Across the street, my neighbors seem to have lived there a while. It's a multi-family building, I believe. They have a big front porch with chairs and decor and a radio and beer.

If the weather is nice, the main man is there - a bigger fella with a big gray beard, wearing a hat, drinking a beer. He seems to be the patriarch in some way. He’s always sitting outside and chatting, with people who live there, with friends passing by. The radio blares into the night, to 10 or 11pm. Dad rock.

I’m walking to my apartment some time in the afternoon. The Big Man was there, with his beer and his radio turned low.

“Howdy!” he shouted across the street at me. I was newer to the neighborhood, but had been around long enough to be seen and known.

My shock was like whiplash. “Cheers!” I shouted back with a tip of my Baja Blast.

Maybe a peculiar response, but I’m a peculiar person. The Man smiled and laughed and tipped his beer to me.

I thought about that interaction the rest of the day.

I am visibly queer. My partner who lived with me was Black, and we lived in a small white town. I am sure the man across the street is a Republican or conservative of some measure. Beyond just the “look,” the 90s SUV in the driveway has a front plate with a silhouette of a busty pin-up babe colored by the American Flag. A true red-blooded patriot. But in that moment, first and foremost, we were neighbors.

Some days later, I heard him again: “Cheers!”

He was grinning and holding up his beer.

I held up my Baja Blast once again and replied, “Cheers!”

These are the only interactions I’ve had with my neighbors across the street. I think about these interactions every week.

I live and grew up in a very classic, quaint American small town. It's the type of town you see in Hallmark Christmas movies. Old-fashioned street lamps, a big clock in the town square. The main street is shut down at least once a month for festivities, like the elementary school pumpkin fair, or the annual soup-tasting competition, or a classic car show.

I left for the cities for some years but ultimately returned (though, through no choice of my own, but that is a longer story). I returned at the end of 2022, amid an ever-increasingly divisive political and cultural atmosphere. I didn't know what to expect in my little old hometown after 5 years away.

My neighbors two or three houses down have a Democratic inclusivity sticker on their window. I see progress flags waved from porches next to houses with Trump banners. During the 2024 election cycle, I saw a single house that the yard was split between Harris posters and Trump posters; you could see the ongoing war of ideologies playing out every time you drove past. One more Harris sign, one more Trump banner. Not entirely surprising to see so much Democratic support from a suburb of aging WASPs - white Anglo-Saxon protestants. Of course, the county voted red at election time, regardless.

Still, it made me feel at least marginally safer, if only an iota.

Those neighbors have never waved hello.

Conservatives have the liberals beat by miles in the arena of building community. Liberals sow paranoia, hide behind academia, and disconnect themselves from the struggles of working people. People become Republicans because the Republicans at least pretend to care about working class issues. Republican voters feel good getting together to “fight for their rights;” they think they’re on the right path because their leaders promise to help them. Yet more and more, the Democrats show their hand as only belonging to their donors. They are repeatedly uninterested in their constituents and what they want.

Of course, the same is true of Republicans, as for being bought and sold. But they couch their atrocious policies in promises of resolving real world issues that people face. They convince working people that other working people are the enemy; conservatives abuse the inherent competition that capitalism breeds.

Liberals, Democrats, act as a polite wall to keep a dissenting populace placated, all the while refusing to resolve issues they could end in one sweeping move. Every year, they further distance themselves from their constituents, leaving huge swaths of apathetic, unmotivated, and cynical people who have given up on a government that will ever serve them.

The liberal cynics may be the worst citizens in the US. They generally agree with populist and socially progressive ideas, but have no faith they will ever be enacted. It keeps them apathetic to change and unmotivated, and unwilling, to help. Their cynicism keeps them from building or finding communities because they start to distrust everyone they meet. They dislike almost every candidate of every party, but they see the political posters and submit to their fate. They become a sort of purist in their own world, a purist who sees nihilism as the correct mode of thought.

Communities arise from trust, of which liberal cynics have none for any of humankind. Conservatives have trust in their politicians, their leaders, and themselves. They have hope and confidence.

