Douchebag of the Week (Week Ending 6/30/18 - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez)

"Some apologists try to excuse Marxism by saying that it has ‘never had a chance’. This is far from the truth. Marxism and the Marxist parties have had dozens of chances. In Russia, a Marxist party took power. Within a short time it abandoned Socialism; if not in words, at any rate in the effect of its actions. In most European nations there were during the last months of the first world war and the years immediately thereafter, social crises which left a wide-open door for the Marxist parties: without exception they proved unable to take and hold power. In a large number of countries — Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, England, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France — the reformist Marxist parties have administered the governments, and have uniformly failed to introduce Socialism or make any genuine step towards Socialism... These parties have, in practice, at every historical test — and there have been many — either failed Socialism or abandoned it. This is the fact which neither the bitterest foe nor the most ardent friend of Socialism can erase. This fact does not, as some think, prove anything about the moral quality of the Socialist ideal. But it does constitute unblinkable evidence that, whatever its moral quality, Socialism is not going to come." -- James Burnham

Somewhere, there's a horse that wants it's face back.

If there's anything less-attractive than a woman with oversized gums and tiny dolphin teeth, it's one with ginormous gums and beaver-like teeth to match. It's like watching a shark in the last second before it shreds it's prey.

See?

Yes, frightening, I know.

I did not begin this, however, to denigrate a woman's looks (other photos of her, with her mouth closed -- the state Nature deliberately chose for a woman, but which they routinely ignore --  make her look fairly attractive).

Instead, I'm here to tell you what a load of bullshit this woman is selling.

For those of you who have been living under a rock, or perhaps in the delusional landscape in which Donald Trump gets impeached, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a neophyte politician from New York who unseated a 10-term (rumored by many to be the ultimate replacement for Nancy Pelosi in the party leadership) democratic stalwart in the recent New York Congressional primaries.

She ran on a platform of good old Soviet-style "compassion-by-compulsion" nonsense wearing the gossimer-thin disguise of "democratic socialism". That is to say, she is pushing the same load of manure that has been a hallmark of every Far Left whackadoodle from Eugene V. Debs to Bernie Sanders:

"Sure we don't know what we're doing, but this time will be different!"

Here we must run down Alexandria's laundry list of policy antidotes for what she sees as a deathly-ill America:

Free shit. For everyone. All the time.

That's it. I don't even have to be specific. You name it, and somehow it's possible to have it for "free". The Free Shit Fairy hands it all out. Naturally, the definition of "free" leaves much to be desired. When people like Ocasio-Cortez use the word "free" what they really mean is "at someone else's expense", because they never intend to stick a crowbar in their own wallet to pay for anything, nor to have to feel the pain of the loss of wealth and property that attends their definition of "free".

In fact, people like Ocasio-Cortez expect to live like royalty, never on their own dime, natch, because they see it as their just reward for advocating "free" shit for everyone else....except the people whose money will be taken to pay for it. Those poor slobs will just have to shut up and take it because racist/sexist/homophobe/Nazi/hater/stealer of someone else's "fair share".

And the list of people who will benefit from all this "free" is even shorter than that list of "free" shit I've given. Basically, the recipients will be "anyone not white, male, and willing to keep voting for me, so that I can live well without working".

Here we must digress for a moment or two to explain what motivates people like this.

Like most good commies, Ocasio-Cortez comes from a very solid Upper Middle Class background. Oh, she may talk a good game about growing up in the Bronx (where she lived until she was five, so let's get real), but her father (an architect) is what Marx would have referred to as petit-bourgeois, a highly-paid professional man, and no friend of the proletariat.

Upon leaving the Bronx, the family moved to the bucolic suburban hell of Westchester County with the rest of the Enemies of the People (the doctors, stockbrokers, lawyers, hedge fund managers, businessmen of a hundred sorts) , one of the wealthiest counties in all of America, if not the whole damned planet.

Old joke:

Q: How do you tell who the poor people are in Westchester?

A: They mow their own five acres and there's only one Volvo in the driveway, and get this, Buffy; it's last year's model.

Ocasio-Cortez then attended Boston University, where she studied economics and international relations, this after having won an Intel Prize in microbiology.

Because nothing says "Solidarity with the Masses!" like microbiology and $70k a year elite schools.

