Trump, Low Information Voters, and George Floyd: Conflating Protestors and Rioters

For the uneducated, white voter, who makes up President Donald Trump's base, the protests that broke out across the country in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police may have been not only confusing, but downright scary.  People were legitimately angry.  And that anger was aimed at the police, the very people that white voters are trained to rely upon for their protection.  With such anger aimed at the very people charged with enforcing the law, some violence was to be expected.  Trump, armed with the images of these angry protests, has been trying to manipulate his voter base by intentionally conflating the peaceful, though angry, protests, with the incidental violence.

Images of African-Americans being brutalized by police have sparked outcry and protests for generations.  Yet, the officers responsible have rarely been held accountable for their actions.  As has happened far too often, Americans from all walks of life have been outraged over the treatment of George Floyd, an African-American stopped by the police.  In an unnecessarily brutal detention, police restraining techniques, in particular Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck, resulted in Floyd's death.  Frustrated over the lack of change in police attitudes towards African-Americans, protests broke out nation-wide.  Disappointingly, although not surprisingly, the response of President Donald Trump and his Republican supporters has been, not to acknowledge the wide-spread problem of impunity among the police, but to placate the uneducated white voters who make up the Republicans' base of support.

Let's examine Trump's response to the protests over George Floyd's death, and how they were meant to manipulate the emotions of the base of his support.  Yes, violence has regrettably accompanied the peaceful protests.  But people are angry, and rightfully so.  Institutional racism among the police is a problem that grabs the public's attention over and over again.  Yet nothing seems to change.

Trump, his Republican allies and their willing accomplices in the conservative media have used the images of that anger, and intentionally conflated the peaceful protests with the incidental violence that has accompanied it.  People are yelling angry slogans: "I can't breathe!"  The slogans reflect the dying words of George Floyd.  In fact, we've heard this slogan far too many times in recent years, as over and over again, police restraining techniques have suffocated the African-American males suspected of committing crimes.  And in most cases, those have been minor, non-violent crimes.

Groups of angry people shouting at the police.  Fists in the air.  These are all frightening images, especially for uneducated white voters.

At the same time, news reporters of violence and looting in the streets of major American cities have flooded the internet and the television airwaves. Juxtapose those images of angry protestors with images of those who have taken the opportunity of the protests to engage in violence, and it can become difficult for the uneducated to distinguish between the two.  Trump and his conservative allies took full of advantage of this.

Trump's initial response to the protests was to emphasize the violence, and ignore the root cause.  Trump has called the protestors "THUGS" -- itself a racially charged word.  He tweeted his willingness to use overwhelming military force to control the cities, warning that "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

That phrase is also tainted with racist overtones.  It was uttered by Miami Police Chief Walter Headley in 1967, in response to similar angry demonstrations over institutional racism that broke out over fifty years ago.  It was a phrase meant to appeal to fears of white voters, with the promise of cracking down on the disturbances, and protect their privileged existence.  The phrase has also been believed to contribute to the intensification of angry racial protests in Miamiin the late 1970s and early 1980s, as oppression continued, and African-American demonstrators became more defiant of this assertion of power.

Speaking of assertion of power, Trump has repeatedly tweeted "LAW & ORDER!"  He admonished governors to dominate the protestors, not only imploring them to call upon the National Guard, but threatening to step in and take over governmental responses to the protests that did not meet his requirement of hard-line suppression.

The very notion that there were peaceful, albeit very angry, protestors, lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly was simply lost on him and his base of support.

Trump's reaction to the protests shows that he has no intention to listen to the grievances of the protestors. His goal has not been to engage in constructive dialogue to address the systemic problems.  He just wants to crack down on them.  And in doing so, to ignite the passions of uneducated white voters, who could only fear the loss of control being portrayed by the conservative echo chamber.

Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham of Fox News have all emphasized the violence and the looting and called for strong police and National Guard response.  Republican politicians, such as Matt Gaetz, Tom Cotton, Kevin McCarthy, joined with this appeal to scared white voters, also failing to recognize the grievances of the protestors, and calling for a harsh, military-like crack-down.

