America Doesn't Have a Socialist Problem—We Have an Apathy Problem

And apathy is how tiny, terrifying, highly motivated minorities end up running cities.

Every election cycle, the media serves up some version of the same breathless headline: AMERICA VOTES FOR CHANGE. The people have spoken. Put a fork in MAGA. Progressivism has left the building. Services for the Resistance will be at noon. If you buy into the hype, this year’s hot new flavor is Democratic Socialism—now with 38% more communism!

As you are surely aware, DSA candidates swept a string of New York Democratic primaries last week. The coverage was swift and predictable. This wasn’t presented as a handful of victories in deep-blue districts with embarrassingly low turnout. No, it was the beginning of a profound political shift. A reimagining of the Democrat Party. The reshaping of America itself.

But here’s the funny part. The press would have you believe that America elected these people. America didn’t elect them. Hell, New York barely elected them. The 276,593 early votes statewide came out of New York’s roughly 6 million registered Democrats. Put another way, the collective voting bloc deciding the state’s fate could fit inside a mid-sized IKEA, while the ones who sat this one out could populate an entire Scandinavian country.

Here’s why they don’t want you doing that math.

Imagine your HOA has 200 homeowners. They send out a survey of proposed property improvements. Ten people actually take the time to fill it out. A majority—six—vote to ban gas grills because climate change, bulldoze the swimming pool and replace it with a nonbinary reflection circle, convert the clubhouse into a multi-faith meditation room (prayer mats included), and require two weeks of anti-bias training before anyone can reserve the pickleball courts.

The next morning the community newsletter reports: “Neighborhood Embraces Bold Progressive Vision.” Except… it didn’t. Six weirdos embraced it. The other 190 were too busy alphabetizing their spice racks or trolling Pinterest for air fryer recipes to fill out a form.

That’s increasingly how American politics works. Radicals sweep elections not because they’re a majority. They dominate because radicals vote. Everybody else complains on Facebook.

And it’s not just conservatives looking around like someone spiked the kombucha here. Bill Maher christened the newly elected turbo left “really crazy” and warned that Democrats are “well on their way” to blowing the midterms. John Fetterman described the movement as an “orgy of socialism,” calling it “anti-America” and “anti-Western civilization.” James Carville basically told congressional Democrats to cross the street if they see these people coming.

Just add sprinkles!

Think about that for a second. When Bill Maher, John Fetterman, and James Carville all look around the room at the same time and collectively ask, “Has the entire coalition lost its ever-loving mind?” it’s clear the tail is officially wagging the donkey.

Take far-left darling Darializa Avila Chevalier. Chevalier is one of New York’s freshly minted Democratic Socialist primary winners whose deleted tweets read less like the feed of a congressional candidate and more like the required reading for Communism 401.

Among the greatest hits: Chevalier all but endorsed communism outright, reposting a quote from Assata Shakur—the convicted cop-killer and FBI Most Wanted terrorist who fled to Cuba. She wants to abolish deportations, police, and prisons entirely. She called Sheryl Crow’s Soak Up the Sun “bootstrap capitalist propaganda.” She lamented that politically left-leaning bookstores rarely stock The Collected Works of Josef Stalin. Not a stray Lenin pamphlet. Not a dog-eared copy of The Communist Manifesto for the aesthetic. Stalin. The man responsible for somewhere between six and twenty million deaths. She wants his entire body of work on the shelf next to the fair-trade coffee and David Sedaris paperbacks.

When President Trump called her a communist, she didn’t deny it. She didn’t clarify it. She didn’t even pivot to “issues that matter to working families.” Instead, she coyly announced, “That framing is one I’m very proud to say I don’t respond to.”

That’s not denial. It’s not even a dodge. That’s a wink.

And somehow, the national conversation has become: “Wow… I guess this is what Americans want now.”

No. It isn’t. Darializa Avila Chevalier is not what America wants. She’s what a few thousand motivated primary voters in a single blindingly-blue district wanted and got—because the people who didn’t want her were too lazy or too jaded or too drunk on uniparty Kool-Aid to participate in the electoral process. Yeah, I said it.

The average American doesn’t want Joseph Stalin’s collected works on the staff picks table at their local Barnes & Noble. The everyday American doesn’t describe anarchism as “intriguing pyromania” and then giggle about it. The median American doesn’t retweet convicted cop-killing terrorists.

But Joe American also didn’t vote in that primary. And that’s the entire ballgame.

At least she said please?

Chevalier didn’t win because her ideology has mass appeal. She won because the people who share her ideology showed up, and the people who think she’s unhinged were busy doing literally anything else. That’s it. That’s not a movement. That’s an attendance sheet.

And I know what some of you are thinking/screaming/gearing up to comment (hi, Anthony S Burkett!): “Politicians aren’t elected. They’re selected. It’s all rigged. Voting is consenting to be governed!”

Fine. Let’s pretend that’s a bulletproof argument for inactivity for a second. Then why does every political machine in America spend literal fortunes trying to get people to vote? Why do unions, activist groups, PACs, billionaires, volunteers, campaigns, and every cable news network on Earth care so much about turnout?

I’ll answer myself: Because turnout matters. It matters more than the candidates themselves! If ninety-five percent of normal people stay home, the five percent who get off the couch don’t just get a vote. They get your vote. They decide what gets taught in schools. Who enforces immigration laws. How much you pay in taxes—and whether those dollars fund drag shows or domestic energy production. Whether your city prosecutes criminals. Whether police departments expand or disappear. Whether your kids will inherit the America you grew up in—or one you don’t even recognize.

So you stay home on Tuesday, and then you wake up Wednesday morning, stare at your phone over coffee, and wonder how on earth we’ve become a socialist country. Maybe we haven’t. Maybe we’ve become an apathetic one. There’s an old saying that evil triumphs when good men do nothing. I’d update it. In 2026, radical politics triumphs when ordinary people decide that they’re “just not that into primaries”—or that their vote doesn’t matter anyway.

Here’s a thought: If you don’t like the direction your city, your state, or your country is heading, stop blaming the six percent who got out of bed and start blaming the ninety-four percent who didn’t.

You’re my GATE kids (minus the pink drink). LMK what you think!

Four days a week, I work for absolutely nothing because I’m generous like that. The fifth post goes behind a paywall because I have this weird habit where occasionally I like to eat. An annual subscription works out to about 30 cents a post and comes with a free signed book. Just saying. ;)