wars is HATED here by the average European. I have a huge network of friends and colleagues from so many different Europeans nations. So much of the nightmarish social strife that is occurring is the direct result of truly massive inflows of refugees fleeing the US wars in the Middle East. We are so so much more impacted by it than the US is. I know so so many completely left-wing people who in the last 5 years have went from staunch "we need to help the innocent" advocates to now admitting that we are being overwhelmed and our open, tolerant societies being negatively impacted. THIS is driving the rise of the RW nationalist fascist scum, and fuels shit like Brexit as well. It is almost impossible to explain this to Americans who have not travelled outside the country.

finally, an aside:

My Swedish relatives (and myself) are extremely strong proponents of social democracy, and are gobsmacked that Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, when he is NOT. A social democrat (what I am) believes in using the power of the government to institute and maintain a society-wide broad, expansive safety net, and to tilt the playing field to greater income equality via tax policy combined with regulation and steerage of the private sector. They do NOT favour the abolition of the private sector, they do NOT advocate complete, or near complete state control of most of the means of production.

A democratic socialist DOES believe that the state should take over much, if not all of the means of production, aka the private sector, especial at the large large corporation level. They just believe that you have to use the democratic voting process to achieve this, versus the authoritarian, non-democratic arc that almost all socialist and communist nations have taken in the past.

Bernie does NOT advocate state control of the means of production, and the US is so reactionary against the very word "socialist" (and also mistakenly directly equates it with communism) due to the Cold War mentality writ large for 40 years plus that Sanders really hurts his chances to do much, and opens himself up for unfair attacks by incorrectly self-labeling.

Social democracy is not democratic socialism, they are profoundly different at multiple key levels.