The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Harvey » Sun Nov 15, 2020 11:00 am

She didn't endear herself to when me she dismissed Jeremy Corbyn as an "anti-Semite" but of course, in the interests of RI unity, I rationalised that away and didn't bring it up. This is offered as food for thought and I'd be happy to read corrections if this is wide of the mark, irrelevant or a false analysis.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/10/dems-n10.html

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pleads for “unity” as Democrats attack the “socialist left”

Within hours of the media’s declaration that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, the Democratic Party launched a vicious attack against its so-called “left” wing, represented most prominently by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The narrative being promoted by the Democrats is that the association of the party with socialism cost its candidates millions of votes in the presidential and congressional races. The Democrats lost seven House seats in battleground districts, including in South Carolina, New Mexico, Iowa and south Florida, and failed to gain control of the Senate.

According to leading commentators, Democratic as well as Republican, the Democrats failed to realize their hopes for a “blue wave” because voters associated them with socialism. President-elect Biden and the Democratic Party-aligned media are insisting that the election result must be understood as a plea from the American people for bipartisan unity with the Republicans.

They do not attempt to square this narrative with the large demonstrations that broke out all over the country on Saturday celebrating the defeat of Trump.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin appeared on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning and assured “his Republican friends” that Biden would “govern from the middle” and “reach out across the aisle… to bring Democrats and Republicans together.”

Manchin went on to blame the “socialist” label for Democratic losses in West Virginia and elsewhere. He said rural America was “scared of this socialism that was thrown out there by a radical part of the so-called left that was throwing all this out.”

He claimed that the taint of socialism “basically scared the bejesus out of people.” He continued: “And it’s not who we are… And I have fought against that. Joe Biden has fought against that. We’re not for New Green Deal… Medicare for all.”

During an appearance on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” House Democratic Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina echoed this sentiment, lashing out against “socialist” demands such as “defund the police.” He agreed with host Chuck Todd that such rhetoric cost a number of seats— including in the high-profile South Carolina race between well-funded Democrat Jamie Harrison and incumbent Senator Lindsey Graham.

Perhaps the most vulgar and vicious attack came from Democratic Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA agent. In a recorded call with House Democrats, Spanberger ranted, “We need to not ever use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”

In response to these attacks, the “progressive wing” of the Democratic Party has completely capitulated, downplaying its mildly left rhetoric and making public pleas to the incoming Biden administration for a seat at the table.

The most open expression of this fecklessness has come from New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who gave a vivid description of the internal Democratic Party campaign against her to the New York Times over the weekend. “The last two years have been pretty hostile,” she said. “Externally, we’ve been winning. Externally, there’s been a ton of support, but internally, it’s been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive.”

Ocasio-Cortez appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” program Sunday morning. When asked about the statements blaming Democratic losses in the election on talk of “socialism” and “radical” demands by herself and other “progressives,” she responded by distancing herself and her party from anything having to do with progressive politics. “Not a single member of Congress that I am aware of campaigned on the slogan of socialism or defunding of the police in this general election,” she declared.

In the same breath she noted that such demands were raised in the massive protests that swept the country in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd. In other words, as Ocasio-Cortez herself acknowledged, not a single Democrat campaigned on the issues that animated millions of workers, and especially young people, and drove them to protest for weeks in the streets of every major city in the US.

Ocasio-Cortez spent a large portion of the interview touting her ability to win voters through digital marketing, appealing to the Democratic Party establishment to make use of her services to boost the party’s electoral fortunes. She summed up her analysis of the Democrats’ losses in key House races by saying the defeated candidates employed an outmoded “2005”-type digital advertising strategy.

In her interview with the New York Times published on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez made her pitch more explicitly, saying:

I’ve been begging the party to let me help them for two years. That’s also the damn thing of it. I’ve been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation... And now they’re blaming us for their loss.


The political role of Ocasio-Cortez, as she herself explains, is to provide a left gloss to a party that is moving further to the right.

