Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, (D-NY) is supposedly the voice of a new generation of American voters making their initial forays into the divisive environment that is modern American politics.
Of course, this is an absurdity.
Not only is this is a woman who believes that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address Climate Change” (real inspirational there, AOC), but she is also apparently shocked—shocked, I tell you!—that since Elon Musk purchased Twitter and made it a haven for free speech (more than it was under the previous management, at least), that she’s “never experienced more harassment on this platform than [she] has [since Musk purchased Twitter]!”
Surely, harassment and hate speech are not appropriate. But harassment directed against an elected official, like AOC, might not just be from the demented who populate the dark recesses of the internet. Further, the best antidote to hate speech is more speech, not less.
It’s an indicator of how deeply unpopular that elected official, in this case AOC, really is.
AOC is One Reason Why Elon Musk Bought Twitter
The entire reason that Elon Musk purchased Twitter was because, as a prolific user of the social media app, he was fed up with the egregious censorship that the previous owners of Twitter routinely engaged in. Since Musk’s controversial purchase of Twitter, in fact, it has since been revealed that the previous management coordinated with the FBI and other elements of the federal government to target Right-leaning accounts to suppress their free speech, often unfairly.
There was effectively a Left-leaning bias that pervaded the very algorithms that fueled Twitter’s daily operations. It was perpetuated by the likes of AOC and her fellow travelers in the government, in media, and inside the old management at Twitter.
And while AOC is the beneficiary of chronically good press (thanks to the media’s bias), when the scales are lifted, such as Elon Musk did when he purchased Twitter earlier this year, much more accurate feelings about public figures are displayed among the social media site’s users.
My Generation is Going to Get Us All Killed
AOC is a member of my generation. We’re around the same age. I grew up with girls like her my whole life. They are masters of championing themselves as the greatest gifts on God’s green Earth while simultaneously portraying themselves as a victim of the dreaded patriarchy. When they are only victims of their own oversized egos and prideful ignorance. People like AOC also have a dangerously inflated sense of themselves.
And they’ve been accommodated far too long by society writ large, which has only fed into this exaggerated self-image of greatness.
In normal people, these distorted, grandiose self-perceptions come across as pathetic. It’s one reason why many American women in my age group are having trouble finding men. In an elected official who very well may be president one day, given where our broken politics is taking us, it is downright dangerous. It shows that AOC, at the age of 33, having been in the workforce for over a decade, lacks any sense of self-awareness.
Now imagine her having power over millions of Americans. Or possibly having control over the nuclear weapons arsenal.
The mind reels.
That this childless individual is influencing policies toward American families offends my sensibilities as the father of two young children (with a third on the way). That this un-self-aware “adult” is serving in the US government—as I once did—is acting in contravention of the very standards of preserving the public interest that are supposed to define government service is deeply worrying.
Rather than protect the public interest, AOC spends her time wallowing in her self-induced ignorance and sharing that stupidity on social media. She’s clearly more concerned with shameless self-promotion than she is with serving her country. More frighteningly, AOC has conflated serving her country with her incessant need to be Twitter famous.
And there’s an entire generation of these “leaders” in the offing (the so-called “Zoomer” generation is even worse than mine, by the way).
Look, I’m somewhat of a public figure myself. I have made mistakes before. I’ve gotten it wrong. I’ve even made a fool of myself in public. The times that I’ve done that, I have never once blamed anyone other than myself—or insisted that those who were calling me out for my mistake were doing so because they simply wanted to date me. But that’s exactly where AOC’s mind went not long ago when she and Elon Musk got into a tiff on Twitter.
The bartender-turned-congresswoman’s massive ego was doubly inflated by many years of existing as a glorified social media influencer (on the public dole, of course) on a platform that routinely amplified everything she said while shutting down most of the ignorant congresswoman’s opposition on ideological, rather than factual, grounds.
AOC Just Won’t Address Her Critics
With the Twitter game no longer rigged against conservatives and AOC’s detractors having been given an equal voice to challenge all the goofy things the once-and-future president says on the app, AOC is melting under the heat (as all snowflakes do).
Next, she’ll try Me-Too-ing her opponents.
When that doesn’t work, just as she learned in college, the next step to addressing opposing viewpoints is not to simply respond and defend herself. Or to ignore the criticism. But it is to impugn the very venue that is allowing for those opposing views to be voiced.
And, right on cue, that is precisely what AOC is doing by trying to bully Twitter into canceling her opponents.
I wish I could say that AOC was an anomaly.
But mine is a generation raised on the notion that everyone gets a trophy, that the only unacceptable lifestyle choices in modern America are to live in a rural community and vote Republican, and that if you dislike something that which someone else says—and they’re even slightly to the Right politically of you—then you get to use the power of corporations and the state (increasingly one-in-the-same) to crush their voice, assassinate their characters, and never once be made to respond based on the merits of their arguments.
AOC Isn’t an Honest Actor
So, when AOC says that Twitter has become too hostile for her, remember AOC is coming from a place where she’s never been challenged, told by everyone around her that she’s the greatest thing since Gloria Steinem first burned her bra, and that anyone who does oppose her is little more than a rube to be silenced.
She is not an honest actor.
I, for one, love that the Twitterverse is finally calling AOC out on her malarkey. That alone makes Musk’s purchase of the social media app worth it. Oh, and AOC, the world is not going to end in a decade. It is going to continue spinning as it always has. It’d be nice if you as a leader spoke to that reality and offered an actual vision for the future—something to hope for—rather than your bizarre delusions of being the female Captain Planet on Twitter.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From 19FortyFive
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