Ryan: Who will save our shopping malls now?

February 12, 2020

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Kevin is an award-winning writer who focuses on long-form literary nonfiction and investigative reporting.

A woman in a black-and-white sweater vacuumed Gardner-Collier jewelry store. No customers. No reason to vacuum.

Penn Central Mall in Oskaloosa, Iowa, a town of roughly 11,000 people. The building looks like hell, attached to a Hy-Vee and a Goodwill.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

But on Feb. 3, 2020, the mall showed hints of activity in anticipation of Democratic presidential nominee Andrew Yang. Three or four dozen people, all wearing Yang 2020 apparel. Including the cheeky "MATH" hat.

"Is he here?" they kept asking.

Yang had spent the past few weeks with Dave Chappelle, who performed a few shows, and made calls, including this gem.

And now, with the caucuses in a day, it was time to let Iowans decide.

Walk through the tinted doors into the south entrance of Penn Central Mall, and to your right, for an uncomfortably long distance, a wall of trinkets and knick-knacks and replica souvenirs. Useless trophies. All the other hallways throb with wallpaper that clearly hadn't been updated since 1980, so the whole place resembled the hotel from Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Besides the Yang supporters, there were only a dozen other people, and they seemed to walk in circles, saying nothing.

No kiosks. No food court. Not even a Wetzel's Pretzels.

Photo, caption: The same cheesy song blared out of a boombox around the corner as a color-guard team practiced, huddling into one corner of the giant carpeted promenadePhoto by Kevin Ryan

Then, turn left, past the Merle Norman Cosmetics with an old green sign. Toward an arcade — now abandoned, chain-locked, doors tinted. You can still see banks of pinball machines and air hockey tables and videogame cabinets like at the old-school pizzerias.

Across from the shuttered nail salon with no window was Andrew Yang's 2020 Presidential Oskaloosa headquarters.
He Intentionally chose abandoned malls like Penn Central Mall for his campaign sites.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Because he believes in the cultural and commercial revitalization of these American institutions. His idea is an extension of his human-centered capitalism: "Humans are more important than money. The unit of a Human Capitalism economy is each person, not each dollar. Markets exist to serve our common goals and values."

With the American Mall Act, Yang would "redirect tax incentives away from big-box retailers and toward more sustainable employers—or even non-commercial uses."

What's more American than a shopping mall?

Unfulfilled

In the 22nd season of South Park, the town gets an Amazon fulfillment center, which quickly becomes a monopoly, and it destroys local business, employing everyone so that their wages become a kind of company scrip they use exclusively for Amazon purchases, a reference to Amazon's "gamification" system.

The villain, Jeff Bezos, resembles Star Trek's Talosians, the ghastly, bulb-headed aliens, who plan to capture the USS Enterprise and enslave its crew for the purposes of breeding. Bezos monitors the townspeople through their Amazon Echo devices.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

In "Unfulfilled" the ninth episode, the factory workers go on strike, and Bezos cuts off their accounts. Unexpected heroes emerge from a derelict mall, former employees who've been trapped there so long they turned green and mangled and rotten, hideous creatures based on the Morlocks, an underground-dwelling from H.G. Wells's novel "The Time Machine."

The mutant mall workers become scabs and the fulfillment center. And, after a bizarre revolution that involves Santa Clause and a cannabis farm and a talking piece of feces, the entire town shows up to City Hall to tell Bezos that they're taking their town back.

Dead Malls

There's something post-apocalyptic about dead malls. A once extravagant giant, eroding. Former cathedrals of consumption slumping into vacancy and disrepair.

So naturally the disintegration of a once-vital cultural institution has both alarmed and intrigued us. You know how there's a subreddit for everything? Dead Malls is a running catalogue of all things Dead Mall, and with 78,000 subscribers.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

One estimate holds that roughly one in four malls in America will close by 2022.

The dead mall phenomenon began in the early 1990s, as the vacancy rate started to rise and the consumer traffic began to dwindle.

Department store giants like Macy's and JcPenney, bring traffic, serve as anchor tenants, that draw people to the mall, making them vital for the success of the smaller businesses that rely on passersby.

Enclosed shopping malls, once an emblem of Post-War America, began losing customers to big-box stores like Walmart, Ikea, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond.

Department store giants began to feel the hit. And when they hurt, every part of the shopping mall ecosystem suffers.
Then — Bezos.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

E-commerce accounted for 12 percent of retail sales in the country, amounting to $3.46 trillion, up from 3.6% in 2008.

