I Really Wish AOC Had Been Named the Top Democrat on the Oversight Committee

If only the DNC establishment opposed white supremacists with the same intensity they muster up against progressives

I don't have any problem with people who disagree with me as long as they do it courteously. I'm finding that in the wake of the 2024 election, I'm feeling protective about progressives like Bernie Sanders and AOC.

It frustrates me how the media and the rest of the Democratic party incessantly and unfairly pile on progressives. They blame them for mistakes that are really the fault of a very unpopular centrist ideology.

At this point, I don't have any patience for the overwhelming deluge of lies that are pushed by mainstream and social media. Recently I saw a meme that looked like it might have been a poster issued by the Nazi party in 1939. It had an AI-generated image of a man chopping wood. Standing next to him was a woman holding a bunch of babies. It said something like “masculine men inspire feminine women, and feminine women inspire masculine men.”

HOGWASH!

What it should have read was “Fascist propaganda tricks people into enabling evil!”

The propaganda era isn't coming... it's already here.

I'm already at the point where I can't take it anymore, so I'm not going to sit quietly and moderate my comments. I'm not going to compromise and say nothing when presented with half-truths. That feels like making a concession before the battle even begins, and I think that's the attitude that got us here.

We have to fortify ourselves and be willing to stand up for truth and accuracy.

Last week, I saw an article about how Nancy Pelosi was “working” to prevent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from becoming the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Since then, she's “succeeded” in her misguided plot to oppose one of the most intelligent, energetic, popular, and honest politicians working in our government today. In fact, AOC might be the MOST intelligent, energetic, popular and honest politician in the whole country.

In light of everything that's going on, why is the DNC establishment using its precious energy to OPPOSE her? It makes me furious. If it's your ambition to drive away the working class, going after AOC is the most effective way to do it.

One of the few shining lights of news I've seen in the media in the months since the election was the report that AOC aspired to have a prominent position on the Oversight Committee. She's one of the very few politicians who actually works for us. She passes the “would you let this politician babysit your children” test.

Does anybody else pass that test? Kamala would, so would Tim Walz, but off the top of my head I can't think of too many more. I'd trust Jamie Raskin too, there are a few others, but not enough…

But then to see that one piece of good news countered by an attack from Nancy Pelosi, who should be using her time in office right now to oppose white supremacy rather than oppose hardworking progressive democrats, really made me frustrated.

So I wrote a note to that effect:

I received a reply from somebody who claimed to be running the Substack account of a writer who is well-known on Medium, but I didn't independently verify if that was actually true. She responded and said that AOC was “dangerous” because her ideas were “too close to socialism” (which is complete nonsense).

That led to this note:

…and this one:

I also received a direct message where somebody accused me of being a “centrist” who is “part of the problem.” I don’t understand the logic of that accusation because it came within a few minutes of my defense of AOC. That criticism actually stung me if I’m being honest, and it became the catalyst for my podcast episode “How to Overcome Frustration and Look for Common Sense Solutions.”

It's simply not the case that progressives represent “socialism,” and I'm tired of people falsely applying that label. AOC and Bernie Sanders don't represent socialism. They represent the kind of common sense solutions that have already been implemented in the majority of the industrialized world. We wouldn't say that all the countries in the world that have universal health care are “socialist.” We wouldn't say that a country that has a military is “socialist.”

We’ve got to stop allowing this lie to proliferate.

We shouldn't permit the word to be used to derail rational conversations about strategies for confronting a problem that leaves tens of thousands of Americans DEAD every year, and hundreds of thousands of Americans BANKRUPT!

So much for your retirement you dupe. You wanted to get cute on the internet and scream about socialism, now you've got NOTHING because you got cancer.

The fact that “socialism” has become this attack word used against anything that might actually help the working class is, I think, one of the main reasons why the Democrats keep losing. They bow down to this misinformed argument rather than push back against it.

Healthcare reform is not socialism. It's common sense. Our system doesn't work. We deserve one that works. We're paying more than we have. We want our children to be healed, we don't want to make billionaires out of the cruel executives that deny them care and watch them die.

Then I was confronted by somebody who said “true progressives” are trying to compromise with libertarians and MAGA-Republicans, and that my language derailed the potential for finding common ground.

Now, again, people are free to disagree with me. Isn't that what we keep saying? Isn't the whole media overrun with snarky little memes about how we can “disagree and still be friends?” Why is it that I always get the hate side from that meme and not any of the theoretical tolerance? Why can't people “disagree” with my idea that we should be able to obtain medical treatment for our children without going bankrupt, and not throw insults at me as if that ambition makes me the worst person in the world?

I think it's actually healthy to have conversations and talk about disagreements, but I don't like to be called names. Somebody called me “pal” the other day, and I called him out on it because I thought it was disrespectful (to his credit, he actually apologized).

I'm really tired of this “you're part of the problem” argument. I don't think I'm part of the problem because nothing I propose is ever implemented.

AND. WE. KEEP. LOSING.

This has been going on since 2016. If we're going to get anywhere, we have to have reasonable discussions. But if you offer any criticism of the DNC establishment, you are attacked in exactly the way the establishment NEVER attacks fascists. This infighting has to stop. Criticism isn't infighting. Asking for something to be done about healthcare isn't infighting.