There are a number of important points to make in relation to these developments.

First, the rapidity and viciousness with which the political establishment, Democratic and Republican, has lined up behind the campaign against “socialism” is a stark indication of the immense fear that exists within the ruling elite of the growing radicalization and leftward movement of the masses. What they fear above all is that this growing movement of workers and young people will break free of the stranglehold of the two-party system.

As for the popular response to invocations of socialism, the reality is far removed from what is being claimed. The Democrats want to ban talk of socialism precisely because ever larger sections of the population are attracted to a radical egalitarian alternative to capitalism.

This was reflected in the broad support, particularly among young people, for the campaigns of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and again in 2020, which were sabotaged by the Democratic Party, aided and abetted by Sanders himself.

Masses of workers and youth are moving to the left. A new report published by the polling firm YouGov found that within the Gen Z group (ages 16-23), support for socialism increased nearly 10 percentage points over the course of a single year: from 40 percent in 2019 to 49 percent when the poll was taken in September 2020.

Workers in the US and around the world have lived through immense experiences over the course of the Trump administration and in particular this past year. They have watched the Democratic Party, including Bernie Sanders, facilitate the attacks on the working class spearheaded by Trump, including the trillions of dollars handed out to Wall Street and the giant corporations through the CARES Act.

They have suffered the catastrophic toll in death and disease, as well as mass unemployment, resulting from the refusal of the Trump administration to implement any serious measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic. They have been forced into factories, workplaces and schools that are breeding grounds for infection without any real safety measures in place, as Trump and Democratic governors and mayors implemented an economic “reopening” driven by the profit interests of the corporate elite.

They well remember the violent attacks on protesters during the protests against the murder of George Floyd and Trump’s June 1 attempt at a military coup d’état.

They did not vote for Biden because they desired “reconciliation” and “unity” with the party that enabled Trump to persecute immigrants, block measures to contain the coronavirus pandemic, incite fascist vigilantes and killer cops, and ride roughshod over basic democratic rights. Quite the opposite—the election was, above all else, a massive popular repudiation of Donald Trump, his catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic, and his fascistic and authoritarian rhetoric and policies.

The attacks on the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party once again reveal the bankruptcy of the pragmatic and opportunist politics of “lesser evilism,” based on the fiction that the Democratic Party, the oldest capitalist party in the US, can be pressured from below to become an instrument for progressive reform or even socialism.

The claim that a Biden administration would create “space” for the left, used to browbeat youth into voting for Biden, was touted ad nauseum by all of the organizations in and around the Democratic Party, most prominently the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and its affiliated organ Jacobin. It took only a few hours after Biden’s declared victory for this political fraud to be exposed.

The reality is that a Biden administration—should it actually come to power, which is by no means guaranteed given Trump’s refusal to concede and the abject cowardice of the Democrats—will seek to establish a de facto coalition government with the Republican Party. Moreover, the right-wing policies that a Biden administration plans to implement, policies of austerity and militarism, will create conditions favorable to a further growth of the far right.

What the 2020 elections and their aftermath have definitively shown is that nothing progressive can be advanced within the framework of the Democratic Party and its so-called “left” representatives such as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders. A Biden administration will rapidly come into conflict with the working class, fueling a growth of the class struggle and posing the necessity for a mass independent movement fighting for socialism.

There is an immense constituency for socialist politics in the working class in the US and around the world. But the organic striving for an alternative to capitalism must be turned into a conscious movement armed with a revolutionary socialist and internationalist program. This requires the development of a new political leadership in the working class. The central issue is the building of the Socialist Equality Party and its youth organization, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sun Nov 15, 2020 3:49 pm

.


http://www.wsws.org:

The political role of Ocasio-Cortez, as she herself explains, is to provide a left gloss to a party that is moving further to the right.


AKA Controlled Opposition.


