“Marginalized” Americans are Waking Up and its bad news for Progressive Liberals

It really appears that marginalized Americans are coming around to see progressive liberalism as the ideology that the “elite” used to gain control over “the masses”. It all started with politically correct thinking. Let that term sink in. Which political system in the world imposes control over thought through control over speech and the use of censorship… yep… systems built on Marxism.

While “wokeism” has been around since the 50s, it really took off after Democrats lost the election in 2000 and crystalized under the leadership of Obama. Obama was a master community organizer. His skill of at forging alliances between historically divided identity groups by telling them they were victims of “the system” (controlled by whites) created a political power base that vaulted him into the White House and subsequently bestowed upon him substantial riches.

But if you believe what you read, Obama failed to address the concerns of marginalized people. Did Obama address racism or reduce antisemitism? Did he lift the poor out of their poverty? It turns out dividing the country into different identity groups and pitting them against one another may be a brilliant political strategy, but it does little to improve people’s lives and at some level sews distrust between people, who should be on the same side.

We all know in war there are no winners, some people may lose more than others, but looking at Ukraine as an example. When the conflict is over, who will be the winners… technically, the Russians or Ukrainians will ultimately win… but will they be better off than they were before the war? And yet politicians try to sell us, that identity group conflict even if it elicits violence is okay, since it is going to take us to a place where the “great good” prevails. After eight years of Obama and four years of Biden, the marginalized groups in America are starting to realize, they have been lied to… selling your vote for a promise that will never materialize is the oldest form fraud.

Are the Cubans, Venezuelans, Chinese, or Russians better off because they trusted the leaders to make their lives better? The problem is any form of Marxism fails as soon as it promises a fairer means to distribute the goods and wealth of a society, because that means does takes away the incentive needed to convince people to toil all day to produce goods and services. And so while the elite in any society including communist ones will live at a lifestyle far above the regular citizens, the average citizen will be poor and so equity takes the form of shared poverty.

So, is there no hope for marginalized people? Actually, there is hope, but it starts with “capitalism” and “education”. Why both? First and foremost, every study I have ever read on the topic of escaping poverty and marginalization starts with education as the key. No amount of income and wealth redistribution is going to help people escape poverty, at best, it will make poverty “more comfortable”, which is arguably a good or bad thing. I say arguably, because anything that contributes to poverty being “more comfortable” reduces the chances of escaping from it, while anything that makes poverty more comfortable alleviates suffering… keeping both in mind is important.

Continuing with education, in order for education to serve its purpose, the poor must have access to an education that prepares them to earn a good living based on their talents and skills. An education designed to indoctrinate them into an ideology won’t help them escape poverty, but an education that prepares them for college or delivers a vocational skill can. Again, teaching people to feel they have been oppressed in the past can be good or bad depending on your ideology, it has little value in helping the poor to escape poverty.

Unfortunately, access to a good education is not enough. And I don’t know the societal answer to the other key element needed to escape poverty. And that is a set of values. Normally, those values are instilled by one’s family, faith, or in some case other important individuals in one’s life, but absent the core values that someone needs to succeed, it will be hard to do so. This is not unique to the poor, but unlike the poor, people born into better economic situations don’t have the added challenge of “escaping” poverty… an example is a “trust fund” baby, who live their lives contributing little but benefit from the wealth left behind by their parents and so never experience poverty.

However, even if someone has access to a good education, the key to escaping poverty is to live in an economic system that rewards “work”. Whether that reward takes the form of wages or profits, the currency one receives as a reward in a capitalistic system goes towards purchasing goods and services that determine one’s lifestyle. But that only works in a system with plent of goods and services to purchase. In a communist system, not only are there few goods and services (since the reward to work is largely absent), but the state determines what those goods and services will be, meaning you have virtually no input into what your lifestyle will be.

All economic systems have poor people, but capitalism provides an avenue for people to escape poverty, while socialism virtually confines them to poverty no matter what they do (unless they can become part of elite and get first dibs at the limited goods and services) such a system produces. If “marginalized” means living in poverty, with no rights, and no expectation of ever having rights, then socialism excels in marginalizing nearly all citizens other than a select few. In many ways, socialism reminds me of the time in history when the world was divided between nobles and peasants. In socialism nearly everyone is a peasant working for the nobles, in capitalism everyone works for themselves and while not everyone is capable of earning enough to escape poverty, most if they have access to a good education can.

And so, after being duped by the elite, that somehow progressive liberalism was going to lift marginalized people out of poverty and discrimination, it is good to see more and more people realizing what MLK spoke about, but people failed to understand. The key to ending poverty is not identity politics, it is integration. And the most important first step towards integration is education. Education when married to capitalism combined with laws to prevent identity politics from using skin color to discriminate is the way out of poverty.

When MLK dreamed of a world where people were not judged by the color their skin but by their character. At other times, he defined this integration as the ability of each individual to be recognized based on their merit rather than be assigned an identity group based on the color of their skin. He was prepared to fight (using every nonviolent means at his disposal to force integration on society). You cannot have integration unless you put an individual’s talent and character ahead of their skin color and you can end poverty as long as identity politics are driving your politics.

I have mixed black grandchildren, white grandchildren, and my two youngest daughters are half Asian and yet to have children. So, I assume I will someday have mixed Asian grandchildren. Like MLK, I have dream, where each of my grandchildren will live in a world where they are able to realize the benefits that come from a good education and value system regardless of their skin color. It is not that they should not be judged, but rather they should be judged on the basis of who they are as individuals and not members of some identity group. And finally, they should enjoy the rewards of their work and I hope their work contributes to goods and services that make the society in which they reside more properous and better off for their participation in it.