Piety + Irrationality

Last month, this blog's post Roll Call of the Absurd made a prediction about the political outlook for Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in response to her widely ridiculed Green New Deal.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez released her Green New Deal last week. It's not worth reviewing much, as it is the most juvenile political proposal ever made. Even many liberals are openly mocking it or keeping their distance. Conventional wisdom is that AOC torpedoed her career right out the gate. I say she'll come out ahead in the long run. She just made herself high priestess of The Cult.

That prediction was made when even the likes of CNN and Nancy Pelosi were ridiculing the proposal, and many analysts thought that the freshly minted freshman representative had vastly overextended her political capital. Their analysis was based on political rationale, whereas here we categorize liberals as a secular religion. The most powerful political statement that can be made within The Cult is one that signals piety to the group dogma and is logically irrational. The notion that irrationality is preferred overall by today's liberals is the hypothesis being tested by predicting AOC would become more popular even while catching flak from her own party's leaders and propaganda outlets.

There is some early evidence to validate the prediction. From the Daily Mail, by way of Amren's article titled Ocasio-Cortez Draws Bigger Crowd at South by Southwest Than Any Democrat Candidate for President.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dominated the South by Southwest conference with her mere presence, bringing in a larger crowd than any of the 2020 presidential contenders, all of whom were asked about her or her Green New Deal in their own sessions at the popular event.

The 2,000 plus ballroom — one of the biggest in the Austin Convention Center — was packed, the overflow rooms were flooded with attendees and Bill Nye tweeted a photo of himself from the room waiting to hear the freshman Democrat from New York speak.

The crowd rose to its feet, whooping, cheering and hollering when Ocasio-Cortez entered, but, when she spoke, you could hear a pin drop.

She isn't even running for president. She couldn't - she's not old enough. And yet she's stolen the show even from the veteran foot soldiers vowing to end the reign of NeoHitler. How? Well, she knows the winning formula. Piety + irrationality.

Her performance at SxSW seems to have been a masterful one. Consider the original headline from the Daily Mail.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez uses her SXSW talk to label FDR's New Deal 'racist' compared to her 'Green New Deal' and protests minorities being treated like 'garbage' - as she draws a bigger audience than any Democrat 2020 hopeful

She spent most of her time talking about the bad treatment of minorities, even going so far as to label the original New Deal - which her own political treatise parodies - as racist! That is some serious irrationality. Excellent touch. My only suggestion to her - and I could be wrong, it's her speciality after all - would be to back off slightly on the pandering to minorities. That's the domain of the lowly white candidates, who must grovel before POCs for their approval. No, as a proud woman of color, she can rise above that level slightly, and instead focus on attacking her enemies for their lack of piety. Call Nancy Pelosi a racist. Would it be insane for the lowest-ranking Democrat in the house to mutiny against the highest ranking? It's a leading question. As a minority, AOC actually outranks Pelosi in the ways that matter to Democrats at-large. Pelosi is already weak, babbling and demented, disliked by progressives who hate seeing old whites in power. With a sustained attack, initially subtle but increasingly aggressive, she could likely drive Pelosi out of power, single-handedly.

Another public performer was in attendance.

And there was a surprise during the Q&A session when Bill Nye the Science Guy came up to ask her a question, which earned a roar of delight from the crowd

Bill Nye is not very science smart, but he is very shrewd at gaining attention and praise from The Cult, just like AOC. He's an old white guy, which is almost a deal-breaker these days, but he largely redirects his fans by dressing up as a scientist, a revered priestly class amongst the left. And he has deliberately chosen not to have children, making him a role-model white guy to the modern progressive. He's the kind of guy who owns multiple homes throughout the country, and then shows off his solar panels to guests as a display of environmentalism. It's just irrational enough to work, and if he's showing up to lend support to AOC, she must be doing something right. Expect to see much more from her. (Also, brace yourself.)