Much of the American commentariat remains somewhat mystified at the number of young countrymen who can be so dissatisfied with their personal economic circumstances that they turn to discredited socialism. Lately, understanding of this phenomenon is making some inroads, but there remains a need to pull the diverse causal pieces together into a coherent gestalt.
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First, is it not exasperating to hear the disaffected masses claim that the U.S. economy is not working, at least not for them? Such narcissism by the “entitlement” culture! The appropriate rhetorical rebuttal question to that posture is, then why is it working just fine for so many others?
In fact, the U.S. economy is presently very strong, per the standard metrics. We are at full employment, formally defined as about 4 percent unemployed. Macroeconomic growth is enduring and stable. Taxes are lower, especially for those dependent on tips, overtime, or Social Security. Real incomes, which declined under Biden, are rising (as they also did in Trump’s first term).
The main negative for the consumer is that inflation is still too high, but it is truly amusing to hear Democrats and their socialist fellow travelers complain about “affordability.” Most of the abnormal surge in consumer prices in recent years is attributable to the 22-percent cumulative increase during the Biden years. Imagine how much lower retail prices would be if we could subtract out that 22 percent and the 49-percent rise that occurred during Jimmy Carter’s term! (Inflation has actually been relatively tame during Trump’s 5.5 years in office, as it was under Obama, Clinton, and G.W. Bush. As Casey Stengel once said, “you can look it up.”)
So, a fair conclusion from the preceding is that the economic losers may largely have themselves to blame. The problem is not the overall U.S. economy. Data recently publicized by pollster Nate Silver reveals the diagnosis that those losers are mostly dim-witted liberal Democrat-socialists who chose college majors with little market value, leading to their own low incomes.
To further reinforce where fault lies, demographic statistics confirm how remarkably easy it is to avoid poverty in this country. You need to do only three things — finish high school (even a bad one), avoid having a criminal record, and avoid becoming addicted to drugs or alcohol — and your chances of living in poverty in the U.S. are close to zero. (There are other sets of three sufficient conditions, including factors such as “come from a two-parent household.”) Apparently, many American youths cannot surmount the low hurdles. Corollary blame in this regard, nevertheless, lies with the liberal Democrats who (1) destroyed the quality of American public schools, (2) have been soft on crime, and (3) have glorified substance abuse. Coincidence?
The role of liberal Democrat ideology and policy in creating an economically illiterate cohort should not be overlooked. Reflect again on the terrible public schools tolerated in the blue cities and states, co-mismanaged by the leftist-politicized teachers’ unions. The propagandized content of leftist ideology has also surely contributed to the proliferation of decrepit college majors such as gender studies, fine arts, and even sociology that hamstring their grads in the job market.
Moreover, as well as the U.S. economy is performing now, it could be operating even closer to the optimum if not for misguided and incompetent macroeconomic interference by the left-liberal-Dem-socialist camp whenever they have held dominant power, which has produced over-regulation; excessive inflation; and massive federal debt, inducing high interest rates. (Readers will be aware that Republicans and conservatives are not economically pure, only less guilty based on the objective record. Do not believe the misleading claim that U.S. economic growth is stronger when Democrats are in the White House. See Gaski, City Journal, May 30, 2016.) Again, the present difficult straits of some of our citizens are not the fault of American capitalism. They are instead the result of individuals themselves combined with the left’s sabotage.
The extant state is almost as if it has gone according to plan. A deconstruction of the American left’s playbook, circa 1970 at the beginning of its subversion campaign:
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First, take over the universities for indoctrination and, in turn, to undermine our disciples’ economic prospects. Then we infiltrate elementary and high schools to lower academic standards and dumb down the populace more generally, to its economic detriment. At the same time, we dispense relentless radical propaganda to brainwash America’s youth. Still, we need to dumb them down enough to render them pliable to the message — and we do need widespread economic failure to make the victims amenable to persuasion by a failed system such as socialism. In short, we ruin people’s economic lives and reinforce the effect through false propaganda to keep them on track for failure. Dumb them down enough, and they won’t even recognize that socialism is communism because the latter is socialism’s ultimate aim. Onward the revolution!
(Even leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America have been publicly exposed for ignorance of what socialism is!)
An implausible conspiracy theory? Actually, Cloward, Piven, and Alinsky had already said this quiet part out loud contemporaneously, and a concrete manifestation is readily identifiable: By destroying the quality of inner-city schools (all run by liberal Democrats) in particular, along with glorifying the crime and drug culture while incentivizing single-parent households, the American leftist–Dem-socialist side has undermined black opportunity enough to create a permanently frustrated and Democrat-loyal underclass. The cause-and-effect relation is so transparent that it could hardly have been unintentional!
Now they transfer the sinister methodology to the broader population. The lib-Dem left undercuts economic advancement for a large subset of the U.S. population while subjecting them to socialist propaganda, which is absorbed only because the left had first handicapped the audience cognitively. This answers the prevailing question of how so many Americans can succumb to the phony lure of the failed ideology of socialism. Simply, they were manipulated into that dead-end position by the Dems’ multi-pronged attack. Yes, the immediate cause is indeed abject ignorance by a segment of the public, but the ignorant have received a devious negative assist through the crippling influence of leftist ideology at the micro and macro levels. The left’s program: Wreck their schools, brainwash them, and subvert their economic environment; then we’ve got them where we want them.
Finally, to those who are falsely confident that “it can’t happen here” — i.e., that the socialists or communists cannot take over America — be aware that we now have a growing socialist-amenable voting bloc that is too dumbed-down to (1) see through the shallow deceptions of the lib-Dem-socialist scheme; (2) recognize that their problems are not the result of capitalism, but rather due to their own leftist politics excessively imposed on that system; or (3) rightfully blame the real politico-economic perps who caused their problems. As a result, (4) they will likely vote the guilty, destructive parties into power.
Can’t happen here? Note also that the Dems can count on an absolute floor of about 48 percent of the popular vote in national elections. Even Kamala Harris got 48.3 percent, so how many (or how few) more votes does today’s socialist-controlled Democrat party need to guarantee a win? Another way of looking at it: Suppose the floor for the current socialist-Democrat amalgam is considerably lower — say, 40 percent. Add in millions of illegal votes from non-citizens and other creative Dem vote-counting, and this country truly could be on the verge of a Dem-socialist (therefore communist) takeover. (Unfortunately, the best scientific estimate of non-citizens voting in our national elections is about 3 million — as of 2008–10! See Richman et al., Electoral Studies, 2014.) Consider also that the Dems now proclaim that they will do anything to win.
Be afraid; be very afraid. Sorry to break the news this way. Pleasant dreams, comrades.
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Image: Ivan Radic via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.