MAGA hearts AOC
Someone’s got a mad crush …
Jeffrey Denny
Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you.
— The Police
Want to really turn on the Trump base and his official state media?
I mean, make hearts pound, pulses race, faces flushed and mouths dry and blurting gibberish with a passion like lust?
Just mention U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Obsessive love disorder,” medicinenet.com says, differs from healthy love in that, “feelings of infatuation become extreme, expanding to the point of becoming obsessions. Obsessive love and jealousy that is delusional is a symptom of mental-health problems and … occurs in about 0.1% of adults.”
While I’m no clinical psychologist — at least mine says I’m not — the panting, sweating and hyperventilating about AOC among roughly 100% of Trump adults either watching Fox or bloviating on it sounds just a wee bit stalky.
Media Matters reported in April that Fox News and Fox Business mentioned AOC more than 3,000 times in 42 days. Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson alone cited AOC a combined 58 times.
This was before AOC’s recent flap with Nancy Pelosi and then Trump telling AOC to go back where she came from (the same place he did: Queens, NY).
Barely masking a lascivious, almost drooling twinkle, Fox pursues AOC like Jeffrey Epstein courting a ‘tween.
AOC obsession is passing strange:
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is only one of 535 members of Congress, just 0.19% of the House and Senate. As a frosh, she has little power to wrangle votes, make laws, bring home bacon or attract Ferragamo-shod, lucre-bearing lobbyists to lick her cheap ankle boots for legislative largess.
AOC is also just 29 years old in a Congress that averages around 60, the crustiest in history and unlikely to deign to those dad-blamed Millennial whippersnappers.
Bear in mind AOC was elected by the old, rusting, working-class 14th district New York City boroughs of the Bronx and Queens where the median income of $58,000 is just lower than America’s. She beat a lazy longtime incumbent in a solid Dem district and a scandal-scarred joke of a GOP opponent rejected by his own party.
Suffice that AOC is neither a fearsome LBJ-style Washington power broker nor a queen lording over our lands.
Yet when AOC says Trump’s “go back” comment is racist, he snaps back, no, YOU’RE racist. When AOC dares to criticize Trump, his sock-puppet Hannity rises in his fullest fulminating dudgeon. When an “Obama judge” rules that Trump can’t block critics on his Twitter account who are provoked (as he intends) by his smearing, sneering insults and attacks, MAGA’s first response is, “What about AOC?”
Yes, what about AOC?
What about AOC makes MAGAs whatabout her on par with the President of the United States?
So what if she’s a Democratic Socialist or a socialistic Democrat?
Who cares if she calls for free college, free healthcare, a free green economy and a decent living wage for working people?
Why does Fox and alt-right media and followers give AOC more star power than any of her fellow 110 new members of Congress? More than any other congressperson, including powerful committee chairs who actually make laws that affect our lives?
Why does AOC get way more Fox air time than even Capitol Hill’s testudines king of the pond, Senate Majority Leader Yertle McTurtle (R-KY)?
Why, with every tweet, photo op or comment, does AOC make the Trumpy internet burst into flames and lose its mind? What about AOC stirs Trump-loving trolls to post their ugliest, most disturbing thoughts online? Why does AOC raise more bazillions for Republicans than whoever the poor RNC chair is anymore? (FYI: Ronna Romney McDaniel).
Theories about AOC Obsession Syndrome abound:
- Fear. Gnarly powerful old white men are afraid of her challenging their old-school comfy patriarchy and business as usual.
- Resentment. She was the smart, cool gal in school that nerdy awkward boys who grew up Republican wanted to date but never could, which also made the nerdy GOP gals jealous.
- The “male gaze.” AOC is telegenic, transfixing the objectifying Roger Ailes leer. While the Fox gaze borders on creepy, it gives AOC invaluable free media and an unfair edge in the constant competition for attention in Washington.
- She’s “uppity.” Shades of old-school racism, this Latina doesn’t know her place. How dare she, as a member of Congress representing nearly 700,000 Americans in her district, not to mention an involved U.S. citizen as our Founders hoped, question the so very regal president our Founders feared?
- She’s fun. Cable, broadcast and social media today fuel and thrive on political conflict, getting people worked up and addicted to anger so they want more, as advertisers laugh all the way to the bank.
My favorite explanation of AOC obsession is: She Trumps better than Trump.
She’s Bizarro Trump!
As superhero fanatics know, Bizarro is the evil clone and nemesis of Superman who can do anything he can do.
Like Trump, AOC hails from Queens. She’s broadcast and social media savvy. She speaks her mind filter-less. She doesn’t care what the political establishment says she’s supposed to say or not say. She’s willing to shake up Washington, challenge norms and the powers that be, and call out accepted BS and old-school way things are done in Washington. AOC won’t go along to get along. She’s not your typical politician.
Sound familiar?
The AOC-Trump differences, of course, are manifold:
She’s not insecure, narcissistic, gratuitously vicious or vengeful. She didn’t inherit $400 million and glide through a privileged life on wealthy connections, but rose from humble origins, went to public school where her microbiology project impressed MIT, earned a college scholarship, and then worked a menial job to make ends meet. She went to Congress the old-school way, through the hard work of shoe-leather campaigning.
She’s not conflicted by dubious Manhattan and Russian real estate deals. She hasn’t left a trail of bankruptcies and screwed-over creditors. She never grabbed anyone. She doesn’t lie or take pleasure in insulting people every day like it’s a bodily function.
In fact, Cong. Ocasio-Cortez is exactly the kind of Horatio Alger boot-strapping immigrant-family success story Republicans always hold up as an example of the American Dream that makes America great.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m no fan of AOC’s lefty politics.
And I understand AOC-haters think she’s an empty, uninformed, ridiculous, phony loudmouth publicity hound, stealing Trump’s thing.
But long-run, wouldn’t it be healthier for MAGAs to simply ignore AOC? Or is this the new love that dare not speak its name?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer
