A highly-educated, well-respected and successful person — a person whose race, ethnicity, sex, gender and sexual orientation is not relevant to this story — loved to travel the world and experience new places and cultures.

On a trip to some fascinating destination — the location does not matter — this person bought a genie lamp for sale in a bazaar. It was a cheap and cheesy souvenir that appealed to their ironic sentimentality.

A few weeks later, regaling some dinner guests with tales of the trip (after consuming perhaps a little too much cannabis), the person picked up the lamp and gave it a theatric rub.

To their great shock, a genie appeared and offered them three wishes.

The first wish was obvious. Long ago, in college, this person had fallen in love with with Marx, and even more in love with Marx’s poststructuralist, postcolonial, postmodern revolutionary heirs.

Without a moment’s hesitation, they made their first wish: “I wish for the Revolution to happen right now.”

Sadly, they did not survive to make the second or third wish.