Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:00 PM | June 14, 2026
meme

If you don't follow Bonchie from RedState, our sister site, on X, you are missing out. 

He has a skill that I certainly lack: boiling things down to points that can be expressed in a sentence or two, and doing so in real time. I have my talents, but that is not one of them. My observations take the form of an essay, linking various strands of ideas into a larger, coherent whole. (At least I think that is my talent.)

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I really appreciate that. The division of labor exists for a reason. 

Bonchie did that perfectly with this observation:

DSA members, and communists in general, are an example of "elite overproduction" in action. They, or at least their leaders, are almost always people who aspired to be and were told they could be elites, but who for some reason or another don't have the chops. They are failures who attribute their failure to the "system," rather than their own shortcomings. 

Revolutionary beliefs are the outlet for their resentment, and the Revolution (or pursuit of political power) is the means by which they can overthrow the order that "holds them down." Nepo babies are an especially ripe target, which is why so many heirs to fortune are leftists, and why so many foundations established by capitalists who achieved great things are funders of destruction. 

Mamdani is a failed artist, and in this clip he features another failed artist, celebrating the fact that by stealing from successful people they can pretend to be truly successful, rather than thieves. They put their aspirations and behavior into the context of making things better for others, but socialism NEVER does that; demonstrably, it makes things worse. 

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Socialism and communism are the products of externalized hatred for achievement. It's not that they can't recruit some poorer people, but it's remarkable how few actual working-class people are attracted to socialism. They may have their problems with the capitalist class, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not, but they are not, in general, motivated by a desire to be thieves or to destroy things. 

If you look at any lineup of Antifa thugs, they are almost universally degenerates. I am not referring to the fact that they are revolutionaries; many of them are clearly failures in life, and radiate it. You don't meet normal-looking Antifa people. 

Seriously. The Brownshirts of the Democrats are whacked. 

The failed elites, like Elizabeth Warren (who had to lie to get hired by Harvard), Mamdani, Graham Platner, AOC, and the like, aspire to be the "Vanguard of the Proletariat," just as the failed Karl Marx needed constant support by a nepo baby to even stay fed. 

Their goal is to break into the elite through political power, usually through coercion or force, and to use that power to steal from people who are actually successful. 

If it feels like we are living in Atlas Shrugged these days, it's because, to a great extent, we are. Ayn Rand's work may be a bit heavy-handed, but she captured the psychology of socialism well. 

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The sheer hatred aimed at Elon Musk is based on resentment, and the steady stream of leftists fantasizing about what they would do if they could steal his money is revealing. They claim to have grand social aspirations, but this is belied by the fact that the federal government could spend his entire fortune, if it were liquid, in 45 days of normal budgeting. If world hunger could be fixed by the strategic application of aid dollars all at once, it would have been solved long ago. 

They just want to take his money and blow it. They want power. 

When you can't succeed by fair means, and you lust for power, you turn to foul means. Ro Khanna is wealthy because he married up; Newsom got his start with loans from the Getty family, but his true business is influence peddling; Elizabeth Warren got where she is by lying about who she was—using DEI—and selling books she knows are full of lies; Bernie Sanders, the man with the penchant for flying in private jets, couldn't hold a real job, so he went into politics and wrote bad books selling resentment to the downwardly mobile. 

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Elon Musk? He builds things. He builds systems that build things. He makes OTHERS rich. That infuriates them, and they want to make him a slave to their will. 

Being a socialist, once you are an adult, is a confession of failure and an expression of ressentiment. 




















































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