The Making of American Socialism

But before socialism can even be sold as the solution, someone has to convince you that America has a problem that requires a radical solution, and for America, it is that there is always an oppressed class and an oppressor class.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, presented the issue that due to racial identity, some people will always be the oppressor and other people will always be oppressed.

DEI's narrative focuses on the missteps in America's history, but instead of using those as a framework for doing better, it uses it as an excuse to perpetuate blame, shame, and radical justice.

So we learn that America is fundamentally unequal or oppressive.

We are taught that capitalism is an extension of that oppression and systematic wrongdoing.

Then to top it all off, despite the influx of equal opportunity, unequal representation and outcomes are interpreted as evidence of systematic oppression, not the natural and uncontrollable variation that comes from equal opportunity.

If you want true equal opportunity, you can't control the outcomes.

DEI's mission, though, has never really been about managing the opportunity.

It's been about managing the outcomes to control for optics.

They want things to look really good, not function really good.

This issue is compounded with the introduction of an idea called racial capitalism.

If you're like me and you've never heard of this term, a simple search will tell us that racial capitalism is believed to be a socioeconomic system where the development, organization, and expansion of capitalism are inherently shaped by and dependent on racial hierarchies.

So allegedly, capitalism and the success people are able to achieve in it is actually a product of racism and oppression.

Got it.

Now that America has been successfully established as racist, oppressive, broken, and fundamentally yet irreparably flawed, we need a new way forward.

To start, the far left doubles down on the last part of that list, the fundamentally yet irreparably flawed part, and preys on people's frustrations by providing an easy outlet to violence.

Oh, you're hopeless that our nation is in ruin.

Well, let's build something new.

But before we can do that, you need to burn everything down first.

In no uncertain terms, capitalism is forcibly associated with exploitation, inequality with oppression, private wealth with injustice, and American institutions with systematic problems.

So then socialism comes in with all of these seemingly perfect solutions to address each problem.

Greater government intervention, redistribution, greater regulations, greater restrictions, and the elimination of private wealth.

Well, it seems too good to be true, because it is.

Hidden behind this appeal for a fairer society is a strategy to expand government power by convincing people to surrender their freedoms under some false promise of what they'll gain in return.

Now, I want to be clear that there are some legitimate economic concerns and things that people struggle with under capitalist systems, but identifying a legitimate concern or problem does not automatically validate going all the way to a socialist solution.