Ask for a Utopia, Get a Caliphate

The radical ideologies on the left, Marxists, anarchists, revolutionary socialists, all the people who see themselves as the vanguard of liberation, they are not entirely wrong when they say we’re being managed, shaped, and manipulated by the structures we live under. They’re right about that part. We are shaped by institutions, by economic incentives, by governments, corporations and political elites who have figured out that it’s much easier to get compliance if you let people believe they’re making their own choices. In that sense, the radicals are right: our environment is engineered. But here’s where they go off the rails: this system didn’t appear out of thin air, created by some alien species with evil motives. It was built by human beings, just as flawed, just as self-interested, just as prone to power-hunger as the ones it oppresses.