Satirical Disclaimer: This is a George Carlin–style rant. There will be profanity, mockery, and uncomfortable truths about capitalism wearing a communist hat. If you came here for bipartisan civility, you took a wrong turn at the breadline.

You know what’s funny? For a hundred and fifty years, we’ve been told socialism is evil. The government shouldn’t own anything, shouldn’t set prices, shouldn’t interfere in the “free market.” And now? Now the self-proclaimed defenders of capitalism are running a state-sponsored command economy with better branding.

We’ve got the Treasury Secretary bragging about price floors — actual, literal price controls. “We’re going to pay $110 a kilo for neodymium!” Hell, why stop there? Let’s fix the price of milk, gold, and stupidity while we’re at it.

And then the government’s buying into private companies — Intel, U.S. Steel, MP Materials — “strategic stakes,” they call it. Fifteen percent here, ten percent there, until the invisible hand looks suspiciously like the Department of War. You remember the Department of War, right? Used to be called Defense. They changed it back because honesty is apparently fashionable again.

So now we’ve got tariffs on China, a trade war nobody asked for, and the grand plan to “decouple.” And what happens? China shrugs, buys soybeans from Argentina. Argentina gets a $40 billion bailout from the U.S. And the American farmers who can’t sell their beans? They get a bailout too — paid for with the tariff money we collected from American consumers.

Let me draw the circle for you: You tax Americans → to punish China → who buys from Argentina → who’s funded by Americans → to bail out Americans → for the damage you caused by taxing Americans.That’s not a supply chain, that’s a goddamn hamster wheel powered by hypocrisy.

And they call it America First.

Yeah — America first in line to pay for everyone else’s bullshit.

It’s socialism for corporations and serfdom for everyone else. When poor people get help, it’s welfare. When billionaires get it, it’s industrial policy. When workers organize, it’s communism. When lobbyists do it, it’s national security.

They say it’s about “countering China’s influence.” Buddy, you don’t fight authoritarian capitalism by copying the syllabus. We’ve become the mirror image of what we pretend to hate — a command economy with better commercials. We set prices, pick winners, bail out losers, and call it freedom.

This isn’t the land of opportunity anymore; it’s the land of opportunities for government contracts. We built socialism for the shareholder class — where losses are socialized, profits are privatized, and the only truly free market is the one for bullshit.

The MAGA crowd screamed for deregulation until their friends needed a handout. Then they discovered the joys of five-year plans. “Industrial policy,” they call it — because ‘planned economy’ tested poorly in focus groups.

Welcome to the Capitalist Soviet States of America: Where the government owns pieces of the factories, the taxpayers fund the subsidies, and the Dear Leader tweets about “deals” like they’re commandments.

We didn’t defeat communism; we franchised it. We built the gulag out of golden arches.

So light your soy-based candle, salute the free market flag, and repeat after me: “The people’s money for the people’s corporations, forever and ever, Amen.”