While this video is several years old, it caught my attention because it was trending. It has to do with Marxist Richard Wolff answering a softball question for his fellow socialists about how to debunk capitalists who say that they earn their money.

The video is about four minutes long, and here it is, so shields up:

I’ll point out, first of all, the tone with which Wolff speaks: he comes off as a mustache-twirler. He knows that he’s villainous, and he’s embracing it.

He doesn’t believe what he’s saying, he just understands the potential to profit off the economically naive who only understand Marxism because it’s the only economic school of thought that they studied, and their interest mainly stemmed from having heard a one-sided argument in favor of it.

But try asking these kids what the difference is between Austrian economics and Chicago economics, and you’ll usually just be treated to a thousand-yard stare. They’ll just lump it all together with laissez-faire classical economics and just call it “capitalism”, because like typical Marxist cultists, they just split the world in two.

But eventually, these kids are going to grow up, and realize that while the Keynesian economic system we currently have is not perfect, it’s still vastly superior to Marxism, and that a person of reasonable ability can thrive when given the opportunities presented in the current economic system. Until then, they’re going to have the kinds of minds that people like Wolff continue to prey upon.

With that out of the way, let’s get into deconstructing Wolff’s Bolshevik.

The conclusion that Richard Wolff is trying to lead you to is that because you’re not coming away with 100% of the value that you produce, you’re not actually “earning” your money, because capitalism is ripping you off.

He speaks like a man who never owned a business. Or, at least, he speaks as though he’s trying to appeal specifically to those for whom running a business is some great mystery, like a form of magic known only to rich people.

Suppose you earned commission for bicycles that you sell at a bike store, and you get $20 for each $200 bike that you sold. In a fair world, wouldn’t you get the full $200 for the $200 bike you sold?

Sure, that would be a great deal for you, but it wouldn’t work for the business that had to buy the bikes from the manufacturer to sell in the first place, or pay the taxes, rent, and other various overhead costs of running the business which includes utility costs. What’s more, the store manager would also require compensation for his own work of managing the finances, ordering merchandise, and making decisions that the staff counts on to be spot-on because they want the business to succeed so they can remain gainfully employed.

Or, suppose that you worked on the production line that produced those bicycles that have an MSRP of $200. If each person on the production line made $20 per hour, how many bikes must be produced per day to cover the wages of factory staff, such as yourself, and cover the overhead costs of running the factory? Perhaps the bikes must be sold to stores for as much as $120 just to pick an arbitrary but perhaps realistic number.

You might be getting the idea that the profit margins for running a business are razor-thin. They usually are, and many of the businesses that fail, fail by inches. Business ownership is no walk in the park.

And what’s more, the idea that a person is being ripped off because they’re getting paid what they agreed to be paid is intellectually destitute.

The next sentiment that Wolff could be dragged across rusty nails over is his implication that shareholding is some sport that rich people engage in, in an effort to extract value from the system without producing value, themselves. As though there’s no connotation of risk in trusting someone else with some of your value in the hopes that they’ll increase their value, and share some of that increased value with you. Nope, in the minds of the typical soy-cialist, the stock market is some mysterious box that goes “brrrrrrr”, and then rich people get richer.

I’m going to let you in on a little something: I’m a shareholder in my own employer. It wasn’t hard, either. All I had to do was opt into it, and a part of my paycheck is automatically invested. Does that make me some kind of wizard in the eyes of soy-cialists?

Here’s another one: if you’re reading this on a smartphone, odds are, you can download a crypto exchange app from your respective app store, then drop some of your fiat currency into a crypto of your choice. If you did, then you just invested.

Just, you know, do your research, first. Don’t be dumb about it.

To those who have not, those who have are a mystery. Where such differences exist, the gap is often filled with a combination of ignorance and resentment. Socialism is about appealing to that ignorance and resentment. It’s the main reason why it attempts to divide the world between the haves and the have-nots. Where understanding exists, ignorance and resentment dissipates, and often, the difference between the haves and have-nots begins to shrink.

It’s amazing how many people want money as badly as they do, but they’d have more if they simply spent less of their money on things they don’t need. I suppose that listening to influencers peddle divisive bullshit is more attractive than self-development.

Let’s not kid ourselves: socialist influencing is a capitalist enterprise. The lives and minds it destroys is out-of-sight of the influencers who profit from their endeavor.

It’s now been over three years since the riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol building on Jan 6, 2021. Since then, the left has taken to memorializing the event as a threat to democracy, and Biden himself has incessantly referenced it, including in his latest campaign ad.

No wonder Trump was such an effective real estate mogul, what with his ability to live rent-free in people’s heads.

It’s obvious that to the Biden administration the Capitol riot was no ordinary riot, even if all evidence points to it not being the deliberate insurrection that the left has made it out to be, but instead a demonstration that escalated to a level that was not originally intended.