Telling people “they're part of the problem” is infighting.

We do need Democrats to stand up for us. In 2020, voters gave Democrats control of the Presidency and Congress. Yes, the Biden administration did a lot of good things. Unfortunately, it really feels like it's all going to be wiped away.

If only they'd passed the John Lewis Act... IF ONLY!

For more than 10 years, I've always felt pressure to be quiet and not say what I think is right. First it was because I was “too young.” Then people call you “stupid.” Then people call you “ignorant.” Then people say “you're part of the problem.” They try to silence you by playing on your insecurities. The attacks are brutal and incessant.

And these are the attacks that are coming from people who claim to be on the same side!

Meanwhile, little by little, the United States has been moving more and more towards an authoritarian state. So, again, my ideas aren't being implemented. Again and again I'm told to shut up, so I stand back and watch as the country burns. So, I don't think I can be blamed for being the problem when they're not doing what I'm suggesting.

But calling me a centrist for defending AOC doesn't make logical sense to me. I don't think we should sit there and tell AOC that she has to tone down her policies because her policies are very popular.

I happen to live in a rural area. Prior to the 2016 election, I knew and still associated with a lot of conservatives. I'm on the front lines of the part of the country that the establishment Democrats can't seem to reach. I grew up with those people. I know what they think, how they think. And what I'm going to tell you that's going to shock you is that a lot of them were ready to vote for Bernie.

These “libertarians and MAGA Republicans” that you now claim you're “trying to reach” felt that the DNC cheated Bernie, and that's why they turned to the GOP. So, if you want to argue that we need to find “common ground” with the right, the pathway is through the progressives.

But then people turn around and defend Nancy Pelosi for attacking AOC and tell me I'm the one who is “all mixed up.” They say Pelosi is trying to appeal to the right wing. But conservatives despise Nancy Pelosi. They see her as everything they dislike about Republicans plus the addition of gun control.

If you want to appeal to the right wing, you do it by embracing progressive policies. Those are popular among progressives and among conservatives. That message is popular among the rural working class, you just have to spread the message without using the word “socialism.”

Just say, “We want to bring down your healthcare costs, we want to bring down your prescription costs, we know you're struggling and we want to help.”

We waste SO MUCH TIME engaged in stupid arguments over words like “socialism.” After all these years of talking about it, the general American public still doesn't even know what it means! How is that possible? How do you spend billions of dollars on multiple campaigns and fail to educate the public about why our healthcare costs are going to leave you sick, bankrupt, miserable, and dead?

We need universal health care.

We need universal education.

We can't compromise and we can't sit around and let the news and the media call that socialism.

The media lies to us in many ways. There are the direct and blatant lies that hit you every day, and then there are the more passive lies. There are the lies that claim Democrats lose because of “identity politics” or because they're “woke” or because they “embrace diversity.”

None of that is why Democrats lose.

But those lies are nefarious because they serve to encourage regular people not to speak out strongly about the issues that are most important. Because people who do speak out get hit by ferocious criticisms from people who claim to be on the political left.

Democrats didn't lose because of identity politics, and they didn't lose because of woke ideology. They lost because the general public sees in the Democrats everything they hate about Republicans plus the addition of gun control.

Both political parties are conservative. That's the problem. That’s what people mean when they say the parties are “the same.” That's why the Democrats lose. Now, I still feel that Kamala Harris is a transcendent candidate. We were lucky to have a candidate that good. I doubt we'll see a candidate that good again in my lifetime. Frankly, I think we should discuss whether she lost because the centrists in the party sabotaged her. Again, if the centrists hadn't obstructed the John Lewis act, I think Harris would be set to get sworn in this January.

We need to have a society that embraces humanity.

We can't be afraid to talk about those things.

We need to stand up forcefully, and when somebody tells lies, we have to call it out as a lie. To say that AOC's policies are “socialism” is something you have to confront. It's not a compromise to sit there and let people spread misinformation. That just makes you complicit.

Then, when those people walk away from the conversation, your silence only serves to normalize and confirm their misunderstanding of reality. Hit them with the “We can disagree and still be friends” argument. They use it against us often enough.

But the bigger problem here is that there's this unproductive tension within the Democratic Party where if you don't bow down to what the elites within the party believe to be true, they instantly start calling you the problem.

But the elites are the ones who have made the decisions until now. They're the ones who've gotten us to this point where we're facing an authoritarian administration.

I moderated myself extensively in 2016. I trusted the people who “knew better” to win, and they lost. I spoke more in 2020, and we did win. I'm going to keep speaking now. I don't believe that my silence is going to help anything. I've seen the proliferation of lies. I've seen the consequences of allowing lies to go uncontested. It doesn't help.

Again, I'm quite happy to listen to people who disagree with me, as long as we do it courteously and productively. But there are so many bot accounts on the internet that I don't have any patience left for being insulted. I also don't think that anybody should attack or obstruct our progressive lawmakers.

If you really want to “reach” the working class, progressives are the ones with the answers.

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