There’s something darkly fascinating about watching someone win an American election and then immediately explain how America itself is the problem. Melat Kiros, the Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidate who just knocked off longtime Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette in a primary, spent last weekend at a Denver event doing exactly that. She called for more immigrants from the “global south” to enter office specifically because they understand American “exploitation” on what she termed a fundamental level.

Let that sink in for a moment. This woman just succeeded in the American political system, utilized its freedoms and opportunities to defeat an entrenched incumbent, and her victory speech amounts to: we need people who inherently distrust this country to run it.

Kiros spoke at the Wa’Ela Tigrai event, drawing inspiration from the so-called Squad members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She framed her win as part of a larger mission to change the global world order. Not improve America’s standing. Not strengthen our communities. Change the entire global order. The ambition would be admirable if it weren’t so fundamentally hostile to the nation she’s asking to represent.

Here’s what gets me about this strain of progressive politics. It treats America as uniquely evil, exploitative and extractive, while ignoring the basic reality that people are literally dying to get here. If we’re so terrible, why the immigration crisis at our southern border? Why do people risk everything for a chance at American citizenship? The cognitive dissonance is staggering.

And yes, Kiros has form on this. She previously called the September 11 terror attacks “inevitable” because of U.S. foreign policy. You know, the attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 innocent Americans going about their morning routines. Inevitable. That word choice tells you everything about how she views this country.

The traditional American story celebrates immigrants who come here, work hard, and build better lives while contributing to our shared prosperity. That’s not what Kiros is selling. She wants immigrants in office because of their grievances, their sense of victimhood, their belief that America owes the world a debt. It’s identity politics weaponized into foreign policy.

There’s also the breathtaking arrogance of assuming that heritage determines perspective. Plenty of immigrants from the global south love this country precisely because they’ve experienced actual exploitation elsewhere. They’ve lived under corrupt regimes, socialist economies, and authoritarian governments. They chose America because it’s different, because opportunity exists here in ways it simply doesn’t in most of the world.

But Kiros isn’t interested in that narrative. She’s building a coalition based on resentment, on the idea that America’s success came at everyone else’s expense. It’s the zero-sum worldview that drives socialist thinking. Someone’s wealth must mean someone else’s poverty. America’s prosperity must mean global suffering.

The free market tells a different story. Trade creates value. Innovation benefits everyone. American strength has underwritten global security for decades. We’re not perfect, never have been, but the alternative to American leadership isn’t some utopian international harmony. It’s China filling the vacuum, Russia expanding unchecked, and smaller nations left to fend for themselves.

Colorado voters just handed this woman a major victory. She’ll likely win the general election in her deep-blue district. And she’ll go to Congress believing her job is to fundamentally transform America’s role in the world, to atone for sins she’s already convicted us of committing. That’s not representation. That’s activism with a congressional salary.

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