The 2026 Midterm Elections Are Like a Blind Date – Do You Really Know Who You Are Voting For?

The 2026 Midterm Elections Are Like a Blind Date – Do You Really Know Who You Are Voting For?

Guest post by Torsten

One of the main topics in these midterm elections is socialism, which is the more palatable term for communism. Who would want to vote for communism? So, communists call it socialism.

Actually, it is surprising that socialism is now so popular in the U.S., as many Americans have never traveled to a communist or socialist country, let alone lived and experienced it. There is a bit of gambling in these midterms: “let’s try socialism; this time it might work”. But be mindful what you wish for.

Informing oneself before an election is a good idea. So, what is socialism or communism? It boils down to “the government gives to the people what they need to make a living”. Sounds enticing. Like Alice in Wonderland. Hopefully, there won’t be a harsh awakening. Hope is usually a bad strategy. So the pressing question is: Is there something like free lunch, free buses, free schools, free this or that? Nothing is for free, not for 340 million people. Everything the social welfare offers “for free” has been paid for… by you and everyone else. After all, someone has to pay for it. If the government tries to get the expenses paid by taxing the wealthy, well, the wealthy might then leave the U.S. and move to tax-friendly countries. They have the money to afford it. And the Wonderland collapses.

Often, socialists refer to Scandinavian countries with a high level of social welfare. What they don’t say is that every citizen in those countries pays about 40-50% of one’s income for a kaleidoscope of taxes, including a 25% VAT sales tax. So, if you earn a $100k per year, you actually only have $50-60k for yourself and your family. If you vote for socialists, you vote yourself into “donating” $40,000+ to the government and to your neighbors.

Let’s compare two societies to get a better idea what we would gain or lose: the free-market U.S.A. and communist China.

America’s GDP (2025) was $32 trillion, China’s GDP was $20 trillion.

The U.S. GDP per capita (per person) is about $94k, whereas in China it is $31k.

Overall, despite the “free-market” in the U.S., the average person is 3x better off in the free-market than under communist rule. Why would one toss away wealth in exchange for a socialist/communist society? The socialist candidates promise you will be better off, but the $$ tell a different story.

So, the next argument is that socialism/communism provides a better distribution of wealth. Let’s take a look at the number of millionaires in some countries. The U.S. has the most millionaires in the world; numbers for 2028 project there will be 25.4 million (!!) millionaires in the U.S. That means one in 13 Americans is a millionaire. Let that sink in. When we talk about fair distribution of wealth and look into communist China, one would expect that everyone owns the same amount of wealth. However, in China there are 6.5 million millionaires expected in 2028. China is the country with the second largest number of millionaires in the world. This is surprising. How is that even possible in a communist country? Does communism really provide fair distribution of wealth, or is it rather Orwell’s “Animal farm”, where some are more equal than others? In fact, these 6.5 million millionaires in China already prove that communism does not work. There are some Chinese who take the detour into a capitalist society to make a million dollars. So, these 6.5 million millionaires make other Chinese citizens work for them so that they have $ millions in their wallets. How is that different from America’s free-market society? In fact, it is the same, but the likelihood to become a millionaire is even worse. Only one in 215 Chinese is a millionaire. (In the U.S. it was one out of 13!)

However, a society is not only about money, but also about freedom. Example: communist Romania. Between 1965 and 1989, Romania was under communist rule. Living standards declined, repression by state police was extreme, and the cult of personality of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was omnipresent. (By the way, isn’t it astonishing that socialism/communism, the political system that “serves the people” always ends up with a totalitarian dictator? It happened in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.)

So, what did people get under Romanian communism? Grocery shelves were empty or sporadically filled: today you can buy bread, tomorrow is vegetable day, and meat at the end of the month. It is not Alice in Wonderland, but reality. Ask the generation that lived under these conditions. The socialist government promised to give to the people, but they did not say—nor promise—, HOW they would fulfill their promise. You can order a Trabant car, but you have to pay and then wait 5 years before it is delivered at your doorstep.

Of course, at the center of it all is… work. If people don’t work, there is no accumulation of wealth. But here is the problem. If the government promises to freely give everything that the people need, then the people will start taking advantage of it: ‘Today I don’t feel like working, I stay in bed, but will still get food and electricity for my computer, because the state promised it.’

Well, if you did not come to work in Romania, you were arrested and thrown into jail, possibly ‘reeducated’ (aka brainwashed), so that you are more willing to work going forward. In short, under communist rule, everyone is forced to work because otherwise, the system would collapse. In comparison to the U.S., if you don’t show up to work, you will be fired, but not put in jail. You keep your freedom. So, why would one vote for socialism with a ticket to be jailed? There is no free lunch. Socialism eventually uses force to make people work, or they run forced labor camps. In the U.S., the approach is different: if nobody shows up for work, they increase the salary until people come to work. And you keep your freedom.

Today’s socialist movement romanticizes communism. They make it sound like the adventures of Robin Hood. Take from the rich and give to the poor. And on top of that you even become a hero. Sounds enticing. But it is deceiving.

Winston Churchill once said: “If you are not a socialist in your 20s, you have no heart. But if you are still a socialist in your 30s, you have no brain.” What does this mean?

The young generation usually has a good heart. They care about others, want to help others, and have compassion for those who don’t do well. This is, frankly speaking, a great character trait. In the past, this compassion was guided by Christian churches; however, today, some among the youth feel a void. During the COVID pandemic, churches were locked down, and the youth found even less guidance of their compassionate nature. And then came socialism… it stormed into this void and told the youth of the Robin Hood movement to care about the poor. This is how socialism simply ‘hijacked’ the compassion of the youth: the socialist movement emerged as the solution to address the longing for compassion. However, contrary to the bait, if you asked anyone who lived under socialism and was persecuted by a socialist/communist regime, NO ONE would ever believe the fairy tale of a compassionate socialist government. Socialism/communism always turned ruthless and brutal in history. Always.

