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jamenta's avatar

I'm still trying to figure out if AOC is just a complete bullshitter, or really does have a feather brain. It's one of the great enigmas of all time. Where's Sherlock Holmes?

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Caitlin Johnstone's avatar

Oh she knows exactly what she's doing.

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Robert H Stiver's avatar

Yes. I've observed for some years, even just casually, that AOC's 'progressive' credentials are deeply suspect. Rashida and Ilhan should take AOC to the woodshed and give her a good thrashing, but I fear it would do no good....

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Feral Finster's avatar

The loyalty of Tlaib and Omar is to Team D.

Not to us or to anyone else.

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Landru's avatar

Suspect, she was a liar and pretender from the first word spoken. She was a rich girl privately schooled, working for Ted Kennedy as a staffer. I was fooled too.

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bill wolfe's avatar

You should write about whatever the hell is going on with AOC defenders.

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Landru's avatar

Which makes her far more evil then any of us know. I was stupid and supported her with donations for her election, not even in New York. The monster that was elected was a liar from the first word. Thank you for doing this Caitlin, you help me sleep at night knowing I am not alone. Dark Matter Zombies.

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Leon Brown, Jr.'s avatar

AOC is apparently a once-sincere advocate of progressive values, who has gotten to Washington and had those values compromised, to whatever extent, by the irresistible (for her) lure of elevation in the political establishment - while trying to retain her "celebrity progressive" status. An oxymoronic, contradictory dream. Sherlock Holmes

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Jo Waller's avatar

It's impossible to be in power in the US without playing the game or paying the ferryman. You have to sell your soul- I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

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Leon Brown, Jr.'s avatar

So true….😐

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jamenta's avatar

I admit, I aspire to be like Sherlock Holmes someday, but in the meantime, I remain a Dr. Watson.

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bill wolfe's avatar

The "progressive" thing was aways a convenient mask. It was never based in principle or analysis or commitment and never came with sacrifice.

She a self promoting ambitious bourgeoisie grifter..

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russian_bot's avatar

"AOC is apparently a once-sincere advocate of progressive values" - if she was and thought she could keep them then she is indeed stupid.

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Landru's avatar

She was none of that, rich girl pretender. Ted Kennedy and AOC tells the story.

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bill wolfe's avatar

as I said: The "progressive" thing was aways a convenient mask. It was never based in principle or analysis or commitment and never came with sacrifice.

She a self promoting ambitious bourgeoisie grifter..

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Landru's avatar

Nope, none of that. Pretender rich girl who worked for Ted Kennedy.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

As a constituent, I note that her campaign catchphrase (since 2018) has been "Courage". Frankly, I don't think it's as simple as Caitlin says. Behind the scenes, I trust that AOC is going through quite the education, and I'd love to hear her interviewed in two decades, or better, five.

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DLehman's avatar

Oh it is that simple.. unless one ascribes to the ‘it’s complicated’ doctrine to describe the Palestine/Israel issue.. indigenous people are being systematically slaughtered and their land stolen by another people and all we [civlised folk] care about is whether the murderers are having a good time doing it and making sure they feel good about themselves..

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Anti-Hip's avatar

The Palestine genocide is not complicated.

The character evolution of (initiated-as-adult, 33-year-old, WC->UMC) AOC is most definitely complicated, and has nothing to do with the political topic at hand.

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Landru's avatar

Hopefully, we never hear from her again. Jose Vega is an interesting character.

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bill wolfe's avatar

"Courage"? I'm searching my addled brain right now for the psychological term for the practice of projecting the polar opposite of your deepest fears and inadequacies as your virtues. What is that word?

The "progressive" thing was aways a convenient mask. It was never based in principle or analysis or commitment and never came with sacrifice.

She a self promoting ambitious bourgeoisie grifter..

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Anti-Hip's avatar

"She a self promoting ambitious bourgeoisie grifter"

I seriously doubt she understands very well the implications of what she's doing. She certainly thinks she does, but IMHO she won't know for a while.

