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Title: AOC is not what should be keeping you awake at night. This is.
By Jon Sutz, Editor, SaveTheWest
If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.
– Thomas Sowell
I get a grim, sad sense of bewilderment when my Republican and conservative friends* express grave concern over the ascendancy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was unknown to 99.9% of American voters only eight months ago, to the apparent leadership of the Democratic Party. (*I am not, nor have I ever been either a Republican or a conservative; I’m best classified as a classic liberal.)
“She’s a socialist!,” they lament. “She’s dragging the Democrats to the radical left!,” exhorts Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate, a charge echoed by Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and other Fox News personalities and pundits. Right-wing social media is filled with a combination of outrage at “AOC’s” meteoric rise from obscurity, and lampooning of her frequent factual gaffes and bizarre claims.
While it is undeniable that AOC is a socialist, and she is indeed influencing the Democratic Party’s left-ward lurch, contrary to Republican and conservatives’ proclamations, she is not the cause of this motion.
They are.
Let me explain.
In a rational world, if anyone were to publicly proclaim that the best way to extinguish a fire is to pour gasoline on it, or that to lose weight is to eat McDonalds’ highest-calorie items every day, or that to protect one’s family is to remove the doors to their home, he or she would ridiculed by any minimally competent person. Because in such a world, not a single child could graduate from even eighth grade without being able to demonstrate basic knowledge regarding these issues, and to refute them with absolute confidence. They would be infused with the moral and intellectual equivalent of a body’s immune system, to quickly detect and reject such lies.
Today, however, the most demonstrably destructive, lie-filled, easily-debunkable, anti-freedom ideas and ideologies – all based on, or variants of statist totalitarianism, which have led to the murders of more than 120 million people in the 20th century alone – are spreading throughout the world like a virus. And not just from the fanatical left. Most tragically, they are spreading like wildfire in America, the veritable cradle of freedom, with almost zero substantive push-back, that is visible to, and understandable by, the general public.
The GOP and its allied organizations go on Fox News and conservative blogs and complain about AOC, but in our balkanized society, no one but conservatives utilize those media platforms. Meaning, only a tiny fraction of American news consumers. Consider: At its peak, Fox News has around 3 million viewers per day. In contrast, the four broadcast networks, plus CNN, MSNBC get around 60 million viewers per day. Add in the massive traffic to far-left “news” sites including HuffPost, BuzzFeed, Daily Kos and others, and you have on order of 80 million or more American news consumers being fed a daily dose of AOC-worshipping propaganda, which then takes on new life through social media, as it is fed into tens of millions of high school and college students’ phones.
And what is the “conservative” response? Satirical memes of AOC, which no one but their own ranks see.
The socialist ideology is akin to an easily-treatable infectious agent invading a healthy body, and under normal circumstances, in a self-respecting republic, its immune system would kick into gear, deploying resources to the deal with the invader. In our scenario, the “news” media and our “educational” system — and especially, Hollywood — are supposed to constitute freedom’s immune system. Not only have they all failed, as we will see, these institutions are, on whole, AOC’s biggest supporters. And where has the GOP and its allied organizations been to ideologically combat AOC, and the ideas that animate her? Aside from said memes, completely missing in action, as measured by the awareness of the average American, as to their objections.
The GOP’s and conservative groups’ buy-in to many of AOC’s core princples
To put all this into context, consider the following facts:
Socialism, in all its flavors, from the Soviet Union to Mao’s China, from Pol Pot’s Cambodia to the Castros’ Cuba, murdered more than 120 million people in the 20th century. Fascism, in contrast, under Hitler, murdered an estimated 11 million civilians, including six million Jews (among them, 99% of my ancestors).
The “bible” of doctrinaire socialism is “The Communist Manifesto,” by Karl Marx & Frederich Engels. One might think that given its blood-drenched legacy of cruelty, oppression, stagnation, poverty and murder, “The Communist Manifesto” would be viewed by our learned class as akin to the “bible” of doctrinaire fascism, “Mein Kampf,” by Adolf Hitler, which served as the blueprint of Nazi Germany.
One would be very wrong. In reality, “The Communist Manifesto” is the single most-assigned “economics” textbook on U.S. college campuses, assigned more than twice as often as any other (*most of which are funded with taxpayer money).
