Do I have to choose between Trump and communism?

Re-creation, RJ Peltz-Steele with Google Gemini CC0 1.0

A sign on my commute distracts me every time, and I find myself thinking about it way too much:

"TRUMP OR COMMUNISM."

So we're clear, that's not actually a choice anyone is being asked to make. 

For Slate, Alexander Sammon wrote today about the rhetoric of a new Red Scare:

"On the occasion of America’s 250th anniversary, President Donald Trump took time away from the birthday revelry to warn of a grave and imposing adversary. 

"'Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11,' he said on July Fourth weekend this year, in South Dakota...."

And in Georgia a few days earlier, "according to the Atlantic, Trump mentioned communism or communist 15 times ... 'starting less than a minute into his hour-plus speech.'"

My family, on one side, escaped communism in Ukraine. I have seen the aftermath of communism in central and eastern Europe since the wall fell. If that "communism" is communism, then I'll take the democratically elected leader every time, regardless of our policy agreements and disagreements.

But as I wrote about Vietnam last year, "communism" today looks more like capitalism run amuck; it's hard to tell from the street which side won that war. Even historically, behind the iron curtain, the authoritarian bureaucracy of red Russia hardly lived up to any Marxian ideal.

So if "communism" means making filthy profits from global cartels and bathing in the social largesse of murderous oligarchy— well, then, I'm not sure how the sign's two choices are different. 

If "communism" means a living wage for one's work, and healthcare for one's hefty taxes; breaking up anti-competitive trusts and leveling the field for a free marketplace; and access to education for those who are willing to put in the work— 

Well, then, I guess I have to think about it some more.