I know what you’re thinking…”But Lee, AOC is insane! She wants America to be a socialist country! She thinks the world is ending in 12 years! She was working as a bartender before she was elected!” All valid points.
Yes, her political opinions are radical and rarely have any basis in reality. She’s trying to sell this doomsday brand of climate theology to the public (for the record, climate change is a thing, but I’d be surprised if it’s anything like she and some others on the left make it out to be. I’ll happily admit if I’m proven wrong someday when Pennsylvania has a beach). She’s always bringing up systemic racism like it’s a real problem. Spoiler alert: it’s not.
Lately, she entered the fray with some pretty insane takes on the situation at our southern border, likening aspects of said situation to the holocaust on her Instagram live feed. She said like a-lot something AOC enjoys) and ridiculously compared the situation at the southern border to concentration camps.
It’s not hard to find evidence that her politics and overall worldview are a bit crazy. However, she is GREAT at stirring up her base. Her tweets get lots of attention. She often uses tactics from the Donald Trump playbook (Dilbert creator and persuasion expert Scott Adams has called her “Blue Trump”): say something controversial that you know your base agrees with, wait for opponents to bite, then go after their counter points in a way that makes your opponent sound dumb or out of touch.
The only real difference I’ve noticed between her and Trump is that Trump rarely quote tweets the people who come at him. He either ignores them completely or goes after them on stage at his rallies (or comes up with some flattering nicknames).
If you’ve noticed, much of the REALLY crazy shit AOC says is not on Twitter. Like the example above illustrates, she sometimes gets herself in hot water when she’s speaking off the cuff.
The conclusion that I have drawn from this is that AOC is only effective on Twitter and in short sound bites. The more that her opponents engage her on Twitter, the more powerful she becomes. Her army of mindless followers (and slanted algorithms) flock to her defense like she’s a cult leader. Just search “AOC Holocaust” on Twitter to see all the mental gymnastics being taken to defend her.
No matter how impactful one of her tweets is, we all have to remember that she’s just one of 435 representatives in Congress. Her stances can be easily taken apart on a long YouTube video, TV segment or article, but she rules the world of 280 characters. If you can’t see at least a few very obvious similarities between Trump’s rise and AOC’s rise, you’re blind.