It has long been known that American college campuses (and increasingly, our high schools) are hotbeds of far-left indoctrination; coupled with the above fact, one is prepared to now approach the reality of what our “educational” system has produced:
According to Gallup, 51% of Americans ages 18-29 (“Millennials”) have a favorable view of socialism; yet from 2010 to 2018, the number who view capitalism favorably dropped from 68% to 45%.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/240725/democrats-positive-socialism-capitalism.aspx
[3.1] 64% of American adults overall now agree with the phrase, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” (Whether they know that is the core doctrine of Marxist socialism or not is unclear.)
[3.2] 58% of American Millennials say they’d rather live under either communism, socialism or fascism, than under capitalism.
China Infiltrating U.S. Education System in Propaganda Coup
America’s Public Schools Have Become Socialist Indoctrination Factories
Making kids lecture on climate change is using them as pawns
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not, as some allege, arise out of nowhere, 18 months ago, and hypnotize the Democratic Party into making her its new “leader.” She is the product of a taxpayer-funded “educational” system that produced not only her, but also:
A now-majority of the rising American generation, who believe that socialism is the moral and practical socution to the problems she alleges are inhibiting us.
The “journalists” who gushingly swoon over her, treating her as a hybrid of a Disney character and a “social justice warrior,” who only means well, even if she sometimes makes bizarre factual assertions that a competent, properly-educated middle-schooler whould know are the opposite of reality.
At a still deeper level, this was not accomplished by the Democratic Party and its allies in our taxpayer-funded “educational” system (which donates almost all of its political donations to the DNC and its candidates):
The Republicans cosigned, and still cosign every check, drawn on our federal or local taxpayer treasuries, to feed the “educational” system that is producing this wave of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezes — year after year, decade after decade. Republicans may not like to have this pointed out, but it is an inescapable fact; while GOP leaders complain about the rise of the Ocasio-Cortezes across America, they have few places to look but in the mirror to realize who has made this all possible, through both their complicity and cowardice.
To put all this into further context, consider what the reaction would be among America’s mainstream “journalists,” “artists” and “educators” if they discovered that any amount of taxpayer money were being used in a university to assign Mein Kampf as an “economics” or “sociology” book, twice as often as any other is assigned. And that when confronted about this, the faculty and administrators of said college defended themselves by saying, “Oh, we’re not advocating fascism, but ‘Democratic Fascism’.”
Their reaction would be swift, and hysterical. The aforementioned “social justice warriors” would be flying all over America in their private jets, making docudramas about the horrors of fascism, and the outrage of using money forcibly extracted, under law, to indoctrinate the rising generation of American “leaders” to believe in this whitewashed fascism. They would be on every daytime talk show, often with victims of fascism, lamenting the outrageous spectacle of any candidate for public office claiming he or she is not for fascism, but only for “Democratic Fascism.” The Demcorats in U.S. Congress and Senate would (rightfully) be holding public hearings with officials of the college in question, and the local bureaucrats who sign checks, year after year, to fund it, with taxpayer money.
But what do Republicans do in reaction to the overwhleming majority of the U.S. “educational” system producing a rising generation of those who claim to believe in socialism (not even the whitewashed term “democratic socialism,” but the real, full-bore, blood-drenched version)? Nothing, except cosign the checks on the U.S. Treasury, year after year, decade after decade, to fund it — then slouch away in apologies whenever one among them even suggests the need for “reform,” to teach basic competence about history, economics, civics, and other vital subjects.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not the main problem that freedom-loving Americans should worry about.
Rather, they should be far more worried about the fact that week after week, year after year, money is being extracted, under force of law, from their paychecks to fund an “educational” system whose product is more political charlatans like her, and people who’ve been indoctrinated to believe in and vote for those like her. And, the fact that both of our major parties either actively or passively support this system, which is bankrupting us, has wrecked cultures around the world, and if not stopped, will do the same to us.
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Only 7% of journalists identify as Republicans (2013)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-the-media-ever-figure-out-how-to-cover-trump/2019/02/03/b74e8774-266a-11e9-90cd-dedb0c92dc17_story.html