One of the worst of such appeals came from Republican Sid Miller, Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture.  On May 31st, Miller posted the following on Facebook:

• Folks this is not a protest. It is a well orchestrated attack on America's major cities with plans to attack the police, riot, loot, and burn buildings. The so-called ‘protestors’ are, in fact, domestic terrorists who were organized and paid for by George Soros to further divide our country. These terrorists were bused into these large cities. We must repel this attack and hold those responsible for their actions. This must be brought to a stop now or we will lose control of our country!

Miller succeeded in wrapping together all of the elements of popular conspiracy theories that motivate the low information voters that support Trump.  It was meant to blur the lines between the lawful and peaceful protests and the incidental violence that accompanied them.

But the most egregious example came from President Trump himself.  Fearful of the presence of angry protestors who had gathered in Lafayette Square, a park directly across the street from the White House where all sorts of protestors have historically gathered, on Saturday, May 30th, Trump retreated to an underground bunker in the White House.  There, Trump only inflamed passions further, tweeting about "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons" that would await protestors who got out of hand.

Trump grew irritated over media reports, which portrayed him as a coward hiding in the safety of the White House bunker.  He wanted to project a show of strength, and manipulate the reports that someone had broken into St. John's Episcopal Church the night before and set fire to the basement of the parish house.  The location of the church next to Lafayette Square is historically significant, as almost every President since James Madison has worshiped there at least once.  His goal was clearly to conflate the violence with the peaceful demonstrations.

On Monday, June 1st, he arranged for U.S. Park Police to use chemical irritants, smoke canisters and flash-bang grenades on people who had been peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights, to clear Lafayette Square.  The images of Park Police using brutal, physical force to attack peaceful protestors merely exercising their First Amendment rights lawfully, was shocking.  These were unjustifiable war-like techniques, including the use of a police shield as a blunt-force weapon to strike a cameraman of an Australian news crew.  Indeed, the indiscriminate police actiondrove  away the very Rector of St. John's, Gini Gerbasi.

We learned that this authoritarian show of force was perpetrated specifically to allow Trump to appeal to his base by projecting an image of strength and religiosity.  Trump had just finishing an inflammatory speech in the Rose Garden again encouraging governors "dominate" the protestors, "establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence," and pushing for the violence to be "quelled."  He then made a spectacle of walking from his speech, through the park that he just had cleared, to use St. John's Episcopal Church as a backdrop for a photo opportunity, as he held a Bible aloft awkwardly. 

It bears emphasizing that Trump didn't care a lick about how St. John's and the the Episcopal Church themselves wanted to react to the damage to their building.  This stunt wasn't for the benefit of the church.  It was to benefit his own ego, and ignite the passions of his Evangelical Christian followers.

He didn't even consult the church before his stunt.  In fact, his Park Police not only chased the Rector away, but disrupted the church's chosen response to the protests.  Rev. Gerbasi and her colleagues were passing out water and snacks to protestors, and offering prayerful support.  Indeed, her op-ed piece in the Washington Post offers further eye witness evidence that the demonstrations on that evening were peaceful.  Mariann Budde, Washington Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the very denomination that owns and operates St. John's, immediately condemned Trump for using the church and the Bible as objects in a politically motivated message.

Nonetheless, this piece of showmanship served its purpose.  On cue, white Evangelical Christians expressed support for the move, and criticized anyone who saw Trump's use of the Bible as sacrilege.  (Such Evangelicals ought to consult the Gospel themselves, paying close attention to Matthew 6:1.)

Trump's tactic is not going to unite the country in an effort to solve the problem of police aggression.  His tactic is just going to further divide the country, in particular along racial lines, and ignore a festering issue that has become intolerable to many.  Just conflating the protests and their goals with the incidental violence, and keeping his voters scared, will only further divide America, and continue to empower those among the police who resist the imposition of accountability among those officers who continue to oppress and brutalize the African-American community.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Check out my YouTube channel by clicking here! 

One thing I don't like to talk about is that cancer has left me disabled.  In fact, in my most recent hospitalization, which was over an infection, I suffered an TIA. Even with health insurance, I am amassing huge medical bills.  If you like what you are reading, and would like me to continue writing, and you feel generous enough to help, you can make a one-time non-tax deductible donation to my special needs trust, use this URL:

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You can also use this email address to make a PayPal donation:  KovatchSNT@gmail.com

Donations will go to a Special Needs Trust set up for my benefit and controlled by a separate trustee.

