Daddy, Where Do Communists Come From?

By David Bittinger

August 23rd,2026

Children are curious and easily frightened. They want explanations for everything scary. For instance —

“Does thunder mean God is angry? That big growling bear I saw on TV — is it going to find me and eat me? And I heard there are disguised communists who are more dangerous than that bear.

“And they’re running around in spooky places like New York and Michigan and Oregon. And California — is that place real? I don’t understand, Daddy. Where, oh where, do communists come from?”

You can’t blame the kids. Communists are also hard for adults to understand, even adults who understand history and economics — especially those adults.

To grasp the outbreak of revived communism — the disease once thought eradicated — first behold its breeding grounds, the manicured lawns and stately buildings of American colleges and universities.

The educators there vary in studies and styles, but most usher young people into semi-adulthood through the same leftist lessons on American wealth and equity: The world of private enterprise creates mostly injustice, which can only be corrected by government-enforced justice. This is not absolute Marxism, more the Marxism of noble pretense.

Has higher education been hyperpoliticized over the past half century? Here’s a brief review. (Don’t bother reading this if you’ve already experienced it. In my generation, such lessons were common as painfully long guitar riffs.)

And what does this education have to do with the reality of adult life? Here are just a few of the actual majors / degrees earned by college students expensively educated in the Post-Reality Academic Era (ca.1965 – the present):

  • Political Economy of Newly Industrialized Societies (possibly withdrawn because of the acronym).
  • Nordic Lesbianism
  • World Domination
  • University Studies
  • Motorsports-Related Studies
  • Global and Transnational Feminisms

Where does such education lead? Nowhere, of course. It’s career training by and for people whose careers seldom generate revenue.

Some useless-studies students leave college, preferring an even less demanding environment. Some graduate with a degree in a selective discipline like Trans Puppeteering and gradually discover the business of fast food. Some protest from their parents’ basement. Some go on to graduate school, one option being graduate school that lasts forever

When it comes to the world of employment, they’re not quite suited. Where do you work if you’re educated in Nordic Lesbianism and can’t afford to travel to Norway? If you went deep into student loan debt to earn a PhD in Workplace Weight Stigma, wouldn’t your job prospects depress you? Maybe you’d overeat.

These young Americans don’t have the work ethic or inclination to build a career or a business. They don’t want the burdens of traditional family life. They’re disappointed and confused. Their contributions to society are mostly street chants beginning with the words “Whadda we want?”

Many resort to a pastime that’s attractive only for lost souls who grew up in comfortable circumstances but now lack comfortable options. They become closet communists — not declared communists, because they’re not joiners. And they never call themselves communists. That’s unfashionable, like calling oneself a troglodyte or, if attending an elite college, a conservative.

But they’re just active enough for street protests and voting in elections for candidates who share their “seize the means of production” misery about life, who resent living in the parents’ basement.

There are already some chilling examples of these people being elected to office, although they know no more about governance than they do about quantum field theory. More of these overreaching underachievers are coming. Here are two current cases, each performing as a mayor.

In a two-word fiction, they call themselves “Democratic Socialists.”

Zohran Mamdani

In November 2025, Ugandan immigrant Mamdani, the son of wealthy left-wing activists, was elected mayor of America’s largest city.

New York City also has the largest Jewish population center outside of Israel. Mamdani somehow managed to become its mayor while supporting Israeli-murdering terrorist organizations and embracing the “BDS” cause, urging the world to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel.

He felt emboldened to advocate the arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister when he came to speak at the United Nations.

A mayor doesn’t remotely have authority to arrest a head of state. This was just a dramatic exercise of his passions as a politician lacking political sanity.

You could try to comprehend his enthusiasm for subverting NYC’s grocery stores by planning a Soviet-style government-run grocery catastrophe. You could try to analyze his proposal of hundreds of millions in new spending for a city whose long-term debt is estimated at over $200 billion. You could try to comprehend his provoking wealthy citizens and Wall Street businesses (whose taxes are urgently needed by New York) to move to Florida and Texas by doing everything he could to villainize and further tax wealthy citizens and Wall Street businesses.

Or you could give up trying. It’s hard to analyze political insanity; you can only bring it to the attention of the sane population.

Katie Wilson

At America’s other coast of progressive childishness, Washington’s largest city Seattle is somewhat governed by a slight, young woman with a passionate devotion to rights: the rights of transit riders, workers in general, Starbucks employees dissatisfied with their pay, people living on drug-dominated streets, arrested drug merchants, immigrants living on government support, and people whose privacy Ms. Wilson deems compromised by surveillance cameras.

