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That meme lands because it's true. The uniform is real. Che shirt, red beret, Starbucks cup, "Feel the Bern" bag, and a lecture on how capitalism is oppression, delivered on a phone built by capitalism.Here's the honest truth. A whole generation has been sold a lie. That effort is optional. That reward should be automatic. That achievement is unfair. That someone else's success is theft from you.Look at the data. A March 2025 Cato/YouGov survey of American adults found that 62 percent of adults under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism, and 34 percent hold a favorable view of communism. An Axios-Generation Lab poll last fall found 67 percent of college students hold a positive or neutral association with the word "socialism," compared with 40 percent for "capitalism." They don't know what they're cheering for.Che Guevara, the face on that shirt, ran the La Cabaña prison in Havana in 1959. According to PBS American Experience, approximately 500 men were killed under his watch between 1959 and 1963. His own words on how the tribunals worked: "We do not use bourgeois legal methods; evidence is secondary. We must proceed to convict." That's the guy on the shirt. And Venezuela? In the 1950s it was the fourth wealthiest country in the world. Today, GDP shrank by roughly three-quarters between 2014 and 2021, annual inflation hit just over 130,000 percent in 2018, and nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled. That is what happens when you punish achievement and reward political loyalty. America was built on a different bet. That free people, working for reward, competing on merit, will out-invent, out-produce, and out-lift every centrally planned scheme ever tried. The Founders called it liberty. Adam Smith called it self-interest. Ordinary Americans call it earning a living.Innovation dies when reward dies. Society dies when work becomes shameful and dependency becomes noble.The Constitution didn't promise a participation trophy. It promised a shot.