And this is where Churchill’s ‘brain’ comes into play. Under socialism, the financial data is worse, the products in stores are scarce, the suffering is great, the freedom is taken away, speaking one’s mind is usually life-threatening, and absence from work will be penalized. After thirty, when you have a family or other goals for your life, the dream of Robin Hood and the “we are all the same” illusion ended. Reality sets in.

Now, let’s put it up to a test. History provided a unique comparison test between a free-market and a socialist society: Germany.

By the end of WWII, all of Germany was reduced to rubble. East and West Germany were turned into ground zero. Under the Allied forces of the U.S., the U.K., and France, West Germany adopted a free-market model, whereas East Germany, controlled by the Soviet Union, adopted a socialist model. In August 1961, this separation gained even more prominence when East Germany started to set up barbed wire overnight, and the construction of the “Berliner Wall” started. For the next 28 years, about 100,000 East Germans tried to escape East German socialism, but only 5,000 succeeded in crossing the wall and entering West Germany. (To my knowledge, no person tried to cross the wall from West to East Germany.) And when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the people crossed the border from East to West. There is a clear trend that people prefer freedom over suppression.

Both countries, West and East Germany were officially founded in 1949. For 40 years, the world witnessed a unique, historic comparison test between a free-market and a socialist society. During those four decades, West Germany recovered from the rubble, it evolved, became a real, economic ‘wonderland’ (!), it became the land of inventors. German engineering was known worldwide.

East Germany took a different route: its economy almost stagnated, and when the wall came down in 1989, it seemed East Germany was 30 years behind West Germany. The main car in East Germany was the Trabant, housing was addressed by ‘flat panel’ apartment constructions, and kids had spied on their parents and reported them to the secret police. Because the walls in the apartment buildings were thin, the typical way of having conversations at home was ‘whispering’.

In 1989, the discrepancies between the two societal models couldn’t be greater.

History has provided dozens and dozens of examples and comparisons between free-market and socialist societies, and yet, “this time will be different!”

So, here is another example to reveal some characteristics of socialism/communism. The People’s Republic of China, as a decades-lasting communist country, has probably set the most abominable, barbaric case of totalitarian abuse. For some reason, socialist or communist countries always end up as a one-party state. In China, it is the CCP. Like any other one-party state, the people in charge are unable to tolerate a different opinion. A second opinion is perceived as a threat to the system. Also, tolerating another opinion mandates that there exists a second opinion; however, since second opinions have been eradicated, socialists are not used to tolerating and are unable to tolerate and compromise. It would jeopardize their authority. One could also say that communists are paranoid that their social construct could end the ‘spell’ that they have put into people’s mind. Anyone who does not abide by the CCP becomes soon a dissident, an outcast or a victim of persecution. In comparison, in a society with 2+ parties, there is always a debate, and check and balances which help to ensure a development in moderation.

The inherent intolerance of the communist regime in China was exposed when a meditation practice composed of qigong exercises and three universal tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance was introduced to the Chinese people in 1992. The Chinese people, familiar with qigong and Tai Chi, immediately realized that this new practice was superior and better than what they used to practice. This new practice was Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa. It became so popular among Chinese people that within seven years, by 1999, 100 million people practiced it. This triggered jealousy and the paranoia in the CCP leadership that they could lose power. But if you see a public park in China with hundreds or maybe thousand people standing there in peace, immersed in their qigong practice, one would understand that they had no interest in the political happenings.

Jiang Zemin banned the practice, defamed it as a cult, and started to persecute, brainwash, and torture them. Followers were arrested and detained, they were medically examined, blood typed, and underwent ultrasound and x-rays. All this, while they were exposed to forced labor or torture. The health exams were not meant for their health. It was meant to create a data bank of medical data, to make it easier and faster to identify the detainees as a match for transplantation. Once a match was found, the authorities would bring the inmate to a hospital and harvest his or her organs. This became known as forced organ harvesting.

Like the Nazis who used gas chambers to eradicate the Jewish people, China adopted the forced organ harvesting as its final solution against Falun Gong practitioners. The CCP committed forced organ harvesting for over 25 years and used the victims to build a transplant industry that is second to none. More than a million of prisoners of conscience have become victims, and China’s ‘organ on demand’ system provides matching transplant organs within days or weeks. However, if a transplant tourist travels to China for a transplant, he or she is likely initiating the murder of a matching prisoner of conscience. Where is here the heart of compassion that Churchill spoke of? This is neither Alice in Wonderland, nor a heroic Robin Hood story. This is barbaric: killing dissidents and turning their organs into profit.

This is but one reminder of the present. How many people have been killed under socialist rule in secret chambers and prison cells? Tens of millions. How many people were killed in free-market societies? Less.

So, when you go to townhall meetings prior to the midterms, and there are socialist candidates in the room, ask them about their stance about forced organ harvesting in big brother communist China? Do they agree with China, that it is OK to kill dissidents and harvest their organs without consent? If not, would they call upon China to end it? If they serve the people, they should also serve those who are unlawfully persecuted. What guarantees would these candidates give that they would their party would never harvest organs from Americans?

In conclusion, the United States has the wealthiest economy by GDP data. It is the freest country in the world (you can even disparage the government and are not thrown in jail). The grocery shelves provide a large selection. You can choose not to go to work, without being arrested (but you might lose your job… freedom comes with free choices and free choices come with consequences). The United States does really well compared to other countries in the world. Why would you treat it like a ‘lab rat’ and vote for a socialist gambling that has the certain likelihood to end in a nightmare?

As an American who lives in this free society, why would you vote yourself into captivity?

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