Actually, when we say "economics and international relations" what we really mean is "studied two forms of bullshit at the feet of the best bullshitters in the business". She also interned for Ted Kennedy.

Because nothing says "Workers of the World Unite!" like working for the sometimes-the-sperm-that-swims-in-circles-gets-lucky offspring of one of America's most-notorious robber barons, Nazi sympathizer, and patriarch of an oligarchical political dynasty.

All real socialists believe in political dynasties, you know. Because in a political system where you shouldn't inherit the family silver (where no one has silver, actually), inheriting a Senate Seat from your late brothers and bought with the wages of Evil Capitalism is no big deal.

That was sarcasm. Smell it?

So, I know exactly who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez really is. Known a million spoiled little rich girls just like her. She's a poser. Probably driven by irrational guilt at having been raised in privilege as compared to her downscale "friends", who most likely occasionally inflicted a sense of butthurt upon her by remarking that a girl from Westchester couldn't really be "authentically Boriqua".

I have no doubt Barack Obama suffered the same experience.For example, when Je$$e Jack$on said that Barack Obama wasn't "authentically Black" he meant that no half-breed raised in middle class splendor in the tropical paradise of Hawaii could possibly have anything in common with the denizen of one of Chicago's worst housing projects, raised on a steady diet of neglect and jail time.

I'll bet the same thing happened to Ocasio-Cortez and it probably got worse at Boston U., when her white friends and professors -- also the children of privilege -- probably looked to her to explain what it was to be a minority in America, and she had no answer for them having never experienced anything but privilege, and this is embarrassing on so many levels.

Perusal of her bio, however, gets to the very heart of the matter and the origin of her "democratic socialist" outlook.

It seems her father died of cancer. It left the family bankrupt. She had to work two jobs to support her mother, including tending bar (What? Economics, international affairs and microbiology don't pay well?). In addition, her father died without leaving a will, and the probate attorneys (Capitalist Bloodsuckers!)  took whatever was left.

It was then that the cruelest hammer blow of all was delivered:

She had been purged from the New York State voter rolls. This was an injustice!

There's mostly only three ways to be purged from the New York State voter registration rolls:

1. You died (and not always then)

2. You are incarcerated (and not always then)

3. You failed to exercise the franchise when you had it, and have to reapply.

And there you go -- the creation of a "democratic socialist": a butthurt, irrationally-guilty child of wealth, lacking in human contact or frame -of-reference with people not like her, surrounded by other people much like her and who most likely treated her as the token Latina, laboring away in elitist schools and apparently making nothing of the experience, learning politics at the feet of the world's most-notorious drunkard, skirt-chaser and killer of secretaries, reduced to poverty and prole work by lawyers and insurance companies, denied her rightful voice in society by sheer laziness in not voting and being even lazier and not reapplying.

Now she's being celebrated as "the new face of the new democratic party"

Which is something that could ONLY happen in America, even racist/sexist/bigoted/Trump's Nazi America.

And that would be the America she promises to change....forever!

Because Heaven Forbid her "amazing story" were to be emulated and repeated by someone else. Especially another Hispanic Woman. No, best to turn the country and system (what? You ran a political campaign without the backing of rich donors, or organizations that extract wealth from the taxpayer?) that allowed her rise into a catastrophic dogpile of government dependence, bureaucratic terror, and forced expropriation.

Because that's also a trait of the "democratic socialist" -- having made it to a high position, or at least obtained a high profile they can turn into cash-for-no-work, they wish to pull the ladder up behind them so that no one else can climb it and perhaps knock them down from their newly-acquired lofty perch.


Or did you think Stalin and Mao killed 100 million people for shits and giggles?

Before I close, I need to address the fallacy of "democratic socialism", once and for all.

A "democratic socialist" doesn't believe in Socialism; they don't believe in equality or egalitarianism; fuck, they don't even like the peasants they routinely claim to be "fighting for". That's just the act they put on to garner enough support until they've "made it" (i.e. found a way to get a permanent paycheck from the exercise of power while doing nothing useful). No, far from being caring humanitarians, the "democratic socialist" is simply a charlatan who aims to swap places with the Capitalist she routinely compares to a rapacious, unfeeling animal.

The difference is the Capitalist worked his way into his privileged position; the "democratic socialist" sponged off Mommy and Daddy until the trust fund ran out, and then seeks attachment to the government tit as a substitute.