The most vitriolic Nazis overpower the conservative media, and by extension the liberal media who must wag their finger at whatever the opponent is doing (even if they do it themselves). The worst that humanity has to offer is displayed and reiterated and shown off for spectacle.

Most people are not those kinds of people. Most people have some level of discernment for the bad and the truly evil. I worked at a gas station in this small town, a little place that only locals stopped by. In that gas station, we are all, first and foremost, neighbors. We are neighbors before politics, before race, before gender identity.

I am openly transgender. I was openly transgender when I worked at the gas station. My partner, at that time, was also an openly transgender Black woman. She would come to the gas station around the time I would close to walk me home. A local resident offered to give my partner a job because I had mentioned she was searching; he knew who she was - that was irrelevant.

When I told customers I was leaving the job, they all mourned for the loss of a great cashier. Some of them called me their favorite cashier. I’m fun and personable and relaxed as a cashier; it’s a job I truly excel at. Once, I gave a customer $12 for gas to get her home because her card declined; the regional manager heard and paid me back from the store. Another time, I covered the last dollar on a woman’s purchase. I let elderly, disabled, and children use the employee bathroom even though I wasn’t supposed to. I was patient with people who lingered a little too long at the end of the night. I patiently counted 200 pennies for a deaf man getting gas. I smile and wave and say hello, welcome, and have a great day. And I mean it, every single time, and the customers know that I mean it. Because you can feel the difference between a scripted line and a heartfelt goodbye.

Several years ago, a swastika flag popped up on the main street in my town. Less than 24 hours, it was taken down. It didn’t show up again.

This is a town built by and for the community. The retired weatherman is a local celebrity because he fully participates in every community event; he even went to a science fiction convention in town. The tri-county radio mentions my little town by name on every news sign-off, simply because it is so vibrant and full of life. “There’s always something happening,” is what they say.

Over the decades, the grind of capitalism and the divisiveness of politics have eroded communities everywhere, in all towns and cities and villages, on all fronts. The loneliness epidemic is an intentional tool to keep unhappy people complacent.

There is only one way to fight cynicism and loneliness. And it starts with smiling and waving to your neighbors.

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But it is ensured by the ruling class that the lower classes remain divided; if they were not, the numbers of laborers would trample the bourgeois in their homes and offices.

Vladmir Lenin believed that the working people would not envision or pursue communism on their own, that the most class consciousness they could achieve without intervention is labor unions. Leftists like to say that “communism is inevitable,” as though that absolves them of putting in no effort toward achieving that goal.

Communism is only as inevitable as when the will of the people can outcompete the destructive force of capitalism; in other words, the working class must unify and rise up before the capitalist class ends the world, from runaway climate change or nuclear war. Time is not on our side. Standing idly by waiting for communism to happen is only allowing the ruling class to further sink their teeth into the flesh of our labor to suck us dry of any value we offer, which is steadily decreasing as technology improves and human labor can be automated.

We, and you, must take matters in our own hands.

Easier said than done, frustratingly. But where can we start?

Educating one another, and those outside of our circle. Mao Zedong had the peasants teach each other how to read and their literacy skyrocketed. We must take this example and do the same for our people.

It is our duty, as leftists and as Marxist-Leninists, to educate our peers of the working class. People are taught from birth a false consciousness, an idea that places the blame of any suffering on a microcosm of a greater machine; for example, blaming immigrants for the lack of jobs or social safety nets, rather than the intentionally oppressive system in place. Not everyone has the same notion, the same supposed villain. But it is ensured by the ruling class that the lower classes remain divided; if they were not, the numbers of laborers would trample the bourgeois in their homes and offices.

The first step is to break someone’s false consciousness. Conservatives may blame marginalized demographics because they believe their party or state is on the right path, yet they fail to see how capitalism oppresses them - like through debt, low wages, poverty, lack of reliable infrastructure, lack of affordable healthcare. They believe the minorities are hoarding all the resources somehow, despite them being in a much more precarious position socially (and legally and systemically), because their news sources lie to them and twist the truth in order to sow disarray among the population.

Conservatives have a good sense of community among themselves, generally, because they agree to get along based on othering someone else. But you’ll find that these working class folk are more susceptible to socialist ideas than you might expect; I believe they simply need to reframe how they view community and family. But the inherent competition of capitalism keeps people from extending their resources too far because they may lose them forever.

Liberals may blame billionaires and the GOP for the state of things in the US, without recognizing how they themselves enable and enforce it. They will claim that the Scandinavian countries figured out “moral capitalism” (an oxymoron if ever I’ve heard one); those nations provide basic necessities and living wages and have solid healthcare systems. Yet, they still buy goods and services from nations with cheap, unregulated labor. Successful capitalist countries rely on the gears of imperialism to keep on turning, on powerful nations to keep suppressing the weaker ones, even if the government is kinder to its own citizens.

In truth, I feel like it’s the perfect cover. Social Democrats fall into this category, where they believe that capitalism can be run in a fair and just way, but it is inherently exploitative of others through imperialist conquest. Controlling smaller states is fundamental to the functions of capitalism because it requires a subjugated workforce - cheap labor and lots of it. It is feudalism, but our lords are the executives of corporations.

It serves individualism by making everyone a potential financial threat to you - either by charging too much for their work, or applying to the same job or apartment, or any other way that could be seen as an obstacle to monetary gain and therefore, personal safety and security. A distrusting society is a thoroughly unhappy and intensely stifled one.

Collectivism seeks to eschew any notion of capital. The motive for production will be the progress of society and humanity because the modes of production - the machines, software, tools used to make a product - will be in the control of the workers, the producers of the products. You will get to decide the path of your life in a way that is more aligned with your interests and the way you function best, not constrained to taking jobs you don’t want to do and hurting yourself through the labor required of you simply to survive.

We must learn to trust one another, albeit with skepticism. Not everyone will be capable of being educated because the malice of capitalism has burrowed too far into their minds.

But those who listen should be taught. No more “Google it” or “go to the library.” It is your duty, your obligation as a leftist to educate your peers. People learn best through connection and through hands-on experience. You must take the time to have discussions and you must have the patience to answer good-faith questions. Provide sources for reading materials and suggest other ways to learn, but first and foremost is the connection you build with them.

Most people have some internal understanding of materialism, that the conditions they live in dictate their lives to some degree. Most people have some understanding that the system is fundamentally broken in some way, but they cannot identify it.

We are the teachers to herald in the next epoch of society.

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This theory of historical materialism places a great importance on technology.

Technology (the material world's productive forces [material; having to do with matter, material is contrasted with the philosophical idea of idealism]) influences the mode of production and encourages change in an economic system.

^ That was a lot of jargon. I apologize! Let’s simplify that:

• This theory basically claims that technologies like the inventions of the Industrial Revolution or the Internet continually impact and change how our economy is structured.

• Marx believed the reason why these economic “modes of productions” came about was due to the each of these civilization’s technological developments being encouraging of a different mode of production.

Modes of production

In most modes of production in recent history, there have been class distinctions or class antagonisms.

(Class antagonisms, simply put, are conflicts between different economic classes.)

In our current mode of production, capitalism, Karl Marx believed this was the antagonism:

• Worker and capitalist

In the European feudal mode of production (think of medieval times)

• Serf and lord

The slave mode of production

• Slave and master

The primitive communist mode of production (think of tribal society)

• Little to no class antagonism

Marx also had an idea of what would come after our current mode of production, capitalism. You’ve probably heard of it before. It’s called socialism.

What is socialism?

There is a lot of fear around socialism and communism due to Cold War propaganda (new Cold War propaganda as well). While existing as a taboo, it’s not understood in the slightest.

There are many definitions and types of socialists “Democratic Socialists”, “Marxist-Leninists”, “Anarcho-Communists”, contrary to the belief that places all socialists and communists in one distinct hegemonic block.

