I do not come to praise Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, but neither do I come to bury her.
Our beloved representative from the Bronx recently urged young people to stay home to avoid the novel coronavirus. Some conservatives slammed her for her previous comments in which she had claimed people were avoiding Chinese restaurants due to “straight-up racism”.
Here’s the part where I neither praise nor bury our beloved Congresswoman: she was right that people were needlessly avoiding Chinese restaurants, but it wasn’t due to racism. People were guilty of magical thinking; the virus comes from China, then lets avoid everything Chinese related. Liberals understand this concept in other circumstances, as when they urge people to avoid telling the truth to avoid stigmatizing one favored group or another.
As to why ideologues invoke their shibboleths as a first answer to everything, well, that’s why they are ideologues. Thinking and moral reasoning are too hard, so vastly more difficult than flogging your dead hobby horse. I’m just mildly impressed AOC eventually pivoted to promoting useful advice.