There is no such thing as "democratic socialism" unless you redefine both words to mean something they normally don't. If you believe the Scandinavian countries the "democratic socialist" is fond of referring to as shining examples of how their system works are democratic, you have another thing coming.

Oh, sure, they have elections, but the real power is held by nameless, faceless, anonymous bureaucrats who labor in the shadows of government offices, arranging society in ways they think best. The European Union is the best example of this phenomenon: people still vote in Belgium, Britain, Italy and France, and even in Denmark, but the policies their governments all follow-- social, economic, defense, legal, diplomatic, and whatnot, are set by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in Brussels. The local election in Norway, Luxembourg or Greece is meaningless; you're only voting for people who are more than happy to pick up a paycheck, enjoy the fruits of power, and then leave everything important to Henri or Georg at the E.U. Ministry for Really Stupid Shit, who have the power to say how many Africans and Middle Easterners Slovakia must take in against their will, what the proper measurements for a cucumber are, and who prosecute greengrocers all over the Eurozone who fail to use the metric system within an inch of their lives.

The government is supported by Big Business, which turns over a hefty portion of it's profits (or produces on command to suit the needs of government) so that the government may hand it out in the form of "free" healthcare, "free" college, and pensions for people who retired from government work at 35, and in return government protects them from foreign competition with high tariffs, unfair trade practices, and keeps labor in check by alternately importing millions of useless low-skilled mouths and restricting entry into the trade unions in order to keep wages and benefits artificially high.

You know who operated this way? The Nazis.

Also, it's difficult to describe most European government as "socialists" when privately-run and held corporations are still being traded on stock exchanges. There is no socialism; only the welfare state kept alive by connivance between government and business and overseen by bureaucrats who are "good party men". This is not "socialism"...it is "Managerialism".

Now, you may ask, why does this appear to work in these countries these people keep mentioning, and why wouldn't it work here?

Glad you asked:

1. Unlike Finland or Sweden or even Germany, the United States is a nation of @ 320 million people. Finland has a population of less than 6 million, Sweden roughly 9 million, and even a big country like Germany (population of 82 million) is smaller than we are. A billion bucks appropriated from business and spread among 6 million Finns, 9 million Swedes and 82 million Germans goes a lot further than a billion bucks spread among 320 million Americans.

Don't even get me started on the other "democratic socialist" hobby horse of Iceland. More people live on the 12 x 7 miles of Staten Island, New York (@470,000) than live in all of Iceland (@350,000). The math don't add up.

2. Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc. pay some of the highest taxes in all of the civilized world. Higher even than American taxes pre-Trump, on average, almost a third more as Americans pay as a percentage of their income.

3. Finns, Swedes, Norwegians etc., often do not mind paying those exorbitant taxes in order to support a government "safety net" of such breadth and depth because they all share a common culture, language, history, and even lineage. They see themselves as an extended family (which they are) as much as they do a nation.

America, on the other hand, has no indigenous race or culture (no, the American Indian is not indigenous to America, either). It consists of large populations of European stock, with a sprinkling of Africans and Asians, and a large dollop of Hispanics. These groups have little in common, except shared American values which are mostly cultural relics of Europe (often rejected by those of non-European stock), and are usually encouraged to make political causes out of their DIFFERENCES, rather than their similarities.

By people much like Ocasio-Cortez.

All forms of socialism, like Burnham said above, ultimately fail. Socialism cannot deliver the goods. It is why The Soviet Union collapsed and China abandoned Communism for Capitalism. Socialism mostly survives as a misused label, or a slogan, and where it is practiced nearly to the letter -- see Venezuela, Cuba, and South Africa, for examples -- it merely turns once-prosperous and materially-wealthy nations into open sewers, while the Upper Crust of the Power Elite live very well in a manner they tell the poor bastards who plunked for them is evil, oppressive and unjust.

So, enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for even if you do manage another "stunning" victory and make your way to Congress, you will not come close to delivering on anything you promise. Primarily because it can't be done, and secondarily because you don't really mean it. Your goal here, obviously, is not to do anything that will fundamentally change anyone's life but your own.

Enjoy this week's Douchebag Award, because it might be the only "free" anything you manage to pry from anyone for a very long time.

UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that the loser in this contest was a 10 term democratic congressman (Joe Crowley), not an 8-term Congressman. Post has been updated to reflect this.