The photograph “George Floyd protests in Washington, D.C. at the White House perimeter” and was taken by Frypie. Licensing information can be found here:  https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Floyd_protests_in_Washington,_D.C._1250_08.jpg

References

Videos of Events

C-SPAN, "President Trump walks across Lafayette Park to St. John's Church," YouTube Video (June 1, 2020).

The Telegraph, “Australian news cameraman struck by US police in Washington D.C while covering George Floyd protests,” YouTube Video (June 2, 2020).

News Articles and Analysis

Ballasy, Nicholas, "House GOP Leader: 'Rioters and anarchists are not protestors,'" Just the News (June 5, 2020).

Boorstein, Michelle and Pulliam Bailey, Sarah, “Episcopal bishop on President Trump: ‘Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,’” The Washington Post (June 1, 2020).

Cotton, Tom, "Send in the Military," The New York Times (June 3, 2020).

Edmondson, Catie, "Trump's Response to Protests Draws Bipartisan Rebuke in Congress," The New York Times (June 2, 2020).

Gelles Karl; Bravo, Veronica and Petras, George, “How police pushed aside protesters ahead of Trump's controversial church photo,” USA Today(June 5, 2020).

"George Floyd death: More large protests in US but violence falls,” BBC News (June 2, 2020).


Gini Gerbasi “I’m a priest. The police forced me off church grounds for Trump’s photo op.,” The Washington Post (June 3, 2020).

Lamothe, Dan, "Pentagon's top general apologizes for appearing alongside Trump in Lafayette Square," The Washington Post (June 11, 2020).

Nicholas, Peter, "Trump is Terrified of Protest," The Atlantic (May 31, 2020).

Phillips, Amber, "The difference between Democratic and Republican reactions to the protests: Elevate George Floyd or 'antifa'?" The Washington Post (June 1, 2020). 

Pulliam Bailey, Sarah and Boorstein, “Michelle St. John’s Episcopal Church, historic church next to the White House, set on fire during protests,” The Washington Post (June 5, 2020).

Samuels, Albert, “In false Facebook posts, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller accused George Soros of paying protesters to “destroy”the country,” The Texas Tribune (June 5, 2020).

Sprunt, Barbara, “The History Behind 'When The Looting Starts, The Shooting Starts,’” NPR (May 29, 2020).

Stone, Devin, "American Carnage at Lafayette Square," Legal Eagle (June 3, 2020) (YouTube Video).

Republicans and Low Information Voters: Trump, COVID-19 and Hydroxychloroquine

Let me start off by saying, I'm not a doctor.  I'm a lawyer.  I don't have an expertise in medicine.  Please don't take medical advice from me.

I also want to say that I sincerely hope and pray that we find a treatment that is effective against COVID-19.  If that turns out to be chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, well that would be just great.  But Republicans, and Donald Trump in particular, are pushing this drug as a miracle panacea for COVID-19.  They're doing this based on very little scientific evidence.  That is, Republicans are trying to convince low information voters that it is ok to end state-imposed restrictions on the economy because we now have a miracle of modern medicine that will protect us all.

Why?  Well, they really need a miracle cure, or the thought of a miracle cure, to support their policy choices.  Specifically, they don't like the fact that we have had to shut down the economy to fight the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.  Trump believes that his re-election prospects are tied to the economy.  History tells us that Presidents who face re-election in the midst of a recession generally lose.  In addition, the Republican's strongest supporters, big business, can't stand the idea that their quarterly reports are being spoiled by slowed sales.  Trump needs to convince you that re-opening the economy in the face of a new contagious virus taking its toll on the public is a good idea.  So, he has to convince you that something, anything, is a miracle cure that makes re-opening the economy less risky.

The logical policy right now would be to discourage unnecessary contact to slow the spread of the virus so as to alleviate the pressure on our healthcare resources, at least until we can find an effective treatment or vaccine.  Because this involve encouraging large portions of the economy to close down, it may also involve the Government assisting those hurt financially from enforced isolation through direct payments to allow people who can't work to pay their rent, pay for their health insurance, and feed their family.

