Marxist(s)???

This is a response to the increasing ignorance of, and increased appeal to the ad hominem misappropriation of the terms: Marxist and Marxism which has become the new fallacy of contemporary United Statesian politics and social life. Although there are countless examples, the most recent demonstration of this problem (involving Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons) can be found here: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/odonnell-calls-coons-a-marxist-during-senate-debate/?hp
Not only can Republicans (and I'd say Democrats too) not define Marxism, I'd bet half the people who also point this fact out, yet do not claim themselves to be Marxist, cannot do it either.

1. Marxism as a blanket term used to describe all socio-politico-economic and cultural philosophies is, even when restricted to the work of Marx alone, a highly complex theory. So much so, that it remains extraordinarily insurmountable a task to criticize it in any way without giving it serious study which hardly anyone (perhaps except scholars of Marxism) actually do.

2. There isn't just "one" so-called "Marxism." - And to use the term "socialism," well, the same goes for that, of which Marxism is one form... (PS- Fascism and Nazism can only hold a thin margin of a "socialist" label in that the economic theory on which that which they (mis)appropriated was Syndicalism.

3. Throwing out the "M-word" is purely a scare-tactic because, in the majority of uneducated United Statesian minds, Marxism = Stalinism = Totalitarianism = Authoritarianism = no "freedom" (whatever that is) = no "liberty" (whatever that is) = some loaded BS notion of "the government taking care of everyone," etc. Yet, the whole catawampus mud-bog of incredulity rests on a general intellectual laziness that refuses to challenge all socio-political categories and systems of structuration.

4. This whole smoke-cloud which is absent of intellectual sincerity or accuracy, but full of the misappropriation of terms and categories, as well as ad hominem attacks, exists in a vacuum despairingly vacant of actual Marxists. This point simply goes to demonstrate the multiplicity of fallaciousness. How bad of a Red Herring must there be when the most direct object of ridicule (Marxists) is nowhere ever present. Hell, even in the current world of philosophy, it is most difficult to find a Marxist—the closest we might have to one being Slavoj Zizek, and even this is sketchy.

5. Finally, and not to berate the proverbial catchphrase so quintessential of laissez-faire, the “bottom-line” is that this is (to use the Marxist term) ideology in its purest and most culturally detrimental form – that no one is doing anything about anything. This, like practically every other facet of our world, is merely a distraction! We are distracted from asking important philosophical questions about society, about the economic structure, about politics, about theoretical categories such as “freedom,” “liberty,” etc., that we take at face value and inevitably take for granted because we are always-already lead by a condition of presupposition. We aren’t working forward or backward, we are a cultural stalemate bent solely on reproducing the same nightmarish simulacrum ad infinitum.