AOC’s ‘Tax the Rich’ Gown: We Will Defeat Progressivism Because She Doesn’t Believe It

“We’re going to win because they don’t believe in it.”

I’ve been thinking about this since the original airing of that episode of MB2A earlier in the week. Bill has a good point but … I’ll get to the “but” in a bit.

Thinking of all the regimes that have come to power on ideological grounds I cannot think of a single one wherein the people promoting and running the ideology didn’t believe in it. There can be little doubt that the Nazis believed in Nazism, it was to their personal gain to so believe. Benito Mussolini was a firm believer in Italian Fascism, he invented it as a viable political force and he got the trains to run on time. Hugo Chavez was not only a true believer in Communist Socialism but he implemented the policies of that ideology and in the process gained immense wealth for himself and ruined his nation. Fidel Castro, same result. The Bolshevik Revolution and Leninist Marxism, same result. Pol Pot, same thing same result. Mao Tse Dungheap, etc. All “true believers” because all implemented their ideology to the detriment of their society.

You can say there was a certain amount of self-serving cynicism in all cases too. That may well be. Even so, it cannot be denied that they believed and acted on their beliefs consistent with their stated goals and in a manner prescribed by their beliefs.

That in all cases the leadership was trying to pound a square peg in a round hole by implementing a system that could never work is irrelevant to the fact that they did in truth believe in their ideology even so.

But … Where I take exception to Bill’s idea that unbelief will result in failure is that it is not a proven premise and congruence is not causality.

There are lots of examples in history wherein a dictator seized power yet had no ideological basis other than his own interests and the interests of those who supported him. One only need view the history of South America to find many examples. There we find many paths to power, most of them similar on a basic level, but none of them solidly based on a particular ideology. Ideology may have been offered as an excuse but it was merely a curtain to hide behind and not a primary motivator in itself.

Bill’s position relies on the idea that exposing the unbelief of the American Left will ultimately result in its downfall. That the fact those people are not “true believers” will be their undoing …

If that were the case then people like AOC (Abominably Obnoxious Communist) would be trying to conceal or at the very least minimize exposure to their hypocrisies. I don’t think they care one bit about that. Clearly attending a $30,000 fundraising gala populated solely by very rich people and wearing a dress that says in huge script (in the same font as Chic-Fil-A uses for its logo) “Tax the Rich” is not only not an attempt at concealment, it’s a blatant and obvious statement that she doesn’t give a rat’s ass about her hypocrisy.

She has an agenda and if anyone who has her ear thought doing this silly thing would be detrimental to that agenda then she would not have done it. Clearly she believed, in spite of the obvious hypocrisy, that the net gain would be well worth the small amount of revulsion at her actions which betrayed her duplicity.

Because the people who AOC wore that dress for don’t care about her hypocrisy or the demonstration of her lack of true belief even one tiny bit.

The very, very rich people in whose presence she wore that dress with its ridiculous statement didn’t say “Get the hell out of here, you loopy bimbo. Of course we don’t want to pay more taxes!” No they did not. Rather she was lauded as some sort of heroine and praised in both person and the press for it.

It’s not even necessary for the AOC side of things to sway a majority. We just came though an election cycle where there is no doubt that significant, likely overwhelming, cheating played a role to a relevant degree. Yet only one side is interested in cleaning that up because the side that’s winning doesn’t care about right and wrong. They only care about winning. That’s not patriotism that’s a power grab. The hypocrisy is obvious and blatant but they ignore their own lack of faith in the election process and our American Way simply because it favors them. If they were “true believers” they must needs create a fair, impartial and transparent system which everyone has confidence in, on their side or not. If they won’t do that they can still rule but they do not rule because they are in the right. They merely rule because no one has the power to stop them.

So being a “true believer” is not a prerequisite for victory and lack of “true belief” does not guarantee defeat.

… and never, ever forget that it was actually a minority of British Colonists in America that drove out the Brits and founded our nation. So numbers are not always the deciding factor.

A + B must always equal C. If it does not then your calculations are in error, the math doesn’t lie and the mistake is yours. Therein lies the conundrum thusly;

If we observe a phenomenon and develop a hypothesis as to the results but those results do not manifest in the real world then that hypothesis is wrong and the real world is right.

We’ve all seen this sort of thing with climate alarmists. Their hypothesis is that global warming will lead to lethal climate change but real world observations do not match their predictions. In fact they not only don’t come anywhere close but are directly contradictory to what we already know from geological history about increasing CO2 and a warming planet. Food production yields today have increased by around 10% just due to the small increase in CO2 according to Freeman Dyson. When the globe has been warmer historically there has be more not less abundance of life. Average global temperature increases by a few degrees over time didn’t render Earth a sterile, baked rock but rather the opposite. Yet none of this disabuses the climate alarmists of their beliefs and rather than dying back their influence grows apace. In spite of their inconsistencies and hypocrisies.

So it would seem to be also with the American Left.

Global climate models and useful idiots like AOC are tools and nothing more. A dull saw will still cut a single board into two shorter pieces. Those pieces won’t be straight and true enough to use but the saw will still produce them. The hand that wields such a tool isn’t a builder but merely a sawyer.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking the American Left is trying to build something, they just want to make smaller pieces. Smaller pieces are easier to consume and digest. You eat an elephant one bite at a time.

I love Bill Whittle’s highly worthwhile efforts and think he’s one of the great patriots, statesmen and thinking men of our time. I don’t counter his arguments frivolously. I put a lot of thought into this and while I agree that AOC et. al. are not true believers I don’t think that their lack of belief will save us from ruin. All the despots I mentioned above fell eventually, we “won” in the end, but at a terrible price. We may win this one too but it’s a mistake to think there won’t be horrors between now and then.

To be fair, Bill didn’t say there wouldn’t be some unbearably hard times preceding our final victory. I wanted to be clear that there’s no reason to believe we probably won’t suffer badly along the way. A “win” due to the unbelief of AOC and her ilk won’t come without a horrible cost. It may not be something recognizable as a win at all.

This has gotten long enough, I’ve written yet another essay but I’m not offering any solutions. I have some ideas, most of you won’t like them, but I’d be happy to discuss this further with anyone who cares to.