1d ago

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lays out battle plan against 'shockingly dim' Trump White House

www.rawstory.com Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez lays out battle plan against 'shockingly dim' Trump White House

The Trump White House this week sparked chaos across the nation when it issued an executive order that resulted in Medicaid portals getting shut down in all 50 states.Although the administration rescinded the order after mass outcry, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt afterward issued a confus...

Summary

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez urged countering the Trump administration’s policies by resisting at every turn, arguing that its incompetence makes it vulnerable.

Her remarks followed chaos caused by a rescinded executive order that temporarily shut down Medicaid portals nationwide.

She encouraged activists to take offline action, citing ongoing mobilization efforts.

Her strategy focuses on making governance difficult for Trump, calling his administration “dangerous and cruel” but also “shockingly dim.”

172 comments

Turns out when all you want are loyalists, all you get are dumb assess.
- I thought this was obvious to everyone. Heck, Futurama had this as a joke 20 years ago when Zapp Brannigan stuffed his crew with nothing but loyalists who fall apart immediately.
- Philosophical inbreeding is also not good.

It isn't chump and his taintsuckers you gotta worry about.
It's the army of Federalist Society lawyers and policy experts around him. They've spent decades figuring out the removed in the armor of our governmental system. Figuring out how to dismantle it piece by piece.
Edit - wtf is that removed about? Wait....oh. bot thinks I did a racism.
- Fucken hell, that's the correct fucking way to define a gap in armor. Bullshit. I really want to try a bunch of slurs out and see what sets it off.
  
  I really want to try a bunch of slurs out
  This is surely the most rational reaction to being slightly inconvenienced by a word filter.
  
  Wait until you try the in-game chat in Rocket League. You can't even type "Discord". It's a banned word. 🤡
  
  Go removed ahead you removed.
  
  Not much since you're on .world. .ml is much more strict.
  
  It's clbuttic bowdlerization.
  
  Would it not be kink? not …
- Are you saying your comment was edited?
- There are better Lemmy hosts out there, just waiting for you to join.
  
  Gimme a list.
  
  I just signed up with the first one that worked, and it still took a while to actually get it created.
- Wtf was removed
- Ha. Reminds me of an Asian standup comedian who had this routine about how he grew up in the inner city where the basketball nets were made of chains and so the chains didn't go 'swish,' they went 'chіnk.' So when guys wanted to play basketball, they said, "let's go shoot us up some chіnk."
  Thank you, Cyrillic letter і, for letting me bypass the bot to tell that joke. Because I've remembered that joke for years.

"Tyranny is eroded by a sea of small acts. Everything matters."
A lot of Lemmy users really need to understand this. Far too often I see people deride any action that doesn't immediately fix all problems in the world as worthless or meaningless, simply because they lack the imagination needed to see how small actions can add up to big changes.
- That's true, but it can also be used in reverse as a pacifying mechanism. For example, contributing to making the US the most incarcerated population in the world with ridiculously strict "tough on crime" legislation and then pardoning a small fraction of prisoners. Another example is forcing student loan debt to stick around through bankruptcy, but then forgiving a tiny fraction of loans. It's a move to pretend change is in motion, but it's so small and so slow that it's never going to actually solve the problem. This is especially bad when the other party makes such huge moves in the negative direction while we're supposed to be content with tiny steps toward "progress".
  
  What is this pacifying people from, do you imagine?
  Like, let's say Trump gives the order to disband all DEI committees everywhere, and a lot of people who like theirs resist the order to do so at every turn. Malicious compliance, straight-up refusal, sleight of hand. This pacifying resistance means they won't...?
  
  Neighbor, you're who they're speaking to...
- Even if the actions really do nothing, they get people active and organized, so that they can take more effective actions later on.
  I honestly think a lot of this criticism is people's internalized rationalization for why they themselves don't take action.
- Incrementalism got us here. At some point, you have to realize that you can't stop a flash flood by bailing with a solo cup and shouting "I'm helping!"
  It's a stalling tactic to placate chumps while they sell us all out.
  
  So it's better to do nothing while they sell you all out?
  
  This is like not believing in macro evolution.
  Actually, I think a lack of incrementalism got us here. We incremented in the wrong direction.
- Republican strategists are masters of the long con. Trump has been coming since Nixon.
- This Lemmy user has the right idea.
- Well, they focused on one issue and ignored the convicted rapist insurrectionist in the room.

finally, a person with a STRATEGY. so sick of the whining.
she needs volunteers for personal escort and safety. i think she is going to be targeted.
- She has employees
  Donate to her
- If she's gonna be persecuted, the DNC and the Clintons might be also involved in that

Any kind of on the ground movement or mobilization needs political support in the halls of power. It's what made the resistance demonstrated against Trump the first term possible, and the dynamic goes both ways. On the ground resistance gives political actors the space to be resilient. Resilient politicians give in the ground movement space to work.
Basically all other Democrats other than Bernie and AOC shrivelling up and hiding in their shells will have a chilling effect on our ability to organize on the ground.
- I've been bitching about the lack of leadership from the Democrats for a while now - I'm glad to see that others are seeing it too.
  