The common thread that most socialists have is that they define socialism as a society in which the means of production are owned by all (communally), rather than just owned by the capitalist class.

The means of production are the means of what is used to create products like factories, machinery, or land. For example, to write this article, I'm using a laptop. The laptop would be my means of production and I’m using my emotional & physical labor to type this all down. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean your laptop will be owned communally in a socialist society. What will be removed is the exploitative relation of the owners of the means of production and the non-owning workers or proletariat.

Hear me out! Imagine I’m using someone else’s laptop to create articles, let’s call him “The Man”. I’m using “The Man’s” laptop, working for them to write articles. He pays me $2 per article, while “The Man” makes $150 on each of my articles revenue. He might pay $40 on the website’s upkeep and expansion, but the remaining $108 would be kept for himself. That would be called profit. Marx thought this was exploitative. Without the worker, there would be no production. In this example, I would be the worker or proletariat, as Marx called it. “The Man” would be the capitalist or member of the bourgeoisie.

Imagine socialism

What I’ve been touching on is only the tip of the iceberg for describing the basics of Marxism. I haven’t gotten into how the ruling class, with their immense amount of capital, are able to shape and bend law, politics, and everything else ideological to align with their own interests.

We live in a society of abundance, although it may not feel like it if you aren’t part of the capitalist class. We have the productive forces for a different mode of production right now. Extreme amounts of food are thrown away simply because no one is buying it. Products are serving the profit motive of the elite rather than the supporting the people & planet. Imagine not having to worry about paying for healthcare. Imagine your tax dollars being spent on substantially bettering public transit so you wouldn’t have to use a car anymore. Imagine not paying as much for rent or anything at all. Imagine socialism.

Countries around the world have declared themselves socialist and are being attacked by capitalist nations on all fronts with blockades or other forms of economic warfare, think Cuba or China. These nations are trying to create what comes after capitalism. Will you join them?

“Protect the children.”

Slogans that hold no weight when the “solution” to school shootings is to hide better.

When free lunch programs are cut because it is imperative that poor children starve at the institution they are legally required to be at.

When the state and system obfuscate any investigation into a documented child sex slave island and the people who perpetrated it and participated in it.

Children are the most oppressed class of people.

Knee-jerk reactionaries will say that I am undermining the real oppression that other demographics face - imprisonment, enslavement, forced sterilization, mutilation, discrimination, violence, silencing their voices when they cry out for justice. Yet children face all of these horrific scenarios regularly, and legally, and it is not only accepted as a part of a civilized society but also encouraged culturally. Discrimination and oppression from race, sex, gender, or other marginalized identities only compound on the oppression that children face - for example, young Black girls will experience racism and sexism, on top of the marginalization of being a child.

In general, children and teenagers are largely dismissed or controlled because Americans perceive them as inherent liars, manipulators, and delinquents. Many adults think children are always exaggerating, and therefore nothing they say is as extreme as they claim. This enables abusers because adults are less likely to believe a child, and the vast majority of child abuse cases are from someone the child is very close with, usually familially like a father, brother, or uncle. It is usually someone they trust, and therefore usually someone their loved ones trust.

Because of this unjustified bad public image, young people are frequently banned from establishments - gas stations, fast food, shops of all kinds - for no reason other than discrimination. Management fears that teens’ high energy (also called rowdiness) will damage their property or reputation. “No loitering” and “No skateboarding” are dogwhistles for “this place is unfriendly to minors.” No loitering - a sign that also targets homeless people and others with unstable living conditions. Why is simply existing in public a crime? This is a heavily contributing factor to how the outside world that is accessible to young people is growing ever smaller.

Yes, young people have less impulse control and less emotional regulation, but they are also more impressionable. Less impulse control and less emotional regulation are uncontrollable features of growing up, not personal flaws. When your guardians don’t listen to your words and dismiss your concerns, especially about mental health, teens and children often do things that others would call “misbehavior” or “attention-seeking.” Attention-seeking is seen as a personal flaw also, rather than a failure of caretakers to adequately take care of them.

