It's not her fault and she's still one of the most decent politicians in the US (doesn't mean much I know) but we are talking about the wrong thing lol
AOC gets a thousand photo ops while native NYers are clubbed and carted off in silence.
Just another normal day under Capitalism.
She's a catch all release forelectoralism flunkies who still think we can change shit by playing by the rules. She might have started off as an earnest progressive but from the looks of it she's been co-opted by the system.
Seems more the opposite. AOC's promise in 2018 was to mobilize people into direct action. Once that kinda fell through, she just started looking like another clout-chasing Congressperson. But that can still change. I'll happily take her in the seat over Joe Crowley or Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. At least she's making the right mouth noises.
The real problem isn't the existence of AOC so much as the absence of any kind of polarizing figure to fill her role. Internet media is increasingly controlled and the spectacle still rules our world. Real Leftist mobilizing remains mostly underground and underreported. Police still do their head cracking without serious media coverage. Local figures still just kinda get ignored if they aren't part of the political or business establishment. Reformists who try anything more radical than tinkering with the edges of the system just kinda fade from view.
Showing up in a TAX THE RICH dress at a MET gala is only notable because it is the outer-most edge of discourse corporate media will even allow. Still more radical positions and actions never seem to make the news.
AOC is less "catch-and-release" for electoralism and more "the token representative for everyone left of Chuck Schumer in the state".
Do you think she would’ve been allowed to go if her dress said Eat the Rich?
Hard to say. Getting kicked out of the MET for wearing a dress that upsets the richest people in NYC? That would be one hell of a PR move. AOC would be center stage for another week, easy.
But, like, would it have any meaningful impact on policy? No. If anything, she'd likely get yanked off whatever Congressional committee she's currently on and told to stand in the corner until she apologizes. That's less fun for a Congressperson who isn't simply in office to throw bombs.
More useful though than being a congressperson saying nothing or actively helping to drop bombs on foreign soil
We've been drawing down since the 2018 midterm. Not nearly fast enough, but we're functionally in retreat.
Not sure what AOC's MET dress would change in that regard. Maybe if she'd dressed in the names of the seven children we killed in Afghanistan as our goodbye salvo...
we are talking about the wrong thing
Your title doesn't do much to change that, ya know.
But speaking of bad focus, this is as decent a time as any to link David Sirota: https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1437617928568852488?s=19
