The Summer I Turned Pretty: the Spectre Rises

Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead. However, since I haven't seen most of the series they can't be that bad. Also, your regular reminder that this is a satire newsletter. In the winter of 1991, the world changed forever. The Soviet Union, the largest country on the face of the Earth and greatest inheritor of Karl Marx, ended. It was quite possibly the most consequential event of the last 30 years. For some, it meant the end of their dreams of equality under socialism. For others, it lifted the great threat of nuclear war. The spectre which had loomed since October 1917 was lifted. The free world breathed a sigh of relief. 30 years later, the world has changed. And yet, a young woman named Isabel Conklin has come to the forefront of American culture. Ms. Conklin is of course, fictional, but nevertheless is a symbol of America's recent turn away from liberalism.

Conklin represents a certain class of Americans that has turned towards radicalism in recent years: the excess elite. Born to two academics, Conklin is firmly seated in the middle class. Between her connections with the Fisher family and her New England school background, she should be set to do better than her parents and secure a successful future. There is one shadow on this bright path. Conklin is far from the sharpest tool in her particular shed. She has access neither to the path of her alternating love interests—sans their seemingly infinite fortune—nor to the path of her brother. He's made a career and relationship out of being a semi-intelligent tech bro. Unfortunately for Conklin, she lacks the brainpower to pursue a similar career. Instead she is studying Sports Psychology, the stereotype of a nonsense social science subject, with hopes to do... something with her life. She hasn't really thought that part through.

This is the class that makes up the most fanatical supporters of Zohran Mamdani in New York. Disaffected left-wing young people who feel entitled to their prestige and wealth but are unable to obtain them. They, like the unemployable Marx and Lenin before them, turn towards radicalism. This is the new Red Threat to the liberal order. Not from the proletariat but from the would-be intelligentsia. Conklin hasn't found Socialism yet and so has settled for laziness and narcissism. Why else does she wear bright red on the cover of this newest season? Why does she flee to France if not to return to the home of radicalism? As the world braces against the rise of the populist right, it also faces the return of a familiar terror. The terror that killed tens of millions in the 20th century has creeped back into the 21st. The spectre of Communism is back. It isn't called that anymore, now it's Democratic Socialism and Anti-American Progressivism. Isabelle Conklin is merely the tip of the Marxism spear coming for the American heart.