To meet her higher goals, Wilson quickly had to propose that Seattle cough up more taxes — higher than the combined local and state rates already the highest of any American city. It’s complicated. So, she proposed the only solution her belief system recognized: new taxes charged only to residents and companies she regarded as having too much money.

Soon enough Katie Wilson’s plan ran into reality problems. Starbucks, the 55-year economic bedrock of Seattle, moved major corporate operations to Tennessee. The former Starbucks CEO announced he was moving his Seattle residence to Florida. A survey revealed that 55% of Washington business leaders were actively considering relocating.

Wilson reacted like a child who learns that her beloved fairy tale has no magic lessons for fixing insolvency. She appeared in public looking spooked by reality.

As closet communists promote “Democratic Socialism” in America, four countries still hold high the old red banner of communism: zombie-communist Russia, imperialist-communist China, starvation-by-despot North Korea, and Cuba in the prolonged death stage of its 76-year-old “revolution.”

The legions of young idlers and old fools who still buy into the creed of Marx and his academic enablers fight for the same old cause, more expensive now than it was in 1917: Government must give me the money I need . . . or else.

Hordes of them still hunker down in basements. But remember 2020. Basements worked for Biden.

-30-

Bittinger is a non-distinguished graduate of Glenbard West High School.(You should see its wall of Distinguished Alumni Awards). He’s also a graduate of Vassar College’s first coed class, and as a devoted admirer of Mahler, still finds his brilliant complex symphonies easier to understand than brilliant complex women.

Comments 32

  2. Well Dave, you’ve done it again. Another fine, coffee out the nose humorous piece for my Sunday.

    You omitted Medieval Poetry as a degree one attains that guarantees a comfy lifestyle (single of course) in the basement of your leftist parents.

    I believe there is a direct link involving kids attending college directly from high school and their being indoctrinated. A good dose of real life medicine is having a job and some life experience before hand. But then their grades will be less then stellar as they disagree with the comrade professor.

    Thanks for another fun start to my Sunday.

    Stay well and rested John.

  3. There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism – by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.
    — Ayn Rand —

    1. Excellent. Her predications written in the fifties are coming to pass. Somehow, education from K-12, and, especially higher ed have to be held accountable.

      1. At the Chicago Economic Club, back when it was a relevant civic institution, they had an evening where members came together, then broke into smaller dinner groups to discuss socialism and communism. A few of the members had lived under communism.

        One of the members passionately told the group about the differences. Essentially, there isn’t one. Socialism is a more “evolved” form of communism.

        Amazingly, many in the club were okay with it. Chicago is worse off for it.

  4. Very well said. The examples are ironic in the sense that Democrat Party Jews (Pritzker) have not only supported, but donated billions over the years to these causes.
    The DSA is now the Democrats in that the heavy majority are going along with this. I think this will be Obama’s and Pelosi’s legacy; unfortunately for the rest of us.

  6. This is a perfect follow-up from yesterday’s column by Paul Vallas. Bravo, Mr. Bittinger.

    We have all gotten very complacent and confident that it could NEVER happen in these states united. I’m hoping that the normies are waking up to the very real and dangerous situation that has already started!

    We can do our parts by educating ourselves about all elections, from local school boards, to judgeships, and everything in between and getting off the couch and voting.
    Turnout has been abysmally low in some of the places where socialists/communists have won. We better start paying attention before it’s too late.

    Casey at the Bat, The Emperor’s New Clothes, the Little Red Hen.

    1. Thanks, Mr. MacDonald. Your reference to those three traditional fables of folly intrigues me. I’m tempted to write a column on that theme. Folly is in ascendance now.

  7. Bravo Mr Bittinger. A very compelling article for this patriotic troglodyte. 🇺🇸 😁 I think of myself as a crusty curmudgeon like Walt from Gran Torino – what the f is happening to my country & Western civilization?

  8. How many of these brilliant baby Marxist’s realize their college’s and scholarship funding partially comes from major corporations and successful alumni?

  11. They are nurtured in the K-12 Marxist aviaries of government schools. When the union’s social justice harpies are through with the students their prefrontal cortexes have a warp that maturity alone will never cure.
    The malignancy is deep in the indoctrination camps.

  12. David — well said. I remember when the degrees were called “basket weaving” but were inhabited at least by students who had something else going for them —talent in a sport watched for recreation and paid for by the public. Some made lifetime careers, others in the end hopefully had saved enough to start a business and continue to trade on their name. If not maybe “ coaching” at their old schools or working in a car wash. Heck NCAA now allowing pay for undergrads. And what about the “professors” in these esoteric jobless topics. I guess they convinced the liberal Boards of Trustees that there was a place and need for such degrees.
    Heck when I did my bachelors the only loosely goosey degree was social studies. My how we have progressed.