2007 marked a tipping point, the first time in 50 years that no new enclosed shopping malls were built in America. Not one. It was five years before another was built, City Creek Mall Center in Salt Lake City. In 2010 came the retail apocalypse, when brick-and-mortar retail stores began closing at a steepening clip.

The first thing everyone I talked to about this story said, "Malls are dead because of Amazon."

Yes. But research indicates that the issue is far more complicated, with numerous variables involved. Real estate research group Costar pointed to the cost of upkeep, shifting demographics and out-of-date tenants.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Our expectations for a shopping experience have evolved. More often, open-air markets and outlet malls give us what we once found in the massive concrete compounds of enclosed shopping malls.

There are a few oddities. Ulta Beauty, the cosmetics chain, is booming in malls. Dave & Busters, with its flexible real estate model, has done incredibly well, with 10 percent growth a year, a third of their locations are inside malls.

The commentary about shopping malls is often either bleak — malls are dying and will soon be obsolete — or optimistic — malls are just evolving to fit the needs of our digital world.

In reality, it's a blend of both.

The way we shop has changed, with Amazon. Because we're also changing the way we spend money. And we're never going to go back. But that doesn't mean we have to get rid of malls. And not all malls are in trouble.

And we can always rest our hope on Gen Z.

Shopping Mall Ecosystem

The success or failure of a mall usually depends on the area it's located. Malls in wealthier communities continue to thrive.They've undergone a revitalization. Malls in middle-class and lower income areas, however, are suffering.

Abandoned malls also happen to be bad for neighborhoods, with less traffic and industry, the crime rates increase. When a mall sinks, it brings the surrounding neighborhoods down with it.

Malls are ranked on a three-tiered system. Class A, Class B, Class C, with A being the most successful and C the least. These are determined by sales per square foot, the average revenue divided by the selling area in square feet. At the very top of the foodchain, you've got Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, which stands as the most valuable mall in America, boasting $1,450 sales per square foot, with a $5.74 billion total asset value.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

So pick a city. Take my hometown, Tulsa, Oklahoma, for instance.

Class A malls are the thriving malls Simon Property Group, General Growth Properties, Macerich and Westfield, with $500 or more in sales per square foot. Like Woodland Hills Mall, near Broken Arrow. It boasts Tulsa's only Apple Store, of the 272 nationwide. Owned by Simon Property Group, it has two bus routes, 580 seats in its food court. There's even a Texas De Brazil Brazilian steakhouse. Located in a thriving area, with big-box stores and restaurants. It's the mall you go to when you want to see the fancy Santa.

The drop-off from Class A is fairly sharp. Class B malls aren't doing well at all, with $300 to $500 in sales per square foot. Promenade Mall has fiddled with repossession — did you know that malls can be repossessed? — but the traffic is still decent because it's more centrally-located. In April of this year, the JCPenney will be closing, Dillard's will be the only anchor store. But while vacancies are noticeable, there are tenants to replace them, however unconventional. Like how the former Mervyn's has been converted into a Sky Fitness & Wellbeing, a Tulsa-based gym chain.

Class C malls are in bad shape, sometimes worse than bad. Less than $300 in sales per square foot, with high vacancies, usually in lower income areas, on the brink of bankruptcy or abandonment. And "greyfields" are malls where the annual sales-per-square-foot drops below $150.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Eastland Mall, in East Tulsa, the most inaccessible of the three, in a less developed area. A gradual slide from the 1990s. Closures in the early 2000s. Unable to find brand-name tenants, the owners leased to dance studios, martial arts schools, even a country music bar and a wedding chapel. By 2006, it had become a dead mall, and the Simon Property Group put it up for sale. It's at this point of a mall's life when things can get pretty ugly. But Eastland serves as proof that even a gutted mall can be brought to life.

A North-Carolina developer bought it for $2.8 million, rebranded it as Eastgate Metroplex, renovated it, and now it's used as office space, with call centers for Coca Cola, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and Capital One. A University of Phoenix campus, a food-handler permit training center, a family health clinic, and a DMV, with the mall's entire lowel level as its waiting area.

Recycling

A 17-minute drive from Washington D.C. at the Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virgina, Macy's , a homeless shelter, with 60 beds and toilets uprooted from an abandoned Lord & Taylor.

Google offices at Mayfield Mall in Mountain View, California.