Yet, some Republicans conveniently become deficit hawks when it means criticism of policies championed by Democrats.  Funny, Mitch McConnell wasn't that concerned with the federal budget deficit when it came to tax reform, and providing big corporations with nice tax breaks.  But when you have the need for social distancing and stay-at-home orders, coupled with an attempt to try to alleviate the economic impact on regular people with the so-called "stimulus checks," McConnell suddenly becomes a deficit hawk again.

This is why Trump and his supporters are so desperate to have the states lift their stay-at-home orders.  He and his supporters need to have the economy restarted before November.  They honestly don't care about the potential death toll that could result from re-opening the economy too early.  If Trump can convince his followers that there is a miracle cure, then he can manipulate low information voters to act against their own interests.

It's funny.  I actually believed that we had put the chloroquine debate to rest.  We had that study from National Institutes of Health that followed patients in the Veterans Administration hospitals.  The study indicated a correlation between the use of chloroquine in COVID-19 patients, and a higher mortality rate.  Keep in mind, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.  Plus, we must consider that the use of chloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment has only bee approved as a palliative measure.  That means it has only been approved to be used when other treatments have failed, and the patient is close to death.  So, you need to consider that when evaluating this study.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration currently cautions against the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment outside of a clinical trial, due to the potentially dangerous side effects, such as how it could affect the heart.

Nonetheless, the NIH study is still a more comprehensive study than the French one that the chloroquine peddlers have been pointing to.  That study involved less than forty patients, and was not a randomized clinical trial.  To be blunt, the French study didn't use currently accepted scientific methodology.

And that is key.  Real science takes time.  You have studies that document experiments.  Experiments need control groups for a valid comparison.  You need the right number of participants so you can show that your results aren't random, and that they are statistically significant.  And then, you need the studies to be reproducible.  They need to be peer-reviewed, which means other doctors and medical researchers need to examine the methodology and the results to make sure no mistakes were made and that the results are accurate.  Why?  Because there is a lot at stake.  The Hippocratic Oath that doctors take says, first, do no harm.  And when you are putting chemicals in your body, there is a potential that these chemicals can affect your health in a bad way.

That's why studies take time. That's why it normally takes years for vaccines to be developed for newly discovered viruses.  Sometimes, vaccines aren't developed for a particular virus.  Think about HIV.  We have nown about this virus and how it causes AIDS for about forty years now.  We still don't have an AIDS vaccine.  Why?  In part, because once we eventually took notice of the suffering that AIDS caused, we discovered some effective treatments.  Also, with appropriate safeguards, the transmission of HIV can be prevented.  But, the point remains, we don't have an HIV vaccine.  It is possible that we may never develop a vaccine to counter the novel coronavirus.

And rushing a vaccine can prove ineffective.  During the 1918 influenza pandemic, for example, the first attempts to rush a flu vaccine into production failed miserably.  We don't want that to happen here.  That's why valid scientific methodology is so important.

But many Americans don't understand science, and this is where Republicans and their allies in the media try to manipulate low information voters.  They were promoting stories of individuals who said that they took chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine and got better.  This is called anecdotal evidence.  It is the weakest evidence a scientist can rely on.  Remember how Rush Limbaugh addressed it?  "Anecdotally, it worked," is what Rush proclaimed.  To the uneducated, you hear these stories, and you might conclude, hey this seems like a good idea.  But, anecdotal evidence presents several problems.

First, you need to verify the anecdotes.  Did it really happen?  Then you need to know all of the facts and circumstances of the particular anecdote.  Was there something about that particular case that made it special, or calls into question the conclusion?  You need to remember, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.  The result could be coincidental.  Maybe the body's own defenses finally kicked in just as the patient began taking chloroquine.  To reach the right conclusion, we need to know all of the factors involved.  It's complicated and the process takes time.

But right now, time isn't on Trump's side.  He needs to restart the economy now.  He needs the states to re-open so we aren't in a recession come November, science be damned.

So, on Monday, May 18th, he revealed a very astonishing fact.  He revealed that he had been taking hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure.  He's testing negative for COVID-19.  He has no symptoms.  He claims that he has been taking the drug anyway.

Now, we need to take this news with  grain of salt.  Trump's penchant for lying is documented and notorious.  Nonetheless, his assertion still raises a number of questions.