Here's another example:

Image

How does one resolve this tweet by Sanders? One has to either believe Sanders is somehow blissfully unaware of the DNC's blatant acts of fraud -- twice -- against his own campaign, OR: he's a willing player.

Any other options here?

I see AOC as playing the same role, but for the younger (Millennial/Gen Z, etc.) demographic.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Harvey » Wed Dec 16, 2020 7:33 pm

Jack, do you see what I meant now? I always liked her, still do, but I just knew what would happen. Call it a gift. :shrug:



Edit: I feel Medhurst needs to learn to control his justifiable hatred of the absolute bastards to some degree (a fellow sufferer speaks), precisely because he stands a good chance of making them aware of exactly what they are. Which is a fate worse than death for them - rebirth.

Remember Richard, the pen is mightier but mostly when the work is actually read.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Belligerent Savant » Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:08 pm

.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-ma ... vant-class

The Masking of the Servant Class: Ugly COVID Images From the Met Gala Are Now Commonplace


While AOC's revolutionary and subversive socialist gown generated buzz, the normalization of maskless elites attended to by faceless servants is grotesque.

From the start of the pandemic, political elites have been repeatedly caught exempting themselves from the restrictive rules they impose on the lives of those over whom they rule. Governors, mayors, ministers and Speakers of the House have been filmed violating their own COVID protocols in order to dine with their closest lobbyist-friends, enjoy a coddled hair styling in chic salons, or unwind after signing new lockdown and quarantine orders by sneaking away for a weekend getaway with the family. The trend became so widespread that ABC News gathered all the examples under the headline “Elected officials slammed for hypocrisy for not following own COVID-19 advice,” while Business Insider in May updated the reporting with this: “14 prominent Democrats stand accused of hypocrisy for ignoring COVID-19 restrictions they're urging their constituents to obey."

Most of those transgressions were too flagrant to ignore and thus produced some degree of scandal and resentment for the political officials granting themselves such license. Dominant liberal culture is, if nothing else, fiercely rule-abiding: they get very upset when they see anyone defying decrees from authorities, even if the rule-breaker is the official who promulgated the directives for everyone else. Photos released last November of California Governor Gavin Newsom giggling maskless as he sat with other maskless state health officials celebrating the birthday of a powerful lobbyist — just one month after he told the public to “to keep your mask on in between bites” and while severe state-imposed restrictions were in place regarding leaving one's home — caused a drop in popularity and helped fueled a recall initiative against him. Newsom and these other officials broke their own rules, and even among liberals who venerate their leaders as celebrities, rule-breaking is frowned upon.

But as is so often the case, the most disturbing aspects of elite behavior are found not in what they have prohibited but rather in what they have decided is permissible. When it comes to mask mandates, it is now commonplace to see two distinct classes of people: those who remain maskless as they are served, and those they employ as their servants who must have their faces covered at all times. Prior to the COVID pandemic, it was difficult to imagine how the enormous chasm between the lives of cultural and political elites and everyone else could be made any larger, yet the pandemic generated a new form of crude cultural segregation: a series of protocols which ensure that maskless elites need not ever cast eyes upon the faces of their servant class.

Last month, a delightful event was hosted by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for wealthy Democratic donors in Napa — the same wine region of choice for Gov. Newsom's notorious dinner party — at which the cheapest tickets were $100 each and a "chair” designation was available for $29,000. Video of the outdoor festivities showed an overwhelmingly white crowd of rich Democratic donors sitting maskless virtually on top of one another — not an iota of social distancing to be found — as Pelosi imparted her deep wisdom about public policy.