  13. The pendulum can’t swing back to *Individual Responsibility & Accountability* in support of a better society soon enough. This juvenile “whaddya got for me?” freeloading phase has gone on long enough.

    Regarding higher education, they are in their ivory tower sucking on the teat of tax payers allowing in students who need remedial math high or middle school education to catch up. They’re most likely not going to benefit themselves or their class cohort, but the colleges & universities benefit, getting their highly inflation costs reimbursed by tax payers bamboozled by these politicians.

    Final thought, I love the saying that “Socialism works well, until the money runs out”.

  14. In both cases you show, it starts with the parents. Mamdami’s should know better: the family was thrown out of Uganda under Idi Amin’s pogrom. When they came to America, America was very good to them.

    As for Wilson: my parents would have thrown out my stuff on the lawn, changed the locks and told me to either find a real job or join the Army; not run for public office.

    The universities and like are just the vines of the poison ivy, its the roots below the soil that we don’t see that are the cause-the parents; what did they instill in their child?

  15. David,
    Your column is an excellent summation of our current political problems.
    A few of the leftists have woken up and seen the light. (See Sasha Stone)
    As an admitted Deadhead I will quibble with one statement by asking a question:
    How many seconds or minutes does a guitar riff become too long?
    Cheers

  16. Thank you Dave, an excellent piece to consider and spur discussion. While concerned about the DSA, I believe their appeal is limited and there are plenty of states and people who are firmly against the Progressive/DSA nuttiness! Living in Florida, cannot see the New York, Seattle, Chicago or L.A. Progressive takeovers happening here! Too much common sense around still in the population. On university studies, I think federal student loans/grants should only be allowed for degree courses with real, employable benefit to the nation, e.g. STEM based programs. taxpayer underwriting of silly degrees needs to be halted!

  17. Excellent column and good reading on this Black Ribbon Day marking the 87th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact’s secret protocols under which Hitler and Stalin divided Europe. It condemned by ancestral homeland of Estonia to Soviet Communist occupation that ended in 1991. On August 20, we celebrated 35 years of the restoration of independence. Thanks, David, for your insightful work.

    1. Your celebration of restored independence is important, Ms. Karu, also your sharing such history like this. Brave survivors of communism like you are an important American counterweight to our brainless homegrown communists.

  18. The real question regarding NYC Mayor Mamdani is how did he somehow manage to become its mayor in a city with the largest Jewish population center outside of Israel while demonizing the only democracy in the middle east and simultaneously capturing over 30% of the city’s Jewish vote? The answer to that might prove discomforting, so the question is avoided by polite society.

  19. Bruce- I think Mamdani got elected by promising free stuff. And if we don’t solve the accelerating polarization of wealth problem in this country, the would be socialists are going to have an increasing appeal. Unfortunately.

  20. It isn’t Republicans vs. Democrats. It’s Nationalists vs. Globalists/Socialists/Communists. The prior are the Builders. The latter are the Destroyers. I believe a person’s politics boils down to their psychology. Blamers that like to tear people and things down tend to be liberals. Eg. “I am a vegan so you should be too or you are a bad person…” Critical, judgmental, condescending, self righteous and sanctimonious. I went to Law School in Oklahoma in the 1980’s. An older guy that grew up on a rural ranch perhaps put it best. He and his brother were the ones to get up and milk the cows…His sister slept in, resented ranch life and tormented her parents. He and his brother were conservatives while the sister was liberal. Communism has failed everyone everywhere and left a trail of dead bodies. America’s youth need to learn some real history.

    1. From Mamdani’s “control of the means of production,” to the head of the DSA cataloguing how they want to get rid of the Constitution and replace our checks and balances government with a Party elected Politburo, commies are telling us exactly who they are, and you’re falling on the old Democrat saw that there are no commies left anymore and it’s just right wing paranoia reminiscent of the 50s.

      Sorry, Tommy Boy, but that “who you gonna believe, me or yer lyin’ eyes” BS quit working during Obama’s term.

  24. Great job, as usual Dave. Someone pointed out low voter turnout as to the reason why the Closet Communists are winning elections. Maybe you should do a column on how ” Rank Choice Voting” has enabled not only the Democrats but the Communist Democrats to gain power. This is the greatest voter scam EVER perpetuated on Americans. This ensures you’ll NEVER get a Republican mayor in Chicago. Or Portland. Or New York. The ” featured ” candidates are assured to be two Democrats with no Republican on the ballot. This is why you end up with low turnout and voter apathy. Ayn Rand said it best, like choosing between murder and suicide. Rank Choice Voting ensures these idiots remain in power by giving you no alternative but to stay home on election day.

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