The AOC Industry: Selling Empire As Socialism

 There are few things that strike terror in the dark hearts of god fearing, beef eating, Republicans like the scourge of the Squad. Transgender bathrooms, the female orgasm, pissing off the Israel Lobby. All pale in comparison to the fury of four junior congresswomen of color, Ayana Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and the ferocious Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This fearsome foursome has somehow single-handedly hijacked the most powerful political party in the country and forced it to do their bidding. Their malignant influence reaches all the way to the top. The White House itself is their plaything and soon it will be painted a Bolshevik shade of red as they unleash a socialist wave of terror across the fruited plains of the heartland. The rich will become poor, the poor will become entitled, police stations will be razed to the ground, and the Marines will be replaced by a new Red Guard who will send Scotch bloated right wing talk show hosts to work in the fields. Oh the humanity!

I think the Republicans have been huffing paint thinner and digging into their daddies John Birch Society agit-prop again. As much as I would love to believe that the Squad are the reincarnation of the Symbionese Liberation Army, even Patty Hearst wouldn't be caught dead voting 'present' on genocide. Once again, if the left in this country were even half as scary as the right make them out to be, I would probably be a lot less ashamed to be a part of it. The sad dismal truth about those radical ideologues in the Squad is that they really aren't that radical at all, at least not where it counts. And nothing should count more to a successful leftist strategy than anti-imperialism. On this subject, the Squad is inconsistent at best.

Oh sure, they've thrown a few bones to us starving peaceniks with bills to hold their beloved president Joe Biden to his worthless word on Yemen and to shave a few bucks off Mama Bear Nancy Pelosi's record shattering Pentagon budget, but time and time again these ladies have folded like deck chairs on George Soros' yacht when it comes to empire. Ayana Pressley co-sponsored a bill defending the BDS Movement only to vote to condemn the same group. Rashida Tlaib voted for a bipartisan budget act that allocated billions to the Department of Defense. Even mighty little Ilhan Omar, who I myself was once briefly and madly in love with, broke my bleeding anti-Zionist heart by signing on to a letter by those Hebrew supremacists in AIPAC in support of the UN's crippling sanctions regime on Iran during the height of the pandemic.

But no one capitulates quite like the queen of right wing cringe, AOC. We really probably should have seen this coming after the plucky self-styled proletariat bartender responded to a simple question about Israel/Palestine from Margaret Hoover on the campaign trail with "International relations just aren't my thing." Like, totally gag me with a spoon, girlfriend! It was all pretty much down hill from there. For every full throated tweet about taking on the military industrial complex there was another praising lightbulb factory bomber John McCain, opposing troop withdrawal from Syria, and chastising Republicans for being too weak on national security. She praised Obama's bloody surge in Afghanistan, she voted to remain in NATO, and she backed her Prius right over her supposed comrades in Venezuela, stating sickeningly, "I defer to caucus leadership on how we navigate this" before voting in favor of gifting $33 million to Venezuela's failed coup government for "Democracy promotion." All this bourgeoise statecraft can probably be best explained by considering who AOC's "radical" role model is. The pendent on the congresswoman's lapel doesn't contain a portrait of Che Guevara or Eugene Debs, but that of Bernie Sanders.

There are few cases in recorded history of a wider gulf between reputation and reality than that of Senator Bernie Sanders. The wild eyed socialist rebel rouser is really little more than a yipping partisan lapdog for the elites he pretends to oppose. In spite of his status as an independent, maintained largely to placate those woodsy iconoclasts back in Vermont, Bernie votes with his caucus like any other DNC dupe. He plays up the antiwar pose every time a Republican occupies the White House, but he's put his red stamp of approval on pretty much every war crime a Democratic president has ever committed. He was all in on the obliteration of legitimately socialist nations like Yugoslavia and Libya. In the prior example he even sicked the cops on his own constituents when they protested the Balkan massacre with a sit-in at his Burlington office, and in both cases, once prosperous modern welfare states were reduced to hell-scorched no-man's-lands for slave drivers and kidney thieves to call their own.

None of this sad history stopped throngs of young idealistic kids to flock towards Bernie's quixotic presidential campaigns in such great numbers as to terrify the Democratic establishment into pulling out all the stops to make sure they weren't too successful. In both 2016 and 2020, Bernie could have and should have taken the Democratic Primaries and probably the White House too, but in both cases, his campaigns were brutally sabotaged by his own beloved party, and in both cases, Bernie threw his own diehard followers under the Democratic bus by sitting on his hands and saying nothing until it was time to endorse the establishment candidate who screwed him. You see, Bernie never really ran for president. He ran to herd young wayward leftists into supporting predator capitalist scions of mediocrity like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. In the successful case of Old Joe, Saint Bernard was such a good boy that he was awarded with a cushy position in his masters cabinet and that's all Bernie really ever wanted. But even good dogs don't live forever and the DNC needs a new breed of sheepherder for a new era of media savvy partisan depravity.

That's where AOC comes in, and that's why we see the so called radical being groomed by the establishment who supposedly fears her. That's why CNN celebrated their spunky little socialist with that primetime cheese job, "Being... AOC." That's why we see the congresswoman playing the part of rebel at the Met Gala as delighted plutocrats swarmed to receive photo-ops with that couture gown threatening fecklessly to tax them. "Look Buffy, it's the socialist, AOC. How fun!" And that's why we witnessed the bizarre spectacle of AOC bursting into crocodile tears after voting present on a bill funding Israel's apartheid enabling thunderdome. It's all fucking theatre, darling, and AOC is auditioning to play the role of the new Bernie Sanders, a blood and butter social democrat who talks like Rosa Luxemburg and votes like the rose clutching cowards who had her shot in the back.

I may have cut up my socialist card a few election cycles ago, but take it from a bitter anarchist who still respects the fortitude of brave creatures like Rosa, Che and Debs. This shit that the Squad is slinging like fiver dollar crack rocks ain't socialism, because socialism without anti-imperialism is just a bribe for the lower class in this country to subsist on while the third world gets raped. Don't let frauds like Bernie and AOC silence your comrades screams with tabloid theatrics and welfare payola. Lets all ditch these fucking cowards and give Republicans and Democrats alike something to really be afraid of.

Peace, Love, & Solidarity- Nicky/CH

Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post

*  Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill

*  You're No Rock N Roll Fun by Sleater-Kinney

*  God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols

*  Cut Your Hair by Pavement

*  Rebel Rebel by David Bowie

*  Ex-Lion Tamer by Wire

*  A Time For Heroes by the Libertines

This post is devoted in loving memory to Daphne Dorman, another mouthy trans broad who took her life after having her own community turn on her for defending freedom of speech. This is not what being Queer is about. Being Queer is about embracing the liberty to be whoever the fuck you wanna be, regardless of societies prudish expectations. When did we become the church ladies who once condemned us to hell for not fitting in? We can and should do better than this.