Pelosi's donor gala took place as millions face eviction, ongoing joblessness, and ever-emerging mandates of various types. It was also held just five days after the liberal county government of Los Angeles, in the name of Delta, imposed a countywide mask requirement for "major outdoor events.” In nearby San Francisco, where Pelosi's mansion is found, the liberal-run city government has maintained a more restrictive outdoor mask policy than the CDC: though masks were not required for outdoor exercising (such as jogging) or while consuming food, the city's rules for outdoor events required “that at any gathering where there are more than 300 people, masks are still required for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people.” Though Pelosi's fundraising lunch fell below the 10,000-person threshold for LA County's outdoor mask mandate, it may have fallen within San Francisco's mask mandate. Either way, it appears arbitrary at best: how would The Science™ of COVID risk have drastically changed for those sitting with no distancing, at densely packed tables, if there had been a few more tables of Pelosi donors? The CDC's latest guidelines for outdoor events urge people to “consider wearing a mask…for activities with close contact with others who are not fully vaccinated.”

Trying to find a cogent scientific rationale for any of this is, by design, virtually impossible. The rules are sufficiently convoluted and often arbitrary that one can easily mount arguments to legally justify the Versailles-like conduct of one's favorite liberal political leaders. Beyond the legalities, everything one does can be simultaneously declared to be responsible or reckless, depending on the political needs of the moment. But what was most striking about Pelosi's donor event was not the possibility of legal infractions but rather the two-tiered system that was so viscerally and uncomfortably obvious.

Even though many of the wealthy white donors had no food in front of them and were not yet eating, there was not a mask in sight — except on the faces of the overwhelmingly non-white people hired as servants, all of whom had their gratuitous faces covered. Servants, apparently, are much more pleasant when they are dehumanized. There is no need for noses or mouths or other identifiable facial features for those who are converted into servile robots.

Similar scenes were visible at the even more opulent birthday bash which former President Barack Obama threw for himself to commemorate his 60 years on the planet. Held at his sprawling $12 million weekend estate on Martha's Vineyard, Obama and 400 of his closest maskless friends spent hours in indoor tents dancing, chatting in close circles, and yelling in each other's ears over the live music. While custom-made masks engraved with Obama's renowned humility were provided to the guests (“44×60”), only the servants were reported to have worn masks. Who can throw a Hawaiian luau-themed party at one of the country's wealthiest retreats in the middle of a pandemic and joblessness crisis while wearing disfiguring masks, however chic and carefully hand-crafted they might be?

Discussing the controversy over Obama's lavish party on CNN, New York Times reporter Annie Karni explained that while some of the former president's neighbors found the party objectionable on the grounds of health and/or optics, many adamantly argued that such concerns were applicable only to ordinary people, not the more advanced and evolved species likely to be invited to such an extravagant and exclusive liberal party. Karni described this prevailing mentality with vivid accuracy:

[The controversy] is really being overblown. They’re following all the safety requirements. People are going to sporting events that are bigger than this. This is going to be safe. This is a sophisticated, vaccinated crowd and this is just about optics. It’s not about safety.


An avalanche of similarly repugnant imagery poured forth on Monday night at the most gluttonous and opulent royal court spectacle of them all: the annual Met Gala held by long-time Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Town and Country has lamented that the once-elevated-and-dignified event has become quite gauche ever since it became overrun by cultural celebrities and nouveau riche tycoons -- “these days, the gala is a highly commercialized, celebrity-driven media circus that celebrates sensationalist preening by individuals who couldn’t be less interested in the museum.” Yet despite this degradation, the magazine nonetheless still regards the affair as “the fashion and society event of the year.” In 2014, Wintour complained that the event was insufficiently exclusive and raised the ticket prices to $25,000 per person in order to keep out the riff-raff who had been able to get in the prior year for the middling price of $15,000 per ticket. Tickets this year cost as much as $35,000 per person. It is, pronounced Wintour's Vogue this week, “the fashion world equivalent of the Oscars.”

While event organizers, in an act of noble self-sacrifice and social duty, sadly cancelled the gala in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Wintour was determined this year not to let unpleasant matters like overflowing ICU wards, ongoing school closures, looming mass evictions, and pervasive mask mandates ruin the immense enjoyment bequeathed to the world's serfs as they watch their beloved bejeweled class pose in designer gowns. Following Pelosi and Obama's examples, a long list of America's most glittering stars bravely risked exposure to a deadly virus by appearing without masks, all to ensure that Americans would never again be deprived of such a richly gratifying moment for them. Co-chaired by Timothée Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka, honorary chairs included Tom Ford, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri, and Wintour herself.