May I ask, what is your current age (roughly)? Were you raised (ages birth-to-teens) working-class? If so, was it skilled or unskilled WC? (Do you know the difference, that is, the *cultural* difference?) In general, was it stable or unstable environment? Were there street gangs as a young child? Were you abandoned for lengthy periods so your parents could work? Were the schools authoritarian disciplinarians? Were you ever experimental meat in an Ivy League teaching hospital? Did you ever have screaming matches with "therapists", who couldn't drop their own "juiced in it" [hard-driving-UMC-]parents-are-the-only-genuine-problem monomania long enough to hear what perceptive things you're saying about other things related to you, the world, and your place in it? etc. etc. etc. No, this is not unusual -- this is WC *NORMAL*. So, I hope you're now getting my drift about the possible, maybe probable, brain-state of AOC, having spent her early childhood the Bronx (a hellhole I don't even want to imagine, having seen enough triggers just on the TeeVee), but then coming face-to-face with the magical world of the UC/UMC.

In other words, moving to Westchester does not instantly transform the psyche of WC-raised to an UMC. Thinking it does is a deep UC/UMC conceit.

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bill wolfe's avatar

Wiki says her dad was an architect. That's not unskilled working class. She left the Bronx at 5 years old so had no real exposure to or experience with gangs, violence, et al. Puerto Rican families are known to be tight knit, is I doubt she had instability at home. You have a myth in your mind. Look at her academic focus.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

Fair enough. I'll concede re most of these things (except as in my parallel comment point below). I don't think it's sufficient to refute my core point against Caitlin that "[AOC] knows exactly what she's doing". That's a stretch, to put it mildly.

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bill wolfe's avatar

She's corrupt. She kissed Pelosi's ass. This is not the first example of her corruption. She knows exactly where the lines are.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

On some level she does (she has sufficient though not superior intelligence), but I believe that (within her current hurricane and bubble) she's certainly repressing and/or rationalizing it. It may not bubble to full consciousness for a while, which was in my original point. Therefore, I cannot yet hold her accountable the way I can, say, Bernie Sanders for *his* transgressions.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

"She left the Bronx at 5 years old so had no real exposure to or experience with gangs, violence, et al."

How do you know that? You don't think a 3 or 4 or 5-year-old can experience trauma (at some level of) indirect exposure *worse* than, say, the 19-year-old wielding the weapons involved?

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bill wolfe's avatar

Her self promotional WIKI bio provided that. There are areas of the Bronx that are very nice. Have you ever been there? You have no clue, my friend.

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Robert H Stiver's avatar

Will there be a Palestinian left standing in five, or two, or 0.5 decades?

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Anti-Hip's avatar

I'm not advocating her approach to this conversation at all. I'm saying she is an interesting character, will likely have many demons to face in the future, and in her old age (like Robert McNamara) attempt to come public with them. I do not believe she is a hard-boiled, two-faced sociopath as Caitlin seems to imply. Unless sociopaths and 5-D political chess have become sophisticated beyond my imagination.

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DLehman's avatar

Like someone said, I’m really over these ‘interesting’ characters and these ‘interesting’ times.. let’s drop the euphemism..

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Anti-Hip's avatar

It's not a euphemism.

Because the thing "I'm really over" is the obsessive re-invention of words. One of these cases is the word "interesting", especially as used among the U.S. upper and upper-middle classes and their imitators for a number of decades now. (Today, in the decline and fall of the West, their discourse regularly functions as a modern court of Versailles, that is, as a slice of hybrid warfare.)

To the larger portion of people, that is, the normal ones (as in the original meaning of the word "normal", i.e. "reflecting the norm"), "interesting" isn't a veiled accusation -- it retains its original meaning, that is, making a statement about the *observer's* emotional reaction (i.e. "I'm entertained to explore this person/thing/whatever further, whatever I find"), and does not involve making insinuations about the target person's character.

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bill wolfe's avatar

I guess you never met a striving Bronx born Puerto Rican girl who moves to northern Westchester county and sees how the world works.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

Oh, I know exactly how a working-class person moves into an upper-middle class environment during ones teens and twenties. Mastering by 30 years old at a deep level the sinister subterfuge of a hardened spook is not at all a norm. One can put on the cloak, but not understand sufficiently what's actually going on until decades later. Whoever is making this argument (apparently, Caitlin?) has to make a better case.

For example, at their core, I'm convinced AOC and Bernie are two very different people, no matter how they harmonize on stage. Puppet and puppetmaster.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

BTW, her opponent(s) (this election year) on this question is/are much worse, as is entirely to be expected.

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Robert H Stiver's avatar

"Semi-like!"

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Jun 14, 2024
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bill wolfe's avatar

Delete the word "liberal" and you nailed it.

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Howard Pearce - Libertarian's avatar

My definition;

Progressivism: the political belief in law-mandated / state-mandated liberalism

An actual contradiction in terms IMHO

real liberals need to ditch it before it becomes worse

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