Coveting what others possess is a powerful temptation, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that far too many people are treating that whole “Thou shalt not covet” thingy as obsolete guidance. Therefore, the proof that we’re not quite done flirting with communism is all around us.
The leftist radicals took over academia and spent a few decades aggressively turning out useful idiots. Trotsky wannabes are being programed by “educators” in institutions ranging from New York City kindergartens to the US Military Academy at West Point, and everything in between.
That indoctrination is approaching a point at which elections are affected. A recent Cato Institute survey found that 38 percent of Americans under 30, have a favorable view of communism. That’s enabling the Democratic Socialists of America to seize control of the DNC from the sclerotic octogenarians who’ve been substituting grifting for public service since LBJ decided to nuke the nuclear family.
Unfortunately, the Gen Z kiddies aren’t losing any sleep over the teensy detail that communism killed over 100 million people in the 20th century. I get the whole “omelets requires broken eggs” argument, but enough broken eggs to depopulate Vietnam seems like a lot of suffering to ignore in pursuit of something that has never worked. I guess the promise of other people’s hard-earned stuff is too seductive to resist for some.
There’s a reason the online gaming sites don’t take bets on the long-term prosperity of communist states. Sure-things are not the type of things a betting industry can profit from – and communism failing is an even surer thing than Justice Brown Jackson writing something really stupid. But the collectivism enthusiasts’ wave that off, insisting that past attempts at Marx’s fever dream have simply never been done right. Okay, fine. So, what would communism “done right” look like? I think it would look a lot like the Apple TV+ series Silo. I think the kiddies that worship at the alter of “free stuff provided by the government” should watch the series before they swear their fealty to the DSA.
In Silo, billionaire Per Stensen decides to spread his wealth around, using it to construct a series of 51 underground bunkers (called silos), to protect humanity from an apocalypse – which Stensen causes himself. His underground network is effectively 50 experimental test tubes, and one control bunker. I’m sure Fauci would approve.
Each bunker is a self-contained eco-system housing roughly 10,000 people; controlled by an all-powerful entity called The Legacy. The silo inhabitants think The Legacy is an AI engine, but we eventually learn that it’s actually a central committee of human dictator wannabes in that 51st bunker.
The silo complex is a model of central planning and control – rather like a giant ant hill. Inhabitants are to be selfless workers, devoting their lives to the ongoing survival of the commune – giving their all in exchange for subsistence level rewards.
In his experiment to fundamentally transform humanity, Stensen is determined to avoid the mistakes which doomed every communist implementation since Karl wrote his manifesto.
As every insurrectionist knows, there must be a period of demolition to clear the way for utopia’s construction. That is especially true for communism, because it is fundamentally incompatible with any other form of government. It cannot coexist with capitalism – regardless of what the bumper stickers on the socialist’s cars say. That’s why the left has spent decades attempting to demolish the greatest engine of prosperity the human race has ever seen, with their long march through the institutions. For the silo experiment, Stensen uses a much more elegant solution. He kills everything outside the silos with hydrogen bombs rather than social justice. It’s faster and much more efficient.
Unfortunately for the collectivists, the human flaw that makes communism tempting, also undermines its success. We’re covetous creatures. We want things we do not have. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – if we set out to get things by earning rather than taking them. But such desires are the antithesis of communal life – which requires selfless service to others. Per Stensen attacks that problem by using a regimen of drugs to wipe everyone’s memory, and by destroying any pre-apocalypse artifacts. There will be no nostalgia for “the good ole days.” One cannot desire a return to that which they never knew existed.
Perhaps the biggest barrier to successful communism is that it requires human nature to be something other than what it is. We are not ants valuing the collective over all else. We are individuals who value our loved ones over the collective. It’s built into our DNA. But faulty DNA is just a chemical problem, which Stensen sets out to fix with … eugenics. Only the inhabitants who display “right-think” are allowed to procreate. All others are condemned to childlessness. Outspoken wrong-thinkers are also relegated to the mines or death. Generations of selective breeding and behavioral conditioning are intended to purge the gene pool of troublesome individualists – leaving a master race of compliant ants collectivists to carry on.
The always unstated foundation of collectivism is that individuals are expendable. The needs of the commune come before the desires of any individual. There is no right or wrong in the silo, nor are there any inalienable rights – only an algorithm for success. The Legacy routinely orders the termination of human life for anything it estimates threatens the silo’s probability of survival.
Per Stenson is a smart guy, and he knows herding half a million people into silos, would undoubtedly include a few dissidents with sufficient leadership skills to jeopardize his grand experiment. He addresses that problem by not putting all of his “eggs in one basket.” He maximizes his probability of success by putting his eggs in 50 baskets (silos), all quarantined from each other. He’s banking that at least one of the silos will yield a thriving and stable long-term collective. To prevent cross-contamination of wrong-think, each silo is isolated from the others, and an extermination protocol – called the “safeguard procedure” – is built in. Should any silo attempt to contact another, its entire 10,000-member population will be exterminated.
And yet, peace and harmony remain elusive in this “perfect” implementation of communism. Go figure. The silos are dingy, dark, and oppressive places. The yearning for freedom stubbornly lives on, with people occasionally choosing death over security – venturing outside and accepting death as the toll for a few minutes of self-determination. By the end of the third season, mass revolts in several silos have received the “safeguard procedure.” The ant hills deviating from the plan are eradicated – tens of thousands of people killed to protect the communist experiment, just as has been done in the Soviet Union, communist China, Cambodia, Cuba, North Korea …
The Silo bunkers are obvious applications of communist ideology. The state owns the means of production. The survival of the state supersedes the rights of any individual. Blind obedience to the state is the only accepted faith. It is communism hidden behind a façade of survival. Even so, the word “communism” is never uttered in the series. We’re to know it by what it is, not by what it’s called. That seems like a warning we should heed.
For the youngsters attending the No Oligarchs rallies, who think Zohan Mamdani and Sandy Cortez are hip geniuses, I suggest that they watch all three seasons of Silo. Then they should ask themselves: Is that the life I want for myself and my children? Because that’s the life the socialists are offering.
[Image generated by ChatGPT]
Author Bio: John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now on strike in Galt’s Gulch – which the locals call Idaho. He is a retired engineer who spent much of his career applying engineering principles to organizational development (yes, really). He has written for The American Spectator, Convention of States Action, and American Free News Network. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
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