Much of the attention on Monday night was devoted to the appearance on the red carpet by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). The usual horde of embittered online nay-sayers and envious party-poopers tried implying that there was something incongruous about a socialist politician gleefully participating in the most vulgar tribute to capitalism and social inequality to emerge since the walled-off galas thrown by the French aristocracy at the Palace of Versailles. Some petty, resentful critics even suggested that AOC's latest star turn somehow illustrated what Shant Mesrobian has disparagingly described as “the Squad’s brand of highly educated, professional-class cultural leftism,” which "now offers elected officials a path to fame and pop culture status that circumvents much of the old, hand-dirtying business of politics,” pursuant to which "elected office itself has become merely a stepping stone to social media celebrity” and “maintaining a social media influencer empire rivals, or even surpasses, the priority of being a successful legislator."

Fortunately, many of AOC's most devoted socialist supporters stepped forth with passionate defenses of their leader. As they pointed out, AOC had painted onto the back of her pristine white gown — in perfectly proportioned and tastefully scrolled red ink highlighting the stunning virtues of the designer dress' silhouette -- a leftist phrase, Tax the Rich, that not only assaulted the Biden-supporting liberal celebrities in attendance but made them feel endangered in their own habitat, as if their wealth and privilege were being imperiled not from afar but from one of their own, from within. Far from being what AOC's dirty and petty critics tried to malign this as being — an attention-seeking, celebrity-building, branding opportunity in which AOC yet again lavished herself in the multi-pronged rewards of the very economic and cultural hierarchies she claims to despise and vows to combat -- she was actually engaged in a revolutionary and subversive act, injecting into aristocratic circles a beautifully artistic yet hostile message.

This was not, contrary to the grievances of her small-minded and jealous critics, AOC reveling in one of Louis XVI's court festivities. Instead, she was storming the Bastille: not with weapons or fire but with the graceful designer elegance of the insurgent Marxist renegade, which made her presence all the more deceptively disruptive. While it may have appeared that Vogue's perfectly-coiffed red-carpet correspondents and other Met luminaries were gushing with admiration and awe at her bold fashion statement, they were actually shaking with fear over what AOC had wrought. They were quivering with rage and fear, not swooning with delight as it appeared.

Besides, as AOC herself put it with her trademarked class consciousness, the very fact that she can attend the Met Gala while you cannot is proof of the potency of the left-wing movement she leads. Standing next to Aurora James, the designer of her dress, AOC revealed the underlying clandestine strategy of her subversive attendance: “We really started having a conversation about what it means to be a working class woman of color at the Met ... we can’t just play along, but we need to break the fourth wall.”


In a separate exposition, AOC explained that her appearance at the Met Gala was such a watershed moment for working-class politics because it is vital that she not be confined to dreary poor and lower-middle class venues when spreading her fist-raising rebellion. Instead, she must endure the burden of carrying her cause to the world's richest and most privileged elite and the exclusive salons they occupy. Imagine being so unimaginative and myopic as to be unable to recognize and be grateful for AOC's inventive praxis.

The jealousy-driven attacks on AOC by her cultural inferiors were almost certainly driven by various forms of white supremacy, misogyny and colonialism, as AOC said of those who criticized her in 2018 for wearing an expensive designer dress (“women like me aren’t supposed to run for office”) as well as when she denounced the dismissive and condescending attitudes toward the Squad from Nancy Pelosi (“Nancy Pelosi has been ‘singling out’ freshman congresswomen of color”). Worse, Monday night's traumatic bullying of AOC obscured the far more important fact that, yet again, we saw elites prancing around in the middle of a pandemic maskless, while those paid hourly wages to serve them or desperately try to snap a photo of them were required to keep their pointless faces covered with cloth at all times.
Image
Jennifer Hudson, maskless, attends The 2021 Met Gala, attended to by masked servants, on September 13, 2021 in New York City, as masked paparazzi look on