What is it about the Jan 6 Capitol riot that gets under Biden’s skin? What follows is speculation about what might be happening with Biden’s thinking.

When a person would become President of the United States, they undergo a slight change in their thinking. They’ll begin comparing themselves to previous presidents.

While it’s true that there have been protests against the policy positions of previous American presidents, the Capitol riot was the first of its kind, in that people showed up in the thousands to resist the very certification of a man who supposedly had the support of the majority. While it’s true that the protesters don’t represent everybody, they acted on the frustrations of a significant portion of the electorate who believed that they weren’t being represented.

Again, this type of protest was unprecedented in its kind, and grand in scale. What’s more, it was a direct challenge to the Biden administration.

It seems as though a vast majority of people who would run for public office has at least a slight amount of narcissism. Seeing as though Biden has held office for roughly five decades, there’s higher potential for narcissism. In the eyes of a narcissist, they must be loved by most reasonable people, and anyone who would not love them must be unreasonable. This may be playing into how Biden has been coping with the Capitol riot: by making Democracy itself out to be in danger, and making himself out to be a hero, fighting the good fight. In this narcissistic fantasy, the people who don’t accept him must be acting out of malice or ignorance.

After all, to know a narcissist is to love one.

However, an American president doesn’t just compare himself to other American presidents, he compares himself to other world leaders, particularly other influential leaders like those who lead countries such as China, Russia, India, Japan, Germany, and the U.K., just to name a few examples. And, as it so happens, it’s rare for leaders of those countries to see such strong opposition to their leadership, particularly on a day as significant as the certification (or respective ceremony) of their particular appointments.

When you understand this, you understand why Joe Biden and his administration are as insecure as they are.

And, as a further blow to his pride, the candidate that serves as the spiritual representative of the frustrations against the Biden administration is the current frontrunner of the opposing political party, and it’s not even close. And this has occurred in spite of every petty legal obstruction that’s been waged against him, and every attempt to make him out to be an enemy of democracy.

In fact, if the upcoming election were to be held tomorrow, it’s likely that Donald Trump would win. If this were to happen, Joe Biden’s pride would be dealt the cruelest stroke. This would mean that the public, after hearing everything that he had to say about his opponent and his constituency, still sided against Biden. At that point, what would he have left?

While this was speculation, I think it’s reasonable to consider when pondering just what it is about the Jan 6 Capitol riot that Joe Biden seems to take so personally. I’m a bit concerned, because as history has shown us abundantly, when men of power are insecure, they tend to turn to desperate methods.

Personally, I think that this election year is going to be interesting. It’s obvious that there’s a whole lot of pride at stake. I’ve said before that in order for democracy to work, each side needs to see their opposition as legitimate. Both major factions have room to develop as far as that goes, and it doesn’t help that there are people all over who wouldn’t make that easy.

While people ascribe huge significance to the presidency, as I see it, his power should be limited to the point that it shouldn’t make much difference who he is. People should care more about local government, as that can make a far bigger impact on their lives. What’s more, other representatives are significant, considering that if one political party does not control all branches of government, they can’t just push through whatever they want.

Here’s hoping that cooler heads prevail, but to be honest, it’s hard to tell which ones those would be.

A normal, healthy mind supposes that if there are two mutually-exclusive viewpoints, then they cannot both be correct.

For example, if a normal thinker were to be presented with the two statements, “racism is wrong” and “discrimination against whites is okay”, they would perceive an irreconcilable contradiction, and understand that both statements cannot be true.

The use of “if-therefore” statements to determine what follows with axioms as the basis is logical thinking.

You might have noticed that many leftists hold the statements “racism is wrong” and “discrimination against whites is okay” to be simultaneously true. In the mind of a logical thinker, this is vexing, because to them, both statements cannot simultaneously be true.

So, why? Why do so many leftists hold to such a blatant and irreconcilable ideological contradiction? How can such a thing possibly make sense?

And the answer is, it doesn’t. Yet, leftists still hold such contradictory viewpoints due to what’s called dialectical thinking.

So, what is dialectical thinking? As relates to leftism and the related Marxist philosophies surrounding it, dialectical thinking involves the synthesis of conflicting ideas to form a new idea.

Consider how the typical leftist handles the two contradictory statements in the example above. They are told that “racism is wrong”, and “discrimination against whites is okay”, and they are told that, in order to be a good leftist, they need to hold both statements as simultaneously true.

A healthy mind would consider such a political ideology to be complete mushuganah, reject it out of hand, and perhaps even treat it to the sound ridicule it richly merits. However, people who are in cults are seldom of sound mind. They want to fit in, and they’re determined to do so, no matter how hard they have to force the square peg through the round hole.

So, to the end of winning headpats from their ideological superiors, leftists must somehow reconcile the statements, “racism is wrong”, and “discrimination against whites is okay”. But how?

