The Leftist’s Utopia

At some point during our bumpy journeys along the road of life, most of us have daydreamed about an ideal world. What would yours look like? I have a vague idea what sort of world our friends on the left might conjure up in their feverishly dogmatic imaginations. Here’s my best guess, with apologies in advance for any mischievous exaggerations on my part…

The Leftist’s Utopia

Thirty-foot high public posters greet you at every turn: “Diversity Is Unity”… “Equality for All, Except Conservative White Christian Males”… and of couse, that old standard, “No Smoking. Anywhere.”

Rahm Emanuel, an uncompromising lefty unlike his more nuanced predecessor, is now president of the United States.  As a point of fact, there are no more states in the United States. The Union is now organized by group affinity: you belong to the Black, Latino, Environmentalist, Gay/Transgendered, Feminist, Artistic or Reactionary communities, each with its own governor and representatives. (When representatives are apportioned, each Reactionary counts as 2/5 of a person. Reactionaries over 50 are counted as 1/5 of a person.)

Education includes mandatory racial and gender sensitivity training,  self-esteem and entitlement workshops, special-interest identity group studies and at least two semesters of world herstory. University students can take a year abroad in the service of oppressed indigenous peoples or as liaisons for the Angelina Jolie Third World Adoption Agency.

After graduation, the more enterprising young people take up careers as community organizers or corporate communitarians. (It was just a short hop from the defunct capitalist corporate system to the new communitarian system of production; as before, the interests of the individual are subordinated to those of the “team.”) The employees now own shares of their companies, in keeping with the new ideology of equality, but of course some employees are more equal than others. Incomes have been capped so that nobody earns more than five times as much as anybody else — with a special exemption for politically active, non-reactionary media celebrities like Angelina Jolie.

The great stone faces of Mt. Rushmore have been demolished. (“Too noninclusive of minorities, women and the LGBT community, as well as a cultural affront to the Native Americans who revered it as a holy place.”) Washington and Jefferson have been demoted from the pantheon of heroes (“self-entitled aristocrats and owners of enslaved Africans”), as have Theodore Roosevelt (“a warmongering imperialist and systematic proponent of white Christian hegemony”) and Abraham Lincoln (“a covert racist who used emancipation to oppress people of color for another 100 years”).

The Scandinavian “cradle to grave” welfare system has been universally adopted: daycare, schools, universities, healthcare, fitness clubs, subscriptions to Mother Jones, and nursing homes are all “free” (i.e., funded by tax rates of 75%). At least everyone is entitled to a month of paid vacation, including a week for Winter Solstice. (Christmas was abolished for contributing to the persistence of reactionary and divisive comfort mythologies as well as obsessive bourgeois consumerism.”)

Nobody is especially rich or poor, although differences in individual skill and initiative still contribute to an embarrassing gap between achievers and nonachievers. The remedy: habitual achievers are required to take jobs as manual laborers and collective farm workers at least four months out of the year. (Politically active media celebrities like Angelina Jolie are exempt from this requirement.) A recent survey indicated that 100% of chronic achievers were “happy” with the new arrangement.

Coming soon: The Conservative’s Utopia