COVID rules are now so convoluted that liberals are able to defend their leaders’ actions while not even pretending to make sense from a scientific or rational perspective. Many defended Newsom and Obama's maskless partying on the ground that it was all “outdoors,” even though both were actually inside tents and people had been shamed for months for taking their kids to deserted beaches rather than keeping them locked away at home. Liberals argue that it is fine for elites at Obama's party and the Met Gala to remain maskless since they are vaccinated, even as they defend the CDC's new mask directives for vaccinated people based on the view that vaccinated people still dangerously transmit the Delta variant to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people alike. They will claim that it is fine for rich Democratic donors at Pelosi's party to sit on top of one other maskless because they are eating even though the video shows they have no food in front of them (they are waiting for the masked servants of color to bring their food) and even though shoveling food into one's open mouth does not actually create a wall of immunity against transmission of the virus from one's open-mouthed table neighbors. The Met Gala's red carpet is said to be “outdoors” even though it is surrounded by tent walls and other structures, and still leaving the question of why workers need to be masked in the same area.

But all of this stopped being about The Science™ long ago — ever since months of relentless messaging that it is our moral duty to Stay At Home unless we want to sociopathically kill Grandma was replaced overnight by dictates that we had a moral duty to leave our homes to attend densely packed street protests since the racism being protested was a more severe threat to the public health than the global COVID pandemic. One can locate in all of this jumbled and always-shifting rationale various forms of control, shaming, stigma and hierarchy, while The Science™ is nowhere to be found.

Even with all of this deceit and manipulation, there is something uniquely disturbing — creepy even — about becoming accustomed to seeing political and cultural elites wallowing in luxury without masks, while those paid small wages to serve them in various ways are forced to keep cloth over their faces. It is a powerful symbol of the growing rot at the core of America's cultural and social balkanization: a maskless elite attended to by a permanently faceless servant class. The country's workers have long been faceless in a figurative sense, and now, thanks to extremely selective application of decisively unscientific COVID restrictions, that condition has become literal.

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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Karmamatterz » Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:24 pm

What a tool.

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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby PufPuf93 » Tue Sep 14, 2021 2:34 pm



Image

Pretty certain that AOC was riffing on Melania Trump and her "I Really Don't Care Do U?" jacket.

AOC is adept at attracting attention and shedding sunshine. Humors me and gives some hope for future when AOC makes the leading Democrats uncomfortable. But if she perseveres, AOC will grow to be a Democratic leader.

What is the matter with taxing the rich more? It is obvious. Wealth is subsidized and does not pay fair share. Even public spending for infrastructure or even health care for labor subsidizes wealth.
Marginal tax rates in the USA were much higher during the boom years of the 50s and 60s. Wager that just about everyone at RI would benefit if the rich paid more taxes.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Harvey » Tue Sep 14, 2021 3:10 pm

^ The Rich don't pay tax. Taxing them at all would be a start.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby PufPuf93 » Tue Sep 14, 2021 3:16 pm

Harvey » Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:10 pm wrote:^ The Rich don't pay tax. Taxing them at all would be a start.


Like I said, obvious to have the rich pay more taxes.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Karmamatterz » Tue Sep 14, 2021 4:46 pm

This has nothing to do with taxing the rich. You think she is really going to tear up the U.S. tax code and be the "one" who transforms it?
She is a tool. A tool to carry narratives that distract and mislead. Like BelSav mentioned last week about shiny objects distracting cats. Oh look AOC is wearing a dress, showing her ass off and it says "tax the rich!" Wow! she must really care!

Give me a fucking break. She can wear, doesn't mean jack.