  They need to dump Wasserman-Schulz. She's a big part of the reason we're in this mess.
  
  It's all been downhill since JFK...
- Heinrich from NM has made it clear that he will pushback. Let’s see what that looks like. I suggest folks that can contact your reps, now and frequently.
  
  Every day I have sent mine a note from the contact form on their pages. Angrily
- It's funny. sounds like you're giving up already, and blaming the Dems.
  You got Bernie and the Squad.
  If you want to put some backbone in the Dems in office, go out and start a voter registration drive. Let them see that there are people who will support them.
  
  start a voter registration drive
  What? The time for a voter registration drive was a year ago. We're well past that now. You can't vote out a dictator.
  It's time for more direct action. We need protests. We need strikes. We need people in the streets fighting for their rights because they're being taken away by the day.
  
  sounds like you’re giving up already
  What is it about the lemm.ee domain that produces accounts with the most cringe, awful takes?
  
  Understanding and recognizing how the world functions isn't equivalent to giving up. Nor is "hope" for the sake of hope any kind of a strategy. And yes. The Dem's are the fucking problem and always have been. Nothing about this fascist takeover would have ever been possible with out the complicity and milquetoast politics of Democrats. They are a worthless and abhorrent party with no integrity and barely worth supporting, beyond the weakest possible argument of them being the "lessor" evil. The rise of fascism would be impossible with out the previous 30 years of normalization politics out of Democrats. Start a voter registration drive? Give me a fucking break with the navel gazing. Voting isn't going to save the Union.
  We may need the squad to break away from a Democratic party that has shown its self incapable of wielding power in such a way as to prevent the rise of fascism. What we'll need for on the ground movements to be successful is support in some way from the halls of power. That doesn't necessarily mean working with Democrats.
  
  The Dems have given up. Because it's time for them to take a vacation after playing the part for their rich donors for the last 4 years.
  
  sounds like you're giving up already, and blaming the Dems
  We all have dog in this fight. Apparently so do the people who voted third party and refuse to see the leopards.

Look at the "secret service detail" he picked.
He picked loyalty over skill, actually DEI
Just a few inches to the right
Few More Inches
- He got rid of DEI to make more room for cronyism.
- First president with gage earrings.
  
  Does smashing your head against the podium give you gauges? Cause he clearly doesn't have anything missing (except for intelligence, compassion, and empathy) and they wouldn't release the medical record, so the likelihood he was hit or grazed by the bullet is IMO is slim to none.

If all Dems had her tenacity and honest interest in helping the middle class, we wouldn't be where we are.
- If Democrats could say "poor" we might not be where we are.
- ~~Dems~~ Politicians FTFY sorry sometimes we forget because republicans/right are so pro rich class.
  
  It's not that people don't mention Republicans in statements like that because they're letting them off the hook; it's that they don't bother mentioning them because they're a lost cause.
- Thankfully Republicans will do it.

She encouraged activists to take offline action
Based

She is possibly our best hope.

That would be a great plan if the Dems were not spineless at best and complicit at worse
- People see comments like this and get discouraged to vote or do anything meaningful. Life is choosing the lesser of two evils. By not choosing you have chosen the greater evil thus making you complicit.
  
  Bullshit. Electoral reform in the blue states must happen. Red states as well but we all know republicans stance on more democracy.
  Democrats have lost their "we are the only people resisting the republicans" privilege. They should have lost it long ago but we sure gave em every chance we could. No more chances, no more safe states/seats.
  This shouldn't be hard to pass. Alaska already has a Ranked choice voting system. Plus Democrats are huge democracy supporters... right?
  
  That lesser evil still don't want Medicare for all, raise the federal minimum wage, and building more affordable housing-- all of which are actually what suffocate many Americans in the ever worsening wealth inequality. That's why people took the chance to vote Trump who promised tax cut, even though most Americans know they it doesn't actually benefit them but the 1%.
  Look outside of the American mainstream news bubble and discourse that want you to pick the two lesser evils, instead of thinking outside the box. The only way for ordinary Americans to win basic rights is to organise and mobilise by advocating both ranked choice voting and promoting third parties. It won't happen in federal level so start on the local and state levels, and the changes will go up the chain to federal level. It's not like Americans haven't gone and out mobilised before for a better change. The people simply need to rediscover that they have the power.
  
