Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is somewhat less transitory than a fad, and something more transformative than a movement. She represents a culture.
Those of us who have children between the ages of 20 and 30 can provide our personal testimony. AOC, initials that have become a progressive franchise, is the product of an education system spawned by Republican indifference and Democratic manipulation. And both, especially centrist Democrats, have begun to harvest what this has sown.
A focal point in the education of these young people is their positioning before authority. In the rebellion of Alexandria Ocasio-Córtez and three other US Congressional freshwomen against the centrist strategy of House leader Nancy Pelosi, ideas are secondary. In fact, a distinctive feature is the absence of any coherent intellectual code. Their discourse does not revolve around a philosophy, like the Communists of yesteryear, but rather a selection of talking points: environmental, Marxist, Buddhist, Nazi, astrological, Christian ... In short, everything that comes in handy to attack the United States, in particular, and Western civilization, in general.
A fundamental difference in the education of this generation is their attitude towards authority. Having grown up under social standards that grant children and adolescents exceptional autonomy vis-à-vis parents, teachers and authorities, they have been able to breach the limits imposed by tradition, the validation of merit, and civil coexistence, and the consequences of indiscipline, laziness and hedonism found justifications in adverse social circumstances, ethnic and gender diversities, household instability, and intimate susceptibilities.
Some were fortunate to have parents capable of fostering an environment of intelligent guidance, as well as teachers willing to transcend mediocrity and the bias of politically correct curricula and restrictions. Even so, these young people are led to spurn customs, knowledge and common sense for the sake of social acceptance. They will laugh at AOC with you on Sunday dinner, but they won't do it in their university cafeteria.
These are some aspects that define the AOC generation:
- The conviction that the United States is an imperialist power that starts wars and sows poverty in order to plunder the resources of other countries: Iraq's oil, Guatemala's bananas, etc., which reveals an ignorance of the Americans' fight against Fascism and Communism, as well as their efforts to promote democracy around the world.
- Ignorance of the crimes and characteristics of Communism.
- Ignorance of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A vision of Israel as an oppressive power, sometimes comparable to that of the Nazis, prevails.
- Ignorance about threats to the United States posed by Iran, China, Russia, terrorism, and indiscriminate immigration. AOC has called for the National Security Agency to be dismantled.
- The notion that social inequalities in the United States are mainly due to the economic and cultural dominance of the "white man," who oppresses women and ethnic minorities.
- The idea that the State must redistribute wealth in order to achieve an egalitarian society. Remember that the New Green Deal proposed by progressives sets a fixed salary, even for people who do not want to work.
- The notion that the State must regulate culture and entertainment in order to prevent improper characterizations of minorities, cultural and gender appropriation, or the exaltation of sexism, xenophobia, transphobia and other phobias propagated by the "white man".
This is the generation that will inherit the Earth. Future judges who disdain the Constitution, future teachers who burn flags, future soldiers who detest their homeland. A generation that lacks a commitment to debate even within its own ranks.
Maureen Dowd, one of the country's most prestigious liberal voices, wrote last week in The New York Times:
"Progressives act as if anyone who dares to disagree with them is bad. Not wrong, but bad, guilty of some human deficiency, of some impurity that is a moral evil, which justifies their poison. "
For now, I don't see the antidote.