Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) raised eyebrows this weekend when she merely shrugged off her previous enthusiasm for electorally toxic far-left cultural positions.
"I have a local city councilman who has this saying: 'Woke 1 was crazy,'" said AOC with a laugh. She was referencing a tweet by Chi Ossé, a New York City councilman, who similarly uttered this line in an attempt to explain why he had previously said a "white man should not be the next speaker" of the City Council.
Simply put, this attitude is far too blasé. While it's encouraging that so many progressives have backed away from some (though by no means all) of their really terrible ideas, no one should be so naive as to accept these conversions at face value. Moreover, it's quite deflective of them to act as if "Woke 1" was something bad that just sort of happened—like a hurricane or an earthquake—and they passively accepted it because what else could they do?
In fact, AOC and Ossé sound a bit like Anchorman's Ron Burgundy issuing his well-quoted lamentation about his team's outrageously violent, murder-fueled battle royale—"that escalated quickly"—while nonchalantly sipping a beer. Perhaps Woke 1 involved nothing quite so absurd as Steve Carell killing a guy with a trident, but it was still a fairly crazy time, and importantly, political figures such as AOC did absolutely nothing to try to stop it. She was more than complicit in it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member