  *Life in MURICA...

Good luck to her.
- Her point is that everyone has to pitch in and do their little bit to make things harder for this administration. This resistance has to be built from the bottom up.
  
  I already wasted 20 years of my life in sacrifice to politics. I want to be done and other than venting about how we're doomed I more or less am done, thank you.
  I hope I'm wrong, and I earnestly wish her luck but I do not owe a population of people who chose Trump a single solitary fucking thing. I'm bitter, exhausted, and my patience is gone.
- Have the balls to just say you want her to fail.
  People help her and do it together, or it doesn't work. Band together against nazis.

shockingly dim
When you hire yes men, you get some pretty dumb people.

Simple Sabotage Manual

If only AOC didn't whip up a battle plan to prevent the union strike when she voted to protect the rail corporation.
- Oh no, this option isn't perfect in every way for all people, and thus indistinguishable from being worthless?
- She deserves criticism for that, and she should apologize. Your downvoters either support strikebreaking or support AOC even when she does the wrong thing.
  
  She deserves criticism for that but she still does a lot of good and should not be discounted. Saying “if only” kinda sounds like “I would like this good thing she’s suggesting (the subject of the article where they are responding “if only “), if only she didn’t do something I disagreed with once”. A more productive tact would be “I still don’t like that she didn’t support the striking rail workers but the plan she describes here is …”

Bit late. I appreciate her efforts to resist, and we all need to do that, but it honestly is too late now. The time to resist this was last year. Now we’re in disaster recovery, which requires a whole different kind of resistance, and it feels like even people like her don’t quite understand where we are now.
Because of all the people who haven’t fucking listened to the warnings, we’ve entered actual fascism, and regular resistance won’t work anymore. Thinking it will only makes more of us believe small actions or Strong Words will save us. This isn’t 1930 Germany like we were warning last year, it’s 1939 Germany now, and der führer is beginning to build the camps.
Are you going to keep ignoring us when you’re ruffling the ashes of your compatriots from your hair? I honestly believe you will.
- You've convinced me. I was planning to start attending my local town meetings and lend my support to the few outnumbered progressives there, but instead I think I'll just hoard canned goods and hunker down.
  
  If that’s what you took from my comment, I’m sorry. Obviously those are things we should do.
  My point is we’ve been pushing people to do exactly those things for decades (eta and have been doing them ourselves) and it hasn’t worked. We need to do much more than that now.
- You must be fun at resistance parties. I guess it's time to annihilate ourselves through labor then (งツ)ว
  
  I’m just saying we need different, more modern strategies. What we’ve been doing doesn’t work.
  We can do better. I don’t know the answer, but we can’t keep doing the same things.
- I think both you and her are wrong. Dems lost big in this last election. So it's time to take a fucking step back and ask why. What needs changing? The party is in trouble. And they are in trouble because they are listening to big business and political consultants and not voters and people like AOC and Bernie. Kamala was supposed to be easy 'safe' candidate to defeat Trump. How'd that work? Hillary was supposed to be the 'safe' candidate to beat him the first time. Safer than Bernie and his 'crazy radical platform' of actually making the country work for the fucking people who live in it. How'd that work out?
  Maybe having candidates that manipulate the primary process and count on superdelegates doesn't work. Maybe putting someone forward who polled at 2% among Democrats before election season doesn't work. Maybe 'I'm not Trump' isn't fucking good enough to win the White House.
  Unfortunately I don't see many Democrats talking about this lesson, let alone taking it to heart. So I am looking forward to four more years of complaining and hopelessly attempting damage control while putting forward no new ideas whatsoever.
  
  So it's time to take a fucking step back and ask why.
  Obviously we should ask why. But any answers we come up with in response to whatever strategy we’ve been using will be horribly outdated already because we’re no longer operating under even a veiled democracy.
  That was the biggest answer to ‘why’ this last time. Because this is outright, honest to dog fascism. That’s why nothing worked. Because you cannot fight fascism with normal discourse. Because Dems, the media, and everyone still tried to pretend we were working under the status quo when we absolutely were not, and anyone trying to call that out was treated as some kind of alarmist. And the fascists know this, and take advantage of it in their propaganda. Most of us don’t want to believe there’s a true, real, legitimate fascist movement, and fascists use that against us.
  It doesn’t actually matter how good Dem candidates are – Dems could run Jesus himself, seen by all as descending from on high and streamed simultaneously on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch, and it wouldn’t have mattered. They would easily reject Jesus and get all the centrists to oppose him. We’re in an unprecedented age of propaganda owned exclusively by a handful of sociopaths who know they can buy sentiment, views, and votes. They did, and there’s little we can do about it.
  It doesn’t matter what democrats say or do at this point. We’re past that.

172 comments