Meanwhile.....members of Congress are exempt from the Y@tzee mask mandate. The entire covaids scam continues, but AOC is wearing a dress and we're actually supposed to fall for that shit? For fucks sakes.

She is a tool.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby PufPuf93 » Tue Sep 14, 2021 5:17 pm

Karmamatterz » Tue Sep 14, 2021 1:46 pm wrote:This has nothing to do with taxing the rich. You think she is really going to tear up the U.S. tax code and be the "one" who transforms it?
She is a tool. A tool to carry narratives that distract and mislead. Like BelSav mentioned last week about shiny objects distracting cats. Oh look AOC is wearing a dress, showing her ass off and it says "tax the rich!" Wow! she must really care!

Give me a fucking break. She can wear, doesn't mean jack.

Meanwhile.....members of Congress are exempt from the Y@tzee mask mandate. The entire covaids scam continues, but AOC is wearing a dress and we're actually supposed to fall for that shit? For fucks sakes.

She is a tool.


Of course AOC can't change the tax code but she can raise others awareness among other legislators and their constituents. AOC is very good at getting attention. AOC gets much condemnation from many within the Democratic party establishment. Some day AOC will likely be part of that Democratic establishment. Hope she remembers her start when that occurs. Once our politicians get in office, most have the goal to remain in office over anything else. AOC is a shiny object that gets attention where most other pols are unwilling to tread. Good for her. Hope she stays safe and maintains her perspective.

IMO you are a fool and a tool. So what?
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby BenDhyan » Tue Sep 14, 2021 8:06 pm

Cute, tax the rich..

AOC and boyfriend given comp tickets by Met to attend its $35K-a-head gal

Image

https://nypost.com/2021/09/14/aoc-and-boyfriend-got-comped-by-met-to-attend-gala/

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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby PufPuf93 » Tue Sep 14, 2021 9:10 pm

BenDhyan » Tue Sep 14, 2021 5:06 pm wrote:Cute, tax the rich..

AOC and boyfriend given comp tickets by Met to attend its $35K-a-head gal

Image

https://nypost.com/2021/09/14/aoc-and-boyfriend-got-comped-by-met-to-attend-gala/



Look AOC has a matching "Tax the Rich" purse.

Not a big deal that AOC was invited to the Met Gala.

AOC definitely leveraged the invitation for her political ends. Definitely got lots of publicity and for a good cause, just about all Americans should want to raise the tax rates for the wealthy. Typical for prominent NY pols to be invited.

The NY Post calls AOC a socialist ad she is not a socialist but a democratic socialist (basically democratic socialism differs from socialism in that the most means of production are still privately owned, democratic socialism is a still subset of capitalism but with more social safety net, a robust public health care system, more public ownership of things like utilities, and so on). But the right wing likes to smear AOC by calling her a socialist.


Here is the wiki intro AOC. She is an accomplished person given her age, sex, and race. And smart too. See what I bolded.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (/oʊˌkɑːsioʊ kɔːrˈtɛz/; Spanish: [oˈkasjo koɾˈtes]; born October 13, 1989), also known by her initials AOC, is an American politician and activist. She has served as the U.S. Representative for New York's 14th congressional district since 2019, as a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes the eastern part of the Bronx, portions of north-central Queens, and Rikers Island in New York City.

Ocasio-Cortez drew national recognition when she won the Democratic Party's primary election for New York's 14th congressional district on June 26, 2018. She defeated Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, a 10-term incumbent, in what was widely seen as the biggest upset victory in the 2018 midterm election primaries.[1][2][3] She was reelected in the 2020 election, defeating John Cummings.

Taking office at age 29, Ocasio-Cortez is the youngest woman ever to serve in the United States Congress.[4][5] She has been noted for her substantial social media presence relative to her fellow members of Congress.[6] Ocasio-Cortez attended Boston University, where she double-majored in international relations and economics, graduating cum laude. She was previously an activist and worked as a waitress and bartender before running for Congress in 2018.

