By Douglas V. Gibbs
The socialist dystopia George Orwell warned us about has come home to roost. As predicted by Soviet communists, our dangerous tango with socialism did not come upon us wearing jackboots and goose-stepping in the street, but with a smiley face, a Green New Deal, and a promise of free everything for everybody. “Little wonder the Kremlin maintains it will not raise the Red flag [of communism] over America. The Americans will raise it themselves.” It is insidious what has been going on, but the plan went into motion more than a hundred years ago, and it is a perfect realization of Animal Farm and 1984.
Adolf Hitler famously said to the older generation in Nazi Germany, “Your child belongs to us already… What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community.” The progressives in America have used Cultural Marxism to indoctrinate the young in America. And their schemes have proven to be very successful for them. Look at the kids today. They are coming out of our universities that have long ceased being institutions of higher learning and they have taught our children that America is the source of all evil in the world. This is the 1984 Two Minutes Hate come to life. They have been programmed to despise the free market principles that made this country so prosperous, despise the Founding Fathers who established our system of liberty and limited government, and despise our history.
They flock to Bernie Sanders and The Squad because they have no frame of reference. They don’t know history. They don’t know that socialism has failed every single time it’s been tried. They don’t know about the Soviet Union. They don’t know the history of Venezuela’s demise. To them, socialism isn’t a dystopian nightmare; it’s fairness. It’s equality. It’s a bunch of free stuff. It’s getting their student loans wiped out by the government. The Left has successfully rewritten the past, just like the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984, so that these kids think capitalism is slavery and socialism is liberation.
In Animal Farm, Orwell wrote a warning about how socialism takes over. But, to the Democrats and their leftist allies in America, Orwell’s writings don’t serve as warnings. For them, it’s a playbook for their takeover of America. Remember how the pigs started out? All animals are equal. That sounds great, right? That’s Bernie Sanders. That’s AOC. We’re just here for the little guy! We’re here to stick it to the evil corporations and the rich! Then, by the end of the book, the pigs start walking on two legs. They start sleeping in the farmer’s house. They start drinking whiskey. And the chilling line changes from All animals are equal to All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
That is the Democratic Party of today. They tell you they want equality of outcome, but who ends up running things? The elite ruling class. The bureaucrats. The intellectuals. The self-appointed experts. The people like Bernie Sanders who owns three houses while preaching about the evils of wealth. They are the pigs. They want the power to distribute your wealth, but they never touch their own. They promise the sheep and the chickens a utopia, but they deliver a dictatorship where the elites live like kings while the rest of us stand in line for toilet paper.
Why is the younger generation buying this? It’s simple human nature, and the Left knows it. It’s the lure of the sugar-teat. When you offer a twenty-something who is drowning in debt because of a useless degree the prospect of free healthcare, free college, and a guaranteed job, they aren’t going to ask how it gets paid for, and who will innovate once the free market dies. They aren’t going to ask about the inevitable collapse of production, the currency, and liberty. They are going to vote for the guy promising them the loot.
Socialism is a philosophy of failure that has failed every time it has ever been tried. It preys on the ignorant, and preaches the gospel of envy. Its only inherent collective promise that comes true is equity – the equal sharing of misery. But it is sold as compassion. The purveyors of collectivism use the language of morality, peace, love, and unity. If you oppose their socialist schemes, you aren’t just wrong on policy; you are a bad person. You are a racist, a sexist, a bigot, and a homophobe. This is Orwell’s Newspeak. They shut down debate by controlling the language. If you can’t say it, you eventually can’t think it.
They call themselves Democratic Socialists to soften the blow. They tell us that they just want us to be like more like Sweden. The lie is that first of all, Sweden is a mess, but the truth is not reaching public ears. The truth has been suppressed, and only glowing reports come out of Scandinavia. What we will get, though, if we follow the pied piper’s flute over the cliff, is Venezuela. The aim of the Democrats is to someday control every aspect of your life. What you drive. If you drive. What you eat. What you say. What you think. That is Orwell’s 1984. The telescreen in your living room isn’t just a TV anymore; it’s your smart phone. It’s the cancel culture that patrols your thoughts and punishes you if you step out of line.
