I think the problem is deeper than just the press. These identity flame wars are sponsored by almost all big (non-news) corporations.
The reason is clear. While there is distraction, the real issues are unaddressed and they can keep putting their hands in your pocket when you aren't looking.
Also, excessive pseudo-socialism is a great tool to drive down wages and have the whole world compete against each other. Locust capitalism.
Example: The US healthcare system. The financing is through socialist policies (Medicare, state assistance, regulatory requirements/incentives for employer-provided insurance), but the system itself if thoroughly corrupt and inefficient.
Example: "Affordable housing" subsidies/requirements. Instead of actually addressing high housing costs in general, set aside an inadequate amount of substandard housing with burdensome hoops to jump through to get it and call that a solution when it isn't.
Example: Environmental rules that apply to where a product is manufactured but not where it's sold, so that instead of eliminating pollution, manufacturing jobs move to countries that allow pollution.
The half measures are the worst of both worlds. You get the inefficiency, incompetence and unaccountability of central planning and the externalities, corruption and high prices of market failures.
For the US healthcare system you can add poor people without insurance using emergency rooms as their primary point of care. Emergency rooms are required to treat them, they can't pay, so those costs get shifted to other people. Worse, the care they receive is usually the bare minimum and there's a good chance they end up back there. Overall a horrifically inefficient way to socialize medical costs.
The definition of socialism is social ownership of the methods implemented. In all cases above, the public at large owns the cost (and benefits) of the methods implemented:
Medicare, Medicaid, affordable housing etc. We all pay for them, full stop.
Just because some of the programs have worse outcomes than elsewhere in the world, doesnt make them "less" socialist policies.
"Locust capitalism" seems to be a verbatim translation of German "Heuschreckenkapitalismus", which is a phrase commonly in use to describe hedge funds and other large conglomerates buying other companies without regard for social issues like workers' jobs.
In the same way that decaf is coffee without the caffeine, (and phone-sex is sex without sex), pseudo socialism is socialism without genuine socialists. In the USA -- and increasingly in Europe -- we've seen the socialists' ranks get eroded by our societies' blind pursuit of ever-greater profits at the expense of the common good. This has resulted in the subordination of most aspects of life -- including most aspects of political life -- to the central mechanics of the market. Politicians cannot win elections without capital, which subordinates them to the capitalists. This is why they routinely support corrosive policies (like hobbling healthcare, turning a blind eye to the opioid crisis for decades, decreasing taxes, regulatory capture, etc) and oppose policies meant to better the public uniformly (like free healthcare, free education, net-neutrality, higher and transparent taxation, independent and effective regulatory bodies, etc). In short, they are obligated to support policies that will generate profits for their wealthy patrons, at the expense of everyone else.
Socialism is meant to be a counter-force to unrestricted capitalism. America lacks this counter-force. Instead, America has a (so called) Left that is afraid of being branded "socialist". Because they cannot embrace genuine socialist policies for fear of upsetting their very wealthy and powerful patrons, they are trying to win votes by appealing to people's pathological tendency to form rival tribal groups. This is quite the irony, considering that socialism's original rallying cry was the (inherently trans-tribal, trans-national)"Workers of the World, UNITE".
True socialism looks for opportunity in horizontal social partitions (the social classes), whereas nationalism looks for opportunity in vertical social partitions (ethno-linguistic and religious segregations). This is why nationalism is the capitalist class's preferred evil -- it directs the dissatisfaction and anger of the lower classes against each other, away from the wealthy. Both the American Left and American Right are focusing on the vertical (tribal) partitions -- it's just that the Left is very polite and composed about it.
This is what (I believe) the GP tried to imply with the term "pseudo socialism".
If you're going to down-vote me, could you at least offer an explanation as to why? As it stands, there's an infinity of possible objections you can have with my comment. It would help to know what they are, so that I can at least _try_ to integrate them into my thoughts and perspective.
The reason is clear. While there is distraction, the real issues are unaddressed and they can keep putting their hands in your pocket when you aren't looking.
Also, excessive pseudo-socialism is a great tool to drive down wages and have the whole world compete against each other. Locust capitalism.