Voltards Emporium

BLIND SPOT US President Donald Trump blasted Chevron and Exxon earlier this week, demanding they cut the retail price of gasoline and accusing them of making too much money—and grumbling that Chevron’s CEO hadn’t shown adequate gratitude for his efforts to help the US oil industry. Now imagine if the opening words were “US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.” The media would be howling about her communist bona fides and her assault on American capitalism. Whinging that energy companies make too much money and demanding they price to the White House’s wishes amid a supply crunch is what you’d expect from a real socialist—like Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who engages in exactly this often and has held back his country’s economy in the process. The irony: This administration has made fighting communism central to its foreign and domestic policy. Here’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio on July 22: “We’re certainly not going to allow communist efforts to undermine American society and drive wedges into our country.” Nice soundbite, but the communists have already breached the Rose Garden. How else to describe a government that takes stakes in some 30 companies, sells preferential access to the president via his meme coin, charges for faster access to his Truths, fires apolitical statisticians when the data displeases, and bullies companies into compliance? Of course, I’m exaggerating. This isn’t real or principled communism, even if it shares some superficial features. It’s good old-fashioned populism—and for the last two presidential cycles, populism has been the only choice on the ballot. There are no free-market fiscal conservatives with much power in US politics these days. Mamdani and Trump are two sides of the same coin; ditto J.D. Vance and AOC. Are we so blinded by our (historically justified) fear of communism that we can’t see that those screaming loudest about it look an awful lot like what they claim to oppose