Posted on 12/10/2018 6:47:34 AM PST by Liberty7732
Too many conservatives are having too much fun with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s gaffes and more-than-apparent ignorance of economics, history and the U.S. Constitution. There is truly a lot of low-hanging fruit, and it hardly needs to be re-hashed. Just check your social media feed.
But just deriding the woman belies two errors. One is thinking that she is a lightweight one-off to be mocked and ridiculed for sport and the other is to think there is no harm in doing so.
On the first count, she is showing herself to be a much quicker study than one might expect considering her astounding ignorance on so many levels (that is a condemnation more of her education than of her, it seems.) Her speeches are improving, her communication skills are respectable and getting stronger, her use of social media is adroit — with one glaring exception we will get to — she understands how to use a friendly and sympathetic media to her advantage, she uses emotional arguments well and she is already learning how to work within the Washington, D.C. establishment while maintaining her quasi-revolutionary status.
On the second count, the endless memes and savage mockery do nothing more on the right than entertain, but do serve to strengthen the depth of her supporters and probably expand them. “Look, the rotten old Republicans keep attacking this young woman and calling her stupid,” many in the middle will exclaim. “I want to hear what she has to say!”
It’s worth remembering that Democrats and the left mocked, belittled and laughed at candidate Donald Trump until he won. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not Trump, but not taking someone seriously in the political realm is a recipe for disaster. And would the D.C. swamp really be that upset at someone who wanted to dramatically expand their realm of influence and power? Would they go after her some day as they have Trump? We all know the answer to that.
If we conservatives content ourselves to ridicule her with the “crazy eyes,” we make a young, pretty woman with a bright smile into a sympathetic victim, thereby strengthening her without ever engaging her on her message — which is a total shipwreck for the nation.
Kevin McCullough at Townhall wrote, “…we must engage, confront with truth and winsomely dispense with her most emotionally charged but intellectually dishonest ideas.”
Further, Ocasio-Cortez has displayed very thin skin, which is par for her generation, and a willingness to swiftly move to use the levers of power against opponents — an instinct of every socialist ever worldwide.
Most recently on this point, she was trolled by Donald Trump, Jr., who shared a meme on Instagram. It had two images: one on top of Ocasio-Cortez with the text, “Why are you so afraid of a socialist economy?” Below that is an image of President Donald Trump with the text, “Because Americans want to walk their dogs, not eat them.”
Funny, pointed, harmless.
But not to Ocasio-Cortez. She amazingly went straight to threat by the power of government, then tried to say that’s not what she did when it was transparently what she did. She tweeted:
“I have noticed that Junior here has a habit of posting nonsense about me whenever the Mueller investigation heats up,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “Please, keep it coming Jr [sic] — it’s definitely a ‘very, very large brain’ idea to troll a member of a body that will have subpoena power in a month.”
That’s pretty pointed. Sean Davis, at the Federalist, responded by pointing out that the House Ethics Manual prohibits members of Congress from threatening citizens due to partisan politics.
“It’s worth noting that the official House Ethics Manual explicitly prohibits the kind of threat that @Ocasio2018 just issued against @DonaldJTrumpJr for his refusal to support her political agenda. https://ethics.house.gov.”
In this sense, she is not the bright, pretty young lady from the Bronx. She’s taking the first step toward being a Stalinist. (Yes, many steps to go, but you have to start with one, and she did.)
Since upsetting one of the most powerful and entrenched Democrats in Congress, Joe Crowley, during the primaries, Ocasio-Cortez has argued for a broad array of socialist policies, including a single-payer government healthcare system; government-guaranteed high-paying jobs; government-issued housing; abolishing the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and much more.
Perhaps the most chilling part of her agenda was first broached during a rather infamous interview on PBS, when she said “capitalism has not always existed in the world, and it will not always exist in the world” while arguing for why America should end the tyranny of capitalism and move towards socialism.
Of course, she is right that capitalism has not always existed. And neither has anything remotely approaching the standard of living that the poorest American or Western European enjoys today. Just a lowly working stiff in 2018 lives a life of luxury and amazements that Louis XIV, the Sun King of France, could not have imagined. Billions have been lifted out of poverty while starvation due to scarcity has all but disappeared from the planet.
None of that happened before capitalism. And none of that has happened where capitalism was replaced by socialism — in Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, the Eastern Bloc or China, which has seen its economic boom only after adopting capitalist markets.
But the chill-down-the-spine statement was the last part: capitalism “will not always exist in the world.” A world without capitalism, governed by the socialist elites that always end up at despotic communism, is a truly terrifying goal.
And it is her goal. She is much smarter than her original ignorance belied. (She really needs her money back from Boston College.)
The way to fight Ocasio-Cortez — and she must be fought — is not by mocking her ignorance or calling her stupid. That only strengthens both her personal resolve in pursuing terrible ideas and those backing her and her ideas. The way to fight her is to destroy her ideas with relentless history, facts, data and economics.
Socialism is like Sharia law when it comes to America and the U.S. Constitution. Neither of those brutal doctrines can co-exist for long in the same country with the Constitution. The First Amendment alone is antithetical to socialism, and where it always and inevitably leads is to erasing free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and so on.
Socialism is simply un-American at its core. Americans used to know that. They don’t so much anymore, and certainly not the younger generation. And Ocasio-Cortez is now the smiling face of that brutal philosophy. Mocking her is a grave error.