Why now?  We haven't heard him peddle chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for weeks.  Well, intellectual giant, Laura Ingraham, has been pushing a study.  It's a study that say chloroquine can inhibit the infection and spread of the SARS coronavirus.  She's pushing this study, and retweeting it, claiming "the left" has not been doing its research.

There are just a few problems.  First, the study was published in 2005.  We're facing a pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus.  The word "novel" meaning that the virus is new.  The current virus didn't exist until 2019.  A study from 2005, then, is not directly relevant because it could not have involved the same virus that is currently causing the pandemic.

But, she's counting on the ignorant and uneducated getting confused by the terminology.  The term "coronavirus" refers to a family of viruses.  It is a generic term, that refers to the shape of the virus.  Coronaviruses generally look like crowns.  Because something is a coronavirus doesn't mean that they all have the same DNA or RNA make-up.  They just look alike.

We've known about coronaviruses for years.  You may see people who don't know any better pointing to disinfectant labels, and claiming this virus isn't new because the label says that the disinfectant is effective against coronaviruses.  Yes, but there are different types of coronaviruses, and they all act differently.

SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, was a coronavirus that first appeared in 2002.  It was contained, and no known transmissions have occurred since 2004.  The official name of that virus is SARS-CoV1, for SARS, coronavirus one, the first of that kind that we discovered.

The official name of this new virus is SARS-CoV2, or SARS, coronavirus two.  Why?  It causes similar symptoms to SARS.  It's genetically related to SARS.  Much like humans are genetically related to chimpanzees.  But they are different viruses.  They act differently.  They have similar symptoms, but they also have different symptoms.  Just because chloroquine may have been effective inhibiting SARS does not mean it will have the effect on COVID-19.  It may.  It is worth investigating.  But it's no guarantee.

To be clear, the idea is that cholorquine  may affect the pH of the recipient's blood to such as degree that it inhibits the virus from reproducing.  There is some information from India that may support this hypothesis. But, again, these are not clinical studies being conducted using modern scientific methodology.  It would be foolhardy to press for the widespread use of the drug as a prophylactic measure based on such information, without confirming the hypothesis with a study using accepted scientific principles. 

Nonetheless, Ingraham is counting on the uneducated seeing the similarity in names, SARS-CoV1 and SARS-CoV2, and therefore concluding that this must mean chloroquine is an effective treatment for COVID-19.  Unfortunately, once again, it's just not that simple.

Plus, the President likes to downplay the potential side effects of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.  We have been using chloroquine as a treatment for malaria and lupus for decades.  We know these drugs have the potential to affect the heart.  So, doctors need to careful when prescribing it and in monitoring the patients taking it.  When Trump says, "What do you have to lose," potentially an awful lot.  Like, your life.  Especially, if you take the medication as a prophylactic measure, when you've tested negative and show no symptoms.

Still, Trump has been pushing this as a potential miracle cure for some time now.  And he doesn't tolerate dissent, even if that dissent is based on science.  Rick Bright, for example, is a scientist who was in charge of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA).  He refused to tow the party line, and push chloroquine consistent with the President's wishes.  Bright tried to get his political bosses to pay attention to the risks.  He was ignored.  So, he helped corroborate information on the risks of the drug to a reporter writing about the subject.  When the article was published, even though Bright was an unnamed source, he says that he was demoted.  Bright has filed a whistleblower complaint over his demotion.

So science that goes against the President's chosen course of policy is under attack.  Which is typical of the Trump Administration.

Now, I have to wonder about the ethics of a doctor who may have prescribed Trump hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure, when the President has tested negative for COVID-19 and has no symptoms, keeping in mind the potential side effects.  Remember, first, do no harm.  By prescribing hydroxychloroquine in this situation, the doctor may have violated his ethical rules.  If Trump is telling the truth, then the alternative explanation to the doctor violating the Hippocratic Oath is equally troubling.  That would mean that the doctor is giving Trump a placebo marked as hydroxychloroquine, just to placate him.  That possibility also raises ethical concerns for me.

