered in the process, do not naturally or knowingly cheer on their own systemic poverty to prop up elitist decadent gluttony.
Reagan's trickle-down economics, the Clintons' neoliberalism, death of journalistic integrity, persecution of whistleblowers, divisive identity politics focused over actual progress, peace-medal Obama's duplicitous escalation of Bush era war policies, TPP style "trade agreements", Fake News rhetoric to legally create our government's own Ministry of Truth (via the 'Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act'), Trump's 'alt-right' cabinet of 'strength' through bravado and anti-science... it's all just increased consolidation of the wealthy's power.
Normalization of injustice breeds complacency, and those with the power to shape societies all too easily blind those within them. So now the new appearance of freedom is selling our finite bad choices to highest-bidder vendors. We fight indefinitely 'for peace' by simply branding freedom fighters as terrorists, then selling arms for profit. Blindly believing in our non-representative privatized government and media even when they are contrary to provable fact somehow makes us safe. Sound familiar? It's Orwell's 1984: War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength.
No matter how much a fair and just socialist society is portrayed as some fascist dystopia doomed to inevitable failure (by those with the means and motive to push such empty propaganda), people are finally realizing that empty nationalism and rigged "team-sport" politics are the tools of their own oppression. This alternating carrot-and-stick placebo to actual representation has been shown to have no intrinsic merit- it protects neither the ideals nor the populace which it supposedly serves. Everything socialist we were told to fear has thrived via capitalism.
In my view, we've reached the point where The Powers That Be are increasingly forced to drop their pretense of defensible actions, and begin instead to blatantly establish the control structure for another (increasingly) paranoid, isolated police state. Globalization is splitting worldwide between defending unsustainable, imbalanced concentrations of wealth and power by any means necessary, or the overthrowing of such domestic terrorism by united majorities seeking true peace and equality. To me, the latter isn't fearful- it's just welcome, long overdue rationalism.