The Most Feared Person on Capitol Hill

Young and Restless

February 8, 2019

Does this scare you?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress (during the blue tsunami of 2018), is scaring the crap out of most of Washington, DC.  AOC, as she is known is the most talked about pol since the incursion of Donald Chrump.  Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as a democratic socialist.  Ocasio-Cortez came out of nowhere, unseated the third-ranking, 10-term Democrat in Congress, and proceeded to charm and/or frighten everyone in and around politics.  She is incredibly well-informed, is effortlessly well-spoken and has more energy than the Energizer Bunny.  Ocasio-Cortez majored in international relations and economics at Boston University, graduating cum laude in 2011.  She is ready, ready as anybody can be.

Republican’ts across the country are soiling their diapers.  They act like they are seeing the reincarnation of Emma Goldman, or Karl Marx, and they are much more positively disposed toward Marx’s ostensible modern-day successor Vladimir Putin.  Completely at ease with their lying, sexist, racist, failing leader’s shenanigans, Republican’ts are positively apoplectic over the 29 year-old AOC’s ability to consistently attract attention.

Be afraid, be very afraid

Many in the media are simply amazed at the “sudden” emergence of a democratic socialist.  Maybe their brains have been so badly damaged by the perpetual shuck and jive, the slob and sleaze, the constant worst, most bizarre thing ever, the constant psychotic dishonesty of Chrump, that they forgot all about Bernie Sanders.  Sanders singlehandedly turned socialism from a dirty word – if it was known at all to most Americans, to nothing short of a cause célèbre.  Sanders caused ‘socialism’ to be the most searched word (and George Orwell’s 1984 the most searched book) in 2016.  And quelle surprise, a huge swath of America realized that they had all kinds of socialist tendencies.  Americans are unsurprisingly willing to consider Medicare-for-all, free college tuition for those in need, a vibrant social safety net and generally find socialism for the many, instead of socialism for the wealthy, quite appealing. Go figure.

AOC re-exposes the cancer that is dark money in politics

Old-school/Blue Dog Democrats are equally terrified of Ocasio-Cortez and the thought of losing their corporate-backed grip on their side of the aisle.  Just as Bernie Sanders sent them scurrying to the big-dollar-insulated shelter of the party machine and the friendly confines of old guard maven Hillary Clinton.  Clinton rallied to defeat Sanders in the 2016 primary, in part by having the Democratic National Committee stack the deck against Sanders, and in part by coopting Bernie’s progressive, populist message, though not anywhere near as invested in the message as the democratic socialist from Vermont.  The rest, as they say, is the (possible end of) history.

Ocasio-Cortez and many of her fellow freshman colleagues are pushing a Green New Deal – a platform proposal that focuses on environmental sanity, infrastructure, economic, social and gender equality, paid for in part by implementing a 70 percent marginal tax rate for incomes above $10 million.  Scary stuff.  To some.  Like Republican’ts who are calling the Green New Deal a “socialist manifesto.”  They can call it whatever they want, they can call it Peaches for all I care.  Maybe they should shut down the government again, or build a wall to stop it.

I. Mangrey rejoicing.  Just a little bit.