"The frustration bubbling beneath the surface is not irrational. It's earned."
Posted by JK on 7/2/2025, 15:37:34
by quoth the raven Wednesday, Jul 02, 2025 - 6:27
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance
Yesterday, someone left a comment on my post about Zohran Mamdani that stuck with me in a way few internet comments ever do. It wasn’t defensive or hostile—it was sobering.
The commenter challenged me, not to just oppose Mamdani’s ideology, but to think about why his message resonates at all. Here's what they said:
“You really ought to ask yourself: why does his message resonate? Why did Russia have a revolution? People don’t wake up, make the espresso, make an omelet, look out the back window across their deck, the lake, the boat, ready for a day of country living, and say ‘You know what, honey… how about we start that revolution today?’ Nobody does that. Revolutions are made by very unhappy people. Why are they unhappy? Mostly because society largely doesn’t work for them… There is a lot of pain out there, and a lot of it is honest pain.”
They’re right. There is a lot of honest pain.
People are watching the price of everything explode—housing, food, healthcare, energy—while wages stagnate. Meanwhile, Wall Street breaks records quarter after quarter. That disconnect doesn’t feel like capitalism to the average person. It feels rigged.
So when someone like Mamdani shows up and says “seize the means of production,” it doesn’t sound crazy to people living paycheck to paycheck. It sounds like maybe, finally, someone is taking their suffering seriously.
But here’s the part no one wants to talk about—especially not in polite political circles: the real culprit behind this pain is our broken monetary system. And both parties are to blame.
I laid this out in March, and it bears repeating. The U.S. is now at $35 trillion in federal debt. That number alone is alarming—but the speed at which we’re accumulating debt is what's truly terrifying.