Yes, in art they call it naturally inspired clowns. Often an agent will post a prostitute to pretend loving an artist in order to lift the spirit of the artist and make him produce and then have her dump him to control him when he is out of control opening his own competing joints
She is an inspired clown. Someone put something in her head or her life and now she spews out from a vile and stupid heart a production.
It is not her we must fear but the men behind curtains
I truly believe we can do both. Quite often, at the same time.
Good post yours (#10). I particularly agree with your comment about Don, Jr. staying out of things. I didn’t like it when Jimmy Carter asked Amy for advice. And I don’t like it when Chelsea feels the need to comment on every last thing. Same applies here.
And for the folks who think it’s wise to constantly mock Ocasio-Cortez...mockery only works when the swing-voters laugh at it. Sure, we think the mockery is funny. But Joe Six-Pack the Blue Dog Democrat, is he laughing, or is he getting irritated by it?
She has always been a threat because just like Pelosi, she won an election. I wonder what kind of politicians they would have elected in Sodom. It is easy to imagine.
o c proves her stupidity every time she opens her cavernous mouth.
Doesn’t matter how dumb she is, what matters is how good an actress she is. Her office is two doors from Pelosi’s for a reason - she will be mentored and scripted. And there is ample proof that being able to speak your lines effectively doesn’t require great intelligence.
Focus less on her and more on what she represents and says. Just as with Trump.
she’s almost too gaddam stupid to find her way to work.
What really matters is that:
A - She really is the face of the Democrat Party
B - Most Democrats in DC agree with her, but are a little more politically savvy and either tone it down or outright lie
C - Most Democrat voters are at least partially in agreement with her because......
D - They are equally ignorant, lazy, greedy, and have NO sense of honor or duty
I really don’t believe that in the long haul we can save the republic. I believe that the *best* we can hope for is that the union breaks up. Otherwise, they are going to overwhelm us with sheer numbers and enslave us.
I think she is dumb. The Three Branches of Government gaffe is not one you make to look dumb, nor is "The reason unemployment is low is because people have two jobs". These are gaffes that make people question her mental abilities; not a tactic you want to use to begin a political career. Also, threatening a citizens with your ability to subpoena them is an illegal abuse of power and could put her in legal jeopardy...another dumb move. No, she is dumb and I would expect the Democrat party to jump in and shut her up just like they did to Teresa Heinz Kerry after her nomination speech in 2004. Think about it: Before that she was in the media every day. Afterwards, nada. Pelosi has already made some kind of deal with her. She will be used, but in a controlled way.
I don’t know how smart she is or isn’t, but what makes her a threat is the intellectual laziness and ignorance of a huge swath of the American public.
Ocasio-Cortez isn’t a treat. The lobotomized, brain-dead, communist demo-drones who slavishly support her are the threat.
What happens if she gets real questions? There are still some reporters out there (NBC notwithstanding). Instruction from handlers can’t protect her from Fox or Fox Business, let alone someone who knows what they’re talking about in the trade press. They can try to place her with friendly faces like Stelter and Fredo Cuomo to take softballs but the beauty of this dumb bartender (for us) is that she seems to LOOK for opportunities to get angry on TV even from friendly sources. I really, really don’t think she’s teachable. Remember, she’ll visit ANY sit-in and do what “looks good” for socialism over what leadership says. Yes, they got her to cave on Pelosi as speaker but you honestly can’t fix stupid.
When conservative’s bodies are being thrown in mass graves the Democratic Socialist will start to be taken seriously.
the right has offered to engage her, but she won't do it.
o c proves her stupidity every time she opens her cavernous mouth.
Exactly how she wants you to feel, she wants your guard down so she can easily put the knife in your back.
That is how she is working. I am not saying she is a genius here, she wouldn’t be in politics if she was one. But she is not dumb by any measure. She knows exactly what she is doing. She is playing us, she is following her script and she is doing a damn good job.
Truly dumb people would not draw attention to themselves, they would be ashamed of it.
I think she’s dumb, but you don’t have to be smart to be a threat. She’s a raving socialist and completely ignorant (Boston College should be ashamed of granting her a degree in anything, particularly economics, of which she clearly knows nothing). This is NOT a handicap in the eyes of her voters.
She may be ugly, have crazy eyes and look wacky, but we have many other people in government - particularly “minority” women, such as Maxine Waters - who are likewise and yet keep getting re-elected and now have great power.
She doesn’t want to stop at being a mere Representative, however, and while she will not be old enough to run for president in the next election, I bet she’s going to demagogue her way into something much more powerful.
Remember, she’s not actually a Dem, she’s a member of a tiny socialist party, but the Dems have adopted her as their own. And her voters and potential voters are exactly as ignorant and power crazed as she is. She only got elected because the mass of Dem voters just wrote her off as a nut case and the establishment Dem candidate, who had held the seat for 4 terms, iirc, didn’t even bother to campaign.
We shouldn’t make the same mistake. She really does have the makings of a Hitler - who was also had his own little party and was also written off because Germans regarded him as so nutty that he represented no threat.
She went to BU,NOT BC.
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The writer has a point.. remember.. this country twice elected Barack Hussein Obama. Americans are often inspired as much by outward appearance as they are by policy preferences. Americans like shiny new objects.
Ocasio-Cortez Is A Very Real Threat indeed keep sharp items away from her she’s the mother of crazy so are the ones who voted for her.
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