A hockey rink at Hickory Hollow Mall in Antioch, Tennessee.

Following a tornado in 2011 that killed 161 people in Joplin and ravaged the high school, students relocated to Northpark Mall for several years. A few blocks from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, the Galleria at Erieview, known for its glass exterior, once served as a massive urban greenhouse farm called Gardens Under Glass, which has since closed, but the mall has since been remodeled as a YMCA.

Last November, the Mall of America, the biggest mall in the nation, opened a walk-in medical clinic, with a pharmacy, a radiology room, and laboratories.

Fitting, then, that the oldest shopping mall in our country, the Arcade Providence, in downtown Providence, Rhode Island, repurposed its upper two floors into 48 micro-apartments — between 225 and 775 square feet. On the first floor, various boutiques, as well as a bar, a coffee shop, a pizzeria, a bookstore, and a spa.

House of the Lord

The earliest Christians met in their homes or synagogues, not churches. It wasn't until 230 years after the death of Jesus Christ that the first church, the Europos church, was built as a place of worship.

The Bible doesn't include guidelines for where, specifically, Christians have to worship. Joel Osteen holds services in the 16,800-seat arena that many Houstonians still call The Summit, home to the Houston Rockets for 28 years.

Lexington Mall in Lexington, Kentucky, built on the former grounds of Eilerslie estate, constructed by Abraham Lincoln's father-in-law. It began to decline in the early 1990s, and in 2005, the lost the only remaining retailer, Dillard's. Southland Christian Church — an evangelical megachurch founded in 1956 — has several satellite campuses around northeast Kentucky. It bought Lexington Mall in 2010 for $8 million, and rebuilt it into official campus of the church. They use the Dillard's for nurseries and classrooms.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Coffee and hot chocolate, open mic nights , blood drives, concerts, game nights at Church in the Mall, in Heath, Ohio Indian Mound Mall, a C Class mall, a ghost town, with $242 sales per square foot, and no restaurants except a Wetzel's and those are the sloths of the restaurant kingdom — like, not terrible, but would you rather see a sloth or a killer whale?

For a while there, every Sunday and Wednesday, you could find worshippers at the Euclid Square Shopping Mall in Euclid, Ohio. In the old Lane Bryant, was New Praise Ministries. Across from it, in a former One Price Clothing outlet, was World of Faith Christian Center. In total, there were 22 other churches inside the mall. It closed in 2016, because of leaks, demolished two years later. In its place, an Amazon fulfillment center.

Yang Arrives

In Oscaloosa, Yang's supporters all huddled into the crowded shopface of the room, scoping around to catch a glimpse of Yang out the back door. They'd bottle-necked into the room and they appeared to be stuck, clogged.

Yang's bus chugged down the sidestreet behind the mall.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

His wife had traveled along with him. Pictures of the two of them leaving a canvass lunch in Davenport had sprouted up on Twitter.

His red-and-beige scarf, his boxy shoes.

Yang gave the entire speech through a karaoke speaker with a distorted microphone.

He looked tired, indifferent. Maybe, in that moment, he was sick of campaigning.

When he finished, Mark Morrison's "Return of the Mack" started playing through the karaoke speaker. After that, Drake. Fittingly, "Started from the Bottom." Because Yang started from the bottom now he's here.

People asking for selfies or blurting out phrases. To my immediate left, an older man missing some crucial teeth kept shouting, "Andrew! Andrew! Andrew!"

When Yang turned in the man's direction, the man thrusted a wiry baseball hat and a Sharpie toward Yang. A dozen people formed a wall between Yang and the man. But this guy was adamant. Yang stared back, as if perplexed. Nodded, smiled.

Then the man turned his wiry cap around to reveal a giant iron-on patch of a marijuana leaf. "Sign my hat, Andrew!"

Before Yang could fully react, one of his campaign staff ushered him out of the room, apologizing to the YangGang with a sense of imperative.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

Then he was off again. Outside briefly before shuffling back onto the Yang tour bus. From there, he returned to Des Moines, to wait for the results of the caucuses. Then on to New Hampshire, where his 2020 campaign to become president will come to an end.

Still, it's worth remembering Yang's campaign slogans: "Not Left, Not Right, Forward".

New stories come out every Monday and Thursday. Check out my Twitter. Send all notes, tips, corrections to kryan@blazemedia.com

GLENN

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

GLENN

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

GLENN

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.