Young people are treated as immature, ignorant, stupid, and irrelevant in any political conversation, or any serious conversation at all. Yet, when they do one of those attention-seeking behaviors because of their lower impulse control, they’re expected to be fully realized “young adults who should have the experience and control to know better.”

Children are completely and utterly dismissed in American society. Every aspect of being a young person is unvalued, from their opinions to their very life. School shootings are probably the first thing to come to mind, but they are neither the beginning nor the end of the violence that young people suffer. Institutionally, residential schools exist to punish and kill indigenous children, and boarding schools for “troubled” teens are torture camps for unwell or unwanted children. Young people are the only demographic that can be openly, legally abused by anyone. Parents, teachers, elders, siblings. Corporal punishment traumatizes and causes brain damage, from excessive cortisol and severe mental illness and trauma. Society says it's okay to hit your kids, but most people would catch an assault charge if they tried what they do to their kids on an adult.

Of course, young people have no say in any of this. Autonomy is a privilege gifted by generous parents, not an unalienable right. Adults get away with much more violent, controlling abuses against children than against other adults because of this lack of autonomy for young people. Many parents deem self-determination outside the planned route to be unacceptable. Even the most harmless decisions are often forbidden. A parent’s overbearing restrictions limit a child’s access to the world with no regulation. Parents can completely control a child's life up to a certain age. Young people are expected to do what they're told without question, to completely submit to all authority and yield their voice and power to an adult. Children are more vulnerable and require more guidance and supervision to keep them safe and healthy; however, many parents abuse this control to restrict a child’s personal expression and development, and ultimately harms the relationship between parent and child irreparably, and between child and society.

Not that society ever particularly cared about its children anyway. Young people are typically smaller until they're older, and less experienced with less situational awareness. These make them easy targets for kidnapping and trafficking - as demonstrated by Epstein Island. Sexualization of kids is so normalized in current western society that the perpetrators of these unspeakable crimes have not been held accountable, and likely never will in the current system.

Having parents, or stable guardians of any kind with the capacity to feed and shelter you, is a massively underrated privilege in capitalist America. And these are fundamental requirements that don't even yet meet the standard for good child-rearing, but at the very least allow children to live, to survive. Being a child without guardians puts one in the foster care system, which is massively underfunded for the amount of people they have to take care of. But foster care only goes so far, until the person is 18 years old, at which point they are released into society with little to no safety net. 1 in 4 of every person who ages out of the system becomes homeless within the first four years. 25% in 4 years, and 50% of homeless people in the US over all were in foster care at some point.

The scale of this governmental failure is monumental. What kind of ruthless society allows for this level of neglect?

Survival as a young person can be a heavy struggle; every species in the animal kingdom faces the struggle of keeping their children alive and healthy. As humans, we have the technology to ensure that no child goes without their needs met, no matter the case or the cause. Yet to use it for that purpose is an affront to conservative values, as they decline every measure taken to provide free food to children in schools.

Schools where teenagers, and in many cases even younger, are forced into 60 and 80 hour workweeks, between 40 hours at school and 20-40 hours of homework every week. And this is all only if the child doesn’t have to get a paid job, either from pressure from their parents or in order to support their financially unstable household. Adults ask young people to carry an unreasonable burden of labor because education isn’t valued as a kind of labor, which it certainly is. It takes time, energy, and effort and the commodity it produces is an educated worker. We start overworking our populace extremely early on, conditioning people into accepting long hours, unpaid labor, and breaks only to eat so one can do more work. As young as thirteen the concept of recess is discarded, and children must labor harder and longer with fewer breaks.

This is not a sustainable educational system and many parents recognize this - misguided, they often turn to homeschooling and other alternative school methods. Homeschooling is not a superior option, either, because it limits a child’s social development due to a lack of peers. Children need community - “it takes a village” as they say - and this is limited and controlled in any manner possible by parents, teachers - any adult in a position of power over them.

