Greetings, Dear Reader,
I’m back! I unfortunately spent the 250th weekend battling bronchitis (while traveling, yay!, perfect timing!).
So that’s why you missed me yesterday and probably Thursday. I can’t even remember at this point, it’s like when you’re a parent, time just becomes a blob of wiping faces and getting snacks in faces.
So what’d I miss? A lot, it looks like.
One thing I noticed that I think is funny is the concept some are calling “socialism chic.”
Before I get to that though, a word from our sponsor.
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SOCIALISM CHIC
The thing about the recent boom in popularity for socialism is it’s not even remotely a “workers’ revolution.” In recent elections, the “workers” – i.e. working class people – usually break from the socialists and socialism sympathizers.
Two recent cases: the Dem primaries for Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York’s 13th Congressional District and the victory of socialist candidate for DC Mayor Janeese Lewis George over the more moderate Kenyan McDuffie.
In the former, polling showed Chevalier getting shellacked in working class areas, trailing by ~10%. She made up for that by pulling a whopping 20% advantage among affluent college-educated voters.
Similarly, George trailed McDuffie in DC among lower income and education levels, 5% and 8%, respectively, as well as among black voters by 9%. She made up for those deficits by beating him among the next two economic brackets by ~10%, then pulling a 13% advantage in college-educated voters.
So now we’ve got a pretty decent profile for the contemporary American socialist emerging. It’s less hammer and sickle and more $7 lattes and useless masters degrees.
The modern socialist coalition doesn’t look like Rosie the Riveter. It’s not a room full of black-faced coal workers. It’s a grad-student with a NYT subscription and a framed poster of Zohran Mamdani. They are college-educated, urban, and comfortably removed from the working-class base the movement ostensibly claims to represent.
Just look at the leaders.
Chevalier attended Columbia University for Middle Eastern studies – a euphemism for pro-Hamas activism – and is now a doctoral student at CUNY for sociology with a focus on immigration and criminal justice. Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson was born to two nerd famous professors and literally grew up in academia. She attended Oxford before dropping out and eventually founding the “Transit Riders Union,” a 501c3 dedicated to “rider equity” on public transit. Born to a highly-educated chemical engineer, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu attended a top one percent high school, then Harvard, twice. She almost immediately went into government.
A son to wealthy parents, Graham Platner’s rape-tastic voyage started by attending a $75,000/yr prep school. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is literally a theater kid. He also has very wealthy parents.
Starting to notice a pattern, yet?
These people and the people they represent are not interested in seizing the means of production. They wouldn’t know what to do with any of it if they did. In their worldview, homes just get magically built and electricity magically piped into their living rooms. Food is magically delivered and transportation is magically assembled.
Their supporters are cut from identical cloth. The so-called “downwardly mobile” elite. They got the expensive education and now they want the job.
Except, there is no job for people with $250,000 in debt and doctorates in sociology.
In the wildest dreams of the socialist-chic crowd that’s threatening to overturn the democratic establishment, they’d get ~$170,000/yr sinecures in any number of pointless laptop jobs.
Pick up a hammer? Hell naw, dog.
We want that corporate DEI gig that contributes nothing to the bottom line. We want pointless, ineffectual government-funded executive positions at NGOs. We want to be in the administrative state! Pay us mid six figs. Or at least enough to support our semi-affluent urban lifestyles.
Welcome to socialism chic, where our upper-middle class livelihoods are mandated either by government fiat or mob intimidation.
MORE LINKS
Next Two Targets In Socialist Takeover Are Fertile Grounds For Radical Politics
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ROOKE: Surveillance State Has Arrived, And Masked Heroes Are Already Fighting Back
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Brutal.
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