The lure of socialism is the lure of ease over effort. It is the temptation to let the state take care of you so you don’t have to take care of yourself. But as Orwell showed us, and as history has proven time and time again, the price of that security is your freedom… and ultimately, the slaughter of millions of lives.
The younger generation is being seduced by a siren song that leads to the rocks. They think they are fighting for justice, but they are actually volunteering to build their own cages. And the AOCs and Bernies of the world? They are more than happy to hold the keys.
To know the truth, we only need to look upon history. The world has experienced nearly two centuries of ruin brought to those societies that have adopted the socialist/collectivist governing system. Yet, the appeal remains. The free countries of the twentieth century each have a thriving socialist party occupying portions of their governments in the twenty-first century, including the United States with the Democratic Socialists of America.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” He knew what tyranny looks like because he studied it. He paid close attention and realized that the promises of socialists are closely analogous to the serpent’s promises in the Garden of Eden. And while it is reasonable to push back against socialist talking points by teaching people about the endless failures of socialism, the basic laws of economics, and the immorality and destructiveness of confiscating property and denying citizens their constitutionally enumerated natural rights – I am reminded of the old saying: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink… or in this case, you can’t make it think.
The Founding Fathers understood human nature, which is why our Constitution provided so many checks and balances in our system which included oversight by the States with the state legislatures appointing the U.S. Senators, the states providing electors for an electoral college in presidential elections, and the states being tasked with ratifying any amendments with three-quarters approval. They understood the toxicity of utopianism, as they called socialism during their era. Many of those guards have been stripped away, and the promises of socialists made in today’s media landscape are all that the younger generation is hearing. And, as I said a moment ago, they are as sly as the serpent in the garden… eat this fruit, vote and campaign for this socialist and you will have everything you want.
We underestimate socialism. It is a tumor that we see as benign as long as it doesn’t grow too much. We’ve been taught all of our lives that the injection of a little bit of socialism into the system a little bit at a time is harmless. They’ve been doing exactly that for the last hundred years.
If you keep pushing the envelope, eventually it falls off the side of the table.
Today’s progressive socialists consciously reject political reasoning, morality, and complex abstractions. They operate in a binary world marching to Orwellian orders: “If someone disagrees with you, they hate you. If someone does not celebrate your deviations, they hate you. If someone stands against the socialist order, they are Hitler, fascists, and enemies of democracy and they must be dealt with.”
And the Democrats act surprised (or feign ignorance) when their followers rise up and assassinate a member of their opposition, attack federal ICE agents with a moving vehicle, or shout down members of MAGA or the federal government with expletive-laced angry rhetoric.
The result? Mindless automatons willing to do as they’ve been programmed to do. No reason to think about it. The enemy of democracy has been identified.
Common sense, the truth about history, economic facts and even successful results by politicians like that of President Trump during his current term falls on deaf ears. The socialists are convinced that their religion is the only one that matters, and anything that reveals the contrary might be true is propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and hate speech. They, instead, believe the catchy slogan, the hippy chants and songs being blasted through megaphones, photogenic demagogues, a vibe that makes them feel intelligent and a part of something, and anything that has nothing to do with true American History or conservative talking-points.
It’s the worldview they’ve been programmed to follow and fight for, or bust.
Some of them won’t see the truth until it collapses in front of them. They will never understand anything more than what they’ve been indoctrinated to believe until New York City collapses under Mamdani’s leadership, the Minnesota corruption finally slams the Democrat Party across the legal face, and states like California finally collapse in a truly Venezuelan manner.
Then again, they will probably blame the failures of their socialist ideology on capitalism, corporations, and Jewish Bankers.
When you are lied to long enough, even the truth begins to look like a lie.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
