There’s been a lot of talk about AOC recently and justifiably so. She’s fascinating in a way. She’s certainly attractive, and, well, she’s attractive. However, there’s been one aspect of the story about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that hasn’t been covered much.
I stumbled upon it when doing legwork for my recent Brexit pieces. I called British and German pals in the DC community to get their perspectives on the subject. I know the Germans from associations given my several years spent serving in the U.S. Army and going to college there. I know the Brits because of my rampant Anglophilia, my wide drinking…I mean travel…in the UK, membership in the British-American Business Association, and attendance at embassy functions. After the Brexit chinwag they hungered to know about AOC.
“I don’t understand what she means,” said one Brit when told of AOC’s predilection for “emotional truths” over facts. “Don’t you Americans put your children to bed at a decent hour?” said a German pal who takes great pleasure in raking me over the coals at the doings of the dumber of our politicians. They both thought that AOC was much like Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, unintentionally trying to return a very liberal party to its former hard left days of complete unelectability.
Thus the story missed is what an embarrassment This Year’s Girl, this Trotskyite pinup, is to the U.S. on the international stage. Yes, other nations have their hard left leaders. They tend to be the pedantic bearded type. Well, no one can accuse AOC of being a pedant.
The Euros have always seen us as an unruly and unschooled teenager of a nation that stumbled onto world leadership by brawn over brain. Hence their jealousy that sometimes translates into petulant anti-Americanism. As a German college chum told me years ago, “We’ve been doing this for a thousand years. You come along and own the world because everybody owed you money after the First World War. It’s not the way the world should be run.” Then I bought him another bourbon and he shut up.
Bolshevik Betty Boop is a minor headache here. But AOC does us ill abroad as well. She confirms to many around the globe that D-level celebrity and rank stupidity, not intellect, knowledge, or experience, have become the standards by which one becomes an American political powerhouse of the left.
Even though she is a passing plastic icon on our scene, it is a legitimate stereotype they will not soon forget.