As most of us know, to exercise discrimination on the basis of one’s race, such as in cases where a person is white, is racism per se. Considering this, to the end of reconciling the two contradictory statements, it’s plain to see that the leftist’s main obstacle would be the definition of racism.

So, what is the intellectually-confused leftist to do? That’s easy: just change the definition of racism to exclude discrimination against whites.

Obviously, a sound mind would not make such an exception. But, again, we’re talking about cultists. So, not only will they make the exception, they’ll attempt to justify it in an attempt to silence their conscience, which is probably screaming in agony. Knowing this, it’s easy to see why they continually point to the past crime of slavery as justification for their own Halal form of discrimination, while ignoring the fact that slavery was also practiced by nearly every culture to ever exist.

When you understand dialectical thinking, you understand why leftists are as prone as they are to simultaneously holding contradictory viewpoints.

The example above was not arbitrary, by the way. It was selected to help you understand why the word “racism” has gone from a word with a definition to a leftist snarl word that is used to describe people that disagree with them. Leftists use the word “fascist” in the same sense, while simultaneously engaging in collective action to the end of furthering Marxist economics. Unironically.

As I’ve pointed out before, if language is being used that evokes an emotional reaction, while bypassing your better judgement, you might be in a cult.

Dialectical thinking itself is a memetic holdover of Gnosticism, which had a particular influence on Marxism (remember that many Marxist cults were at one point religious in nature). Early in its history, Christianity recognized Gnosticism as a heresy, and dealt with it accordingly, before Christianity went on to become the world’s most popular religion. When you understand this, it’s easy to see why many Gnostics have a problem with Christianity, and that the dialectical thinkers on the left are fighting someone else’s battles for them.

As much as I’d like to ask whether I helped you to make sense of leftist thinking, we must admit that it still doesn’t make sense. Even so, it can be said that when you know about dialectical thinking, you’re in a better position to comprehend the senselessness of leftist thinking, including why they are in a constant state of redefining themselves, and why they embrace contradictions that more reasonable people would not.

It is difficult to convince a person who is in a cult that they are in one. But there are telltale signs that a person can notice if they know to look for them.

One such sign involves how cults use language. If the language your group employs is designed to stir up a strong emotional reaction, and shut down critical thinking, then you’re likely in a cult.

We all like comical examples. You probably remember Jamaal Bowman, the Democrat representative who pulled a fire alarm, disrupting a house vote in progress, then said he thought that that was how one opened a door.

He’s been in damage control since, but his team has managed to find a solution to keep the heat off him: by calling Republicans Nazis:

What Jamaal didn’t count on was for this brilliant plan to leak out. So being ever the diplomat, he took the opportunity to take the moral high ground, throwing his own strategists under the bus:

Which may seem like he’s making himself out as being above such abuse of language, until you consider that a significant portion of his constituents are sincere in their beliefs that their political rivals are not legitimate, but instead, actual Nazis.

The left has been trying for years to connect the right to the National Socialist German Workers Party, with no consideration for the sincerely held ideological beliefs of either the right or the Nazis, or for the left’s own alliance of convenience with actual Nazis in the Ukraine.

On the surface, it seems damnably idiotic. However, it does succeed in fooling the intellectually deficient among us. And, as it so happens, the intellectually deficient have votes that count just as much as the votes of those of us who can tie our shoes without getting distracted into furious masturbation.

You see, the left knows how to abuse language. And one of the ways that cultish movements like the western political left abuses language is by using emotionally charged language that is designed to bypass better judgement, and get you to assume the worst of the people that they describe.

Such as when they wage frivolous accusations of sexual misconduct against those who get to be a bit too influential, in an effort to snipe their careers and cause a chilling effect that serves to dissuade anyone who might consider taking up their cause.

So, while damnable, their approach is not necessarily idiotic.

Amanda Montell, the author of Cultish: the Language of Fanaticism, made an interesting contrast between how language is used by scientists and how it’s used by cultists:

“My parents, they’re scientists and they will use jargon that I don’t understand. But that jargon is there to make communication clearer. Cultish language has these ulterior motives and it’s there to make communication hazier.

“It’s there to divide people, to shut down independent thinking.

“And that’s how you know that language is cultish, when it causes strong emotional response, but you yourself have trouble translating what it is that you’re saying.”

Amanda Montell

Those of us who are sufficiently well studied are aware of what composes the Nazi ideology, how central Socialism was to it, and how its theology is a smattering of German folklore and dialectic philosophy. If you were aware of these things, the left’s divisive abuse of accusations of Nazism is much less likely to have an effect on you.

When it comes down to it, the intended use of language is to communicate clearly and concisely. However, what cultists see in language is an instrument of control. And to this end, they’ll craft mantras and load words so when they use them they’ll have the desired effect, regardless of their original definitions. A cultist may have the same vocabulary, but they don’t have the same dictionary.

Knowing this, do you think you’re in a better position to recognize a cult?