You probably remember the headlines when the Fyre Festival collapsed in April of 2017. It was a disaster which has since resulted in convictions for fraud. But think back to the time before the disaster when thousands of wealthy millennials were convinced this was going to be the experience of a lifetime. This promo clip for the festival has been viewed over 4 million times:

If you really analyze this, it’s pretty vague. Lots of shots of the models and the pristine blue water. A few shots of airplanes and bands. And overtop all of that are the inane slogans:

• “The actual experience exceeds all expectations into something that’s hard to put to words.”
• “All these things that may seem big and impossible are not.”
• “It gives people that type of energy. That type of power.”
• “The best in food, art, music, and adventure.”
• “On the boundaries of the impossible.”
• “A quest to push beyond those boundaries.”

It’s a great, glossy brochure that promises something like a weekend in utopia. It’s so hedonistic and shallow that anyone with any sense would be wary this might be too good to be true. But thousands of millennials paid millions of dollars up front in the expectation they’d be posting their crazy good time on Instagram and making all their friends back home green with envy.

Only, it didn’t work out that way. What they actually got was a centrally planned disaster:

So Fyre Fest is a complete disaster. Mass chaos. No organization. No one knows where to go. There are no villas, just a disaster tent city. pic.twitter.com/1lSWtnk7cA

— William Needham Finley IV(It’s real. I made it up) (@WNFIV) April 27, 2017

Today, Rep. Mark Walker of North Carolina made the connection to another grand proposal: The Green New Deal. He’s taken some of the same images and quotes about things that “may seem big and impossible” and applied them to a slightly different utopian promise.

There are also some new slogans, i.e. “a socialist utopia,” “ban all the airplanes,” and “kill off all the cows.” There’s even an apparent reference to Modern Monetary Theory: “We’ll just print more money.” The clip ends with a desperate man crawling ashore as a superimposed title says “Green New Deal—Trust us.”

After the success of the Fyre Festival, we bring you the Green New Deal. #GNDisFyre pic.twitter.com/uNzT42ZbNV

— Mark Walker (@RepMarkWalker) February 13, 2019

The comparison seems apt. Young people who have grown up with plenty of everything in their lives fell for McFarland’s sales pitch and got taken. It was a disaster but a short-lived one. What can actually happen when you go full socialism, as the GND seems to vaguely suggest (the FAQ released by AOC’s office was a lot clearer on this), would be a similar disaster but with nowhere else to go.

One of the founders of the festival, Billy McFarland, was subsequently arrested and charged with fraud. Last October he was sentenced to six years in jail. He is also being sued by a number of his creditors and victims for millions of dollars. Billboard reported yesterday that nearly $15 million of the money McFarland raised selling tickets to the event has never been accounted for. He simply kept no real records of where the money was going apparently.

How many of the people who savored the schadenfreude of suckers getting taken by the Fyre Festival are eager fans of AOC’s Green New Deal. It would be interesting to talk to a few of them. On that note, here’s a bonus clip from Campus Reform. It’s college kids at the University of Miami expressing support for the Green New Deal and then stepping back when they hear about some of the ideas in AOC’s FAQ.