By SJ Otto
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets constant attention from conservatives at Fox (Faux)News. The station and its many conservative supporters have kept up a steady barrage of accusations and insults. I knew conservatives would be on the attack when a democratic socialist, from Democratic Socialists of America, got elected. Not only does she not embrace Fox’s ultra-conservative views, she dares to support socialism. AOC, as they call her, is like the fly in the conservative ointment. Fox, the Republican Party and conservative pundits have had to watch their perfect conservative government/society/culture that they have owned now for the last 30 years contaminated by progressive ideas. Some of their sacred tenants, such as unconditional support for Israel
Now they have an actual democratic socialist in office and they are working overtime to try and discredit her. They have also gone after fellow Democratic newcomer Ilhan Omar with the same lines of attack.
One of their main tactics is to attack what she says with indignation. Their latest attack is on her claim that the U.S.
The one thing this pundit forgot is that her statement is true. Treatment of people, being put in cages, children taken from their parents and children dying from lack of adequate health care is consider concentration camp treatment. Only people on the far right would be so outraged by such a comparison. And AOC is not the only person to accuse President Donald Trump of being Hitleresque. A lot of people, including myself, have made that comparison.
For the most part AOC has not allowed these people to rattle her. She has refused to apologise to these conservatives for her comments.[2]She was right not to do that. To do otherwise would fall into their traps of trying to make her look insensitive and allowing them to seem right in their attacks.
The next form of attack is the constant attempts to make AOC look uneducated and unintelligent. That latest attack comes from Rush Limbaugh:[3]
“Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., may be addicted to attention over her latest controversial comments, or she's "stupid," said conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
"I think she’s just having fun watching people blow up," he said Wednesday on his radio show. "If she does believe it, then she’s so stupid that there’s nothing to do about it."
Quite often conservatives have had authors and various pundits claim they know more about a subject than she does, just because they have written a book on a subject that disagrees with her opinion. For example AOC said of President Ronald Reagan’s legacy, printed in an outfit called Townhall:
“he "pitted" whites against browns and blacks.
"And one perfect example – a perfect example – of how special interests and the powerful have pitted white working class Americans against brown and black working Americans in order to just screw over all working class Americans is Reaganism in the '80s when you started talking about 'welfare queens,'" Ocasio-Cortez said during an interview at the conference. "So you think about this image, 'welfare queens,' and what he [Reagan] was really trying to talk about was – he was painting this photo, he's like painting this really resentful vision of essentially black women who were doing nothing that were sucks on our country, right? And it's the whole tragedy of these comments type thinking where it's like because these one specific group of people that you were already kind of subconsciously prime to resent, you give them a different reason, that's not explicit racism, but still rooted in racist caricature, it gives people a logical, a "logical" reason to say, 'Oh, yeah, no. Toss out the whole safety net.”
Then we are supposed to believe this guy is automatically right because he has written all these books on Reagan.
“To counter that New York Times best selling author Craig Shirley has written numerous books on President Ronald Reagan and his presidency. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Reagan Ranch and is considered one of the best Reagan historians out there. Shirley decided to challenge Ocasio-Cortez on her statements about the Gipper by providing facts about Reagan and his presidency:”
This is a real common tactic they use against her. They act as if Reagan is a hero and that only someone uneducated or just plain unknowledgeable about the “facts” would dare say such things. Reagan is supposed to be a working class hero and that is supposed to be a fact. In fact all of AOC’s attacks on Reagan were quite accurate. He did make fools of America ’s working class, especially those who supported him—while he lowered the buying power of America
AOC has weathered these attacks rather well. Many novice politicians would have thrown in the towel by now, of simply collapsed from their various attacks. She is quite intelligent and has handled her new job with a great deal of professionalism.
It is unfortunate that Fox News and conservative pundits have such a large and powerful media conglomeration. News/opinion outlets as mine are quite small and I have only a few readers. They seem to command millions of ditto heads that hang on their every word.
Still AOC is doing well and outlets as mine will continue to challenge Fox and other conglomerates.