Which, in all honesty, is nearly every able-bodied adult. Children cannot advocate for themselves, and in the way society is currently designed there is a fundamental clash of interest between adults and children. Advocating for children’s rights, for children’s health and safety, can damage a person's reputation and even risk their career.

What a monstrous way to build a society.

It costs time and money, in the short term, to create a safe and suitable work environment for all workers. Capitalists cannot abide by that because it will affect their bottom line for the fiscal year, which is far more important to them than any theoretical future gains that would arise from equitability and a happily engaged workforce.

What if we removed the profit motive? Workers perform the labor, the products are distributed equitably to all people, and the capitalist-owning class has no power over the production of goods and services not created or served by their own hands. Labor should not be owned, but be rewarding in and of itself, for the commodities produced provide a benefit for the workers and the people.

People enjoy taking part in meaningful work. Given enough free time, humans seek ways to better themselves and contribute to society in a more meaningful way. The lockdown at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic is a prime example of how all those who had the privilege to stay home from work began learning new skills and taking up new hobbies.

Productivity is an inherent function of human nature. We are a very social species who deeply rely on each other in a large-scale, communal way. Contributing to your community is essential to proper development in humans.

But capitalism is constantly shrinking the boundaries of those you should consider community: your parents until you have children, and certainly not your neighbors. No multigenerational households; children are expected to move out on their own for no other reason than that is the American culture. The value of romantic partners supersedes friendship and community.

Capitalism doesn’t want you to trust other people or to value them the way you should. It is a system inherently antithetical to the concept of community as it puts individualism above all else. Personal, individual success is the only success that matters to any one individual within a capitalist system.

Profit is a tool of exploitation. It is money that the workers’ earned through their labor that is not being given to them. Profit-seekers’ only goal is to extract profit, which means squeezing a worker for all they’re worth. Labor is abundant, and so workers are viewed as disposable as any other temporary corporate asset. You, the worker, are forced to find work, even when there is none to be done, even when companies won’t appropriately staff their operations. But housing, healthcare, food, water, and basic necessities of survival are not guaranteed, so workers often have to take jobs they hate or cannot do without harming their wellbeing or cannot do adequately without accommodation.

These kinds of workers are churned through the system pretty quickly. One job to the next, unable to keep steady work because they won’t be adequately accommodated or don’t find fulfillment in their jobs. I’m one of these kinds of workers, as an autistic person. Companies see our shortcomings and call the whole person a loss, rather than cooperate with us so we can do the work.

When people are met where they are, where they function at their best, then they will perform at their best.

There are two reasons that companies refuse to provide reasonable accommodations - whether that be a chair for cashiers or working from home for jobs that can be done remotely or shorter work weeks - for their employees. The first, as mentioned, is their bottom line, but chairs would barely make a dent in the budget, and wouldn’t it be cheaper if they didn’t have to rent office space?

It is a mechanism of control. Burnt out workers don’t riot or unionize, they believe, and mostly they are correct. Corporate executives are aware of how dire the situation is for the lower and middle classes right now. They simply do not care about anyone but themselves, not even other rich assholes.

They know the climate crisis is real and they are simply hoping it benefits them by wiping out the impoverished. In the case of nuclear war, they will choose only the most able-bodied and weak-willed of the plebes to serve them in their bunkers.

Workers are alienated from the means of production - the machines, the software, the tools - because rarely do we have any ownership of the work we produce. However, as capitalism slides further into its inevitable collapse, the real bourgeoisie who hold the money at the top of the economic food chain, the billionaires, also become more and more alienated from the means of production.

The top of the corporate ladder has become so far removed from the factories that produce their goods that they often simply don’t know or understand how their goods are made. They make ludicrous decisions that harm their own company simply from plain, willful ignorance.

I’m sure Elon Musk came to mind as an example, but I also want you to consider companies who fired a significant amount of staff for underdeveloped AI tools and now their product is simply worse because of it.

This is clearly an unstable and unsustainable way to organize a society, and an objectively unethical and immoral one. People are not disposable assets for an algorithm or person to chew through and spit out. Meaningful labor is what humans have evolved for, not standing at a cash register or sitting in an office sending emails.

A free society is when all people have the comfort and stability to pursue meaningful work without the pressure of earning enough to survive. This can only be achieved through socialism.

In the year 2025, working class people (as in, people who aren’t the elite capitalist 1%) aren’t comfortable with policy that promises little to no economic change. This is because the American working class’ conditions are ever worsening. You can see it in your own life, or the lives of others that you know. This sentiment can also be represented statistically. Life expectancy is going down in the U.S., home ownership seems virtually impossible for the up and coming Generation Z, and almost 40% of Americans reported they wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency expense.

The working class is more stressed and materially strained than they have been for decades. Until the Democratic Party realizes this, this will continue to be a problem for their party at large. This will also continue to be a problem for our working class as well, presented with no real working alternative. Donald Trump gained a leg up on the Democratic Party by publicly recognizing that there are real economic challenges that exist for many Americans.

However, Trump pointed at the wrong causes for those challenges, such as immigrants, transgender people, and other marginalized groups that have relatively little to no power within the United States. Instead of this false consciousness, there should be more class consciousness, that is, consciousness between the two opposing classes of our time, the working class and the ruling / capitalist class. This sentiment has been partially represented in the social democratic movement around progressive figures such as Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They correctly assume that the problem is not transgender people’s existence or unqualified Black people in positions of power, but the millionaires and billionaires (e.g. the capitalist / ruling class) of our nation lobbying for their interests.

Among the younger generations, social democracy through the name of “democratic socialism” has become a popular ideological faction within groups of young people who associate themselves with the Democratic Party. Reuters reported that in 2016 that Sanders' support among 18-29 year olds hovered around 70%, compared to about 30% for Clinton. Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean even stated in 2020 that he’d “rather be where Sanders is than anyone else”. Younger generations have been dealt a bad hand and aren’t able to use their previous savings to make up for the economic struggle they encounter under our current conditions. However, social democrats or left-liberals like Bernie Sanders only promote resistance to the ruling class and not a solution to the dictatorship that the rich elites, or bourgeois, have over politics, culture, and other forms of ideology. He has endorsed moderate liberals for presidency and most of the time, social democrats do not critically support nations like Cuba, who is unfortunately suffering under a blockade from the world superpower of the U.S., neither do they support China. These countries are both trying to reach a more advanced level of economic production, one without economic classes.

As capitalism progresses and evolves as a system to try to capture the attention or complacency of the working class through quasi-populist political presentation, if we do not rise to the occasion of being active members of our community through having difficult and awkward conversations with our families or neighbors, or act through forms of direct action, the political machine will continue to ratchet towards supporting the interests of our capitalist or ruling class under a pro working-class facade. The capitalists will do this all while amassing wealth and making us suffer through recession on an average of every 6-7 years due to the economic system we are under. For context, economic recessions do not happen as severely under socialist economic systems, historically.

Through working class people’s pressure, not anyone or anything else’s, we were able to change government official’s opinion or policy on certain matters. We have not made our ruling class give us many concessions as of recent, and in fact, we are losing concessions by the second through Trump’s brand of right wing populism, such as the changing of federal standards for Medicaid benefits. Obama didn’t change his policy on same-sex marriage until we rose up, the 40 hour work week would’ve never became policy unless we rose up, and capitalism will never end until we rise up. It’s time for a different type of populism, a working class populism. It’s time for communism.

The way learned helplessness has been ingrained into the American psyche is why any of this is still happening. Americans feel so completely, utterly powerless against the system.

How corrupt of a judicial system is it that we are more afraid of being arrested than saving our people?

There's also the fear of being killed, which is another discussion about the corruption of our law enforcement.

But I want you to think about how they try to escalate every crime to its maximum punishment, how they frame innocent people, how they plant evidence & manipulate you into lying.

Not to mention the rampant physical and sexual abuse that people in custody and in prison face daily.

Overcrowding. Solitary confinement. Slave camps. Death camps.