Rashida Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez are the first female members of the Democratic Socialists of America elected to serve in Congress.[7][8] She advocates a progressive platform that includes support for workplace democracy, Medicare for All, tuition-free public college, a federal jobs guarantee, a Green New Deal, and abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby drstrangelove » Tue Sep 14, 2021 11:53 pm

Controlled opposition is never completely controlled. Sure, they assassinate the ones they can't control, like MLK and malc X, which led to the pathetic decline of African American culture led by figures like Jay z, to dwindle it down to guns drugs cash money hustle - consumerism, or the westernisation of African culture. For more on this, read Ishmael reed.

Sanders is very aware of the system, AOC wouldn't be, but is learning it. Sanders knows he can only do so much, what the boundaries are, for instance, that heart attack scare he got when it started to look like he would win the primary. Basically, he knows they will kill him off if he gains too much power.

I support Sanders. He is the last politician I'll ever vote for. I knew he would lose, and I knew it would signify the right moment to leave the political spectrum entirely.

He's done some great things, most importantly he has collected and funnelled money to community movements that are not (as of yet) corporate controlled. Also his support of unions, which are currently the only community power structure able to stand up against covid mandates. So people should respect him for his contribution to helping to support community power structures against corporate ones. I think.

His messaging is also hopeful, regardless of how hopeless his policies are. I see him as buying us time. Working within the system so it allows him to slow it down, however slight, so that we might last so long as to reach a future moment where real change can occur.

Which of course it will, because the oligarchs are only growing in wealth and power(well struggling with this latter currently), and all things growing only grow towards their death.

AOC has the right spirit, it's just she is naive and will be groomed from this young age into a purely political creature.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Sep 15, 2021 12:21 am

.

That groom ship has sailed, my friend.
Indeed, she's landed on the pier and has since been promoted some time ago, though I agree she remains relatively naive about the enormity of it all. For now, however, her ego allows her to enjoy the spotlight.

Now is not the time to maintain illusions. Now it's long-past time to dispense with fanciful notions and face cold, hard reality; to stare directly into the dark chasm.


Belligerent Savant » Sun Nov 15, 2020 2:49 pm wrote:.


http://www.wsws.org:

The political role of Ocasio-Cortez, as she herself explains, is to provide a left gloss to a party that is moving further to the right.


AKA Controlled Opposition.


Here's another example:

Image

How does one resolve this tweet by Sanders? One has to either believe Sanders is somehow blissfully unaware of the DNC's blatant acts of fraud -- twice -- against his own campaign, OR: he's a willing player.

Any other options here?

I see AOC as playing the same role, but for the younger (Millennial/Gen Z, etc.) demographic.
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Re: The RI thread about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Postby drstrangelove » Wed Sep 15, 2021 2:14 am

I resolve it easily. In a choice between two evils, Sanders, an independent, has chosen the democrats. The same way in which Ron Paul, and to a much lesser extent his son, have chosen the Republicans.

Anyone who doesn't play the game is excluded from it, or dies in a plane crash when flying a charter airline that has a maintenance contract with dyncorp.

If people like Sanders and Ron Paul didn't/hadn't play/ed the game, they would be replaced with people like Peter Buttigieg, Matt gates.

Politics is a game. To play you need to follow the rules or the ones who do and their backers will just straight up kill you. Trump was an outlier because his base of support was the petty middle class which is utterly powerless, and the rules he broke to gain their support allowed him to support establishment ends.

Sanders is a metropolitan/urban populist, which means he has the ability to mobilize many more people than a rural populist like Trump. Sanders base is also much younger, which means more dangerous. Sanders placated his base in exchange for some level of political action to empower them. You could argue this exchange is not well balanced and he should do more. I'd probably agree with that.

But we all know the kinds of people he is dealing with. Crooks, murderers, paedophiles, rapists, and probably worse combinations of all these.

I don't think he Is above criticism, but to discount him as a shill I think is to ignore the reality of the system he is forced to work with.
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