The president promoting the death penalty and removing any restrictions on cops’ ability to kill. The end of habeas corpus and due process.

To save our people and ourselves is to risk a lifetime of literal torture.

But this is just the enforcement of learned helplessness by the state: a corrupt correctional system that does not “correct” anything, but rather punishes and tortures with impunity. This is how the state enforces the culture of helplessness.

But it doesn’t start there. It’s an ideology that has intentionally and repeatedly pervaded every aspect of American life.

It is not an accident that you feel disconnected from even your local policies and politicians.

How many of you know what government positions are on your local ballot in the next local election? Who is running? What are their policies? Does your state have referendums for citizens to vote on policies? What policies are on the ballot?

Do you even know what day your election IS?

If you’re not actively seeking out this information yourself, if you’re not involved in local politics, you probably don’t know the answer to most of those questions. In an age experiencing the death of cable news and local newspapers, how are we supposed to know what’s going on in our towns? Practically nobody has cable anymore. Almost nobody reads the local papers anymore, particularly young people.

If you’re under 40, you probably don’t have a clue what’s going on in your local politics other than a handful of incredibly uninformative billboards and yard signs telling you to vote for SMITH WHITEMAN for a position you’ve literally never heard of.

Facebook often has pages for local news stations, but how many young people use Facebook? Not many, compared to millennials and gen X.

Imagine a world where your local government keeps you informed of elections through the mail, including the candidates and their platforms, including policy referendums. Or third places and community spaces with public boards that keep citizens up to date, in easily accessible locations.

Imagine if you just knew what was going on around town without having to go out and look for it because it’s an essential public service and would keep the people engaged with their communities.

Instead, elections are obfuscated. Civic education in school is underdeveloped. I should’ve had to memorize every elected and appointed position in my local county instead of every stupid fucking president.

“Goodness” in mainstream media is depicted as a person who doesn’t kill the killer, even if they’ve ended dozens or hundreds or thousands of lives.

The hero who never takes a life is seen as the ultimate pillar of justice.

Just want to posit this little notion: What if contemporary media didn’t depict the killing of one evil person as somehow the same level of depravity as being an abuser or pervert? How different would American culture be?

I think we would fight for our rights a little harder.

We’d be less afraid to take a stand, to make a move. Less afraid of direct action.

Even if there is no intention to ever introduce a fellow to his God, a situation can turn dire in an instant and knowing that you value your life above the oppressor’s is an underrated but necessary form of resistance against fascism.

Because of this intentional programming, we are afraid of trying to take control.

Piping hot take: Terrorism isn’t a real crime. The government is supposed to submit to its citizens; it should be afraid of us. If the government isn’t serving its people, then do we not have the right to demand change?

Writing letters to your senator does nothing when they’re in the pockets of corporations. In other countries, that’s called bribery and it’s illegal. In the United States, we call it “lobbying” and it’s just accepted as part of the political campaign process. Companies own our politicians and the state.

Then how else do we fight for what we deserve? When they don’t listen to our words? We disrupt. If pacifism isn’t working, then violence is a justifiable escalation.

Especially to the lives that are destroyed every day from insurmountable debt, low wages, unaffordable healthcare, underfunded public infrastructure which leads to unclean water and failing electric grids, economic collapse, ecological collapse.

Pollution. Runaway rent prices organized through a corporate loophole. Union breakers. Right to work states - more like the right to be fired. Home insurance that doesn’t cover what you need it to. Underfunded and underprepared disaster response organizations.

If we as a society want progress, we have to make it ourselves. We have to take it for ourselves. Organize your coworkers and neighbors. Host a local forum for discussion. Get professional training and encourage others to do the same. Join a communist or socialist organization, local or national.

“We have nothing to lose but our chains” is an outdated Marxist slogan. We can lose our families to slave camps, now, for political dissent. But don’t let the fear win. We can’t let the fear win. We must not comply.

Maybe in my lifetime I’ll see a socialist revolution. But I can’t do it alone and neither can you.