When it comes down to it, I honestly don't care if Trump wants to risk his own life by taking hydroxychloroquine.  His body, his choice.  And if his core followers want to take that risk, and wind up harming themselves, well that's their own fault.  But, I do worry about the low information voters who are scared, who follow the President's lead, not truly understanding the risks, or that the evidence supporting its possible benefits is sketchy at best.  This is where Trump really has a responsibility to be careful in what he says.  The voters he targets are vulnerable.  By manipulating these voters and valuing his re-election strategy over the health of the American people, he shows his moral failing.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.

Check out my YouTube channel by clicking here! 

One thing I don't like to talk about is that cancer has left me disabled.  Even with health insurance, I am amassing huge medical bills.  If you like what you are reading, and would like me to continue writing, and you feel generous enough to help, you can make a one-time non-tax deductible donation to my special needs trust, use this URL:

https://PayPal.me/KovatchSNT

You can also use this email address to make a PayPal donation:  KovatchSNT@gmail.com

Donations will go to a Special Needs Trust set up for my benefit and controlled by a separate trustee.

AOC Ruffles Conservatives' Feathers

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, affectionately known as AOC, has conservatives so agitated that they are foaming at the mouth.  She has become their favorite target.  Whenever Ocasio-Cortez is in the news, conservatives fall all over themselves trying to find new ways to attack her intelligence.

Ocasio-Cortez should be flattered by this.  When else has a freshman Representative in Congress engendered so much fear from her opposition that they spend so much time and effort trying to insult her whenever she happens to make the news?

That is exactly what is going on here.  Conservatives fear Ocasio-Cortez.  That is because she represents a threat to the political establishment. 

Coming seemingly from nowhere, Ocasio-Cortez,  who is of Puerto Rican descent, defeated a powerful member of the House Democratic leadership, Joseph Crowley, in the congressional primary for a district representing parts of Queens and the Bronx.  Crowley had been rumored to be a potential successor to Nancy Pelosi when Pelosi eventually steps down from her role as Speaker of the House. 

At the time of her primary victory, Ocasio-Cortez worked as a waitress in a taqueria in New York. She has been described as a political novice.  However, she had worked as an intern for Ted Kennedy, an organizer for Bernie Sanders' 2016 primary campaign, and for an organization that supported leadership in the Hispanic community, the National Hispanic Institute.  Her education includes a bachelor of arts degree in International Relations and Economics from Boston College. 

Ocasio-Cortez, who emphasized her working class background, captured national attention running a grass-roots campaign.  She won the general election, becoming the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

Her agenda is unabashedly progressive.  She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and represents a very liberal congressional district.

When preparing to join Congress, Ocasio-Cortez complained of the orientation program for new members hosted by Harvard.  She expressed exasperation that guests included corporate CEOs and lobbyists, but no one from labor unions, no activists and no community leaders.  In doing so, she exposed the bias the pervades the American political system to the detriment of the working class.

Ocasio-Cortez boldly spoke out about the disadvantages and unfair images that the working class, and in particular minorities, face.  She criticized the use of unpaid interns by congressional members, noting that it prevented working class students from receiving valuable experience during their education, since such students often had to find paying jobs to support their education.  She rallied against the image that the poor were responsible for their own position in life, panning a Chase Bank tweet that implied that the poor should skip coffee houses, restaurants and taxi cabs.

Ocasio-Cortez noted that before she became a Representative in Congress, she would wake up n the middle of the night worried if she had paid a certain bill on time.  This was not because she was irresponsible.  It was because she was not being paid a living wage.  Now she had a congressional salary and government health insurance, eliminating a major expense from her former life.  She wanted all Americans to be able to avoid the anxiety caused by low wages.

In sum, Ocasio-Cortez bucked the system, and exposed its biases against minorities and the working class, commanding media attention along the way.  She defeated a powerful incumbent, and then won a general election without relying heavily on corporate donations to her campaign.  She freely exposes how intertwined corporate special interests and the government are, and how freshman members are expected to continue with system.  She decries the situation of the working class poor, and debunks the myths that lead to their stigmatization.

It is because she bucks the system, and does so successfully, while representing views to which conservatives are diametrically opposed, that conservatives feel the need to attack her.  In doing so, conservatives have, at times, shown how ridiculous and petty their criticisms are.

Ocasio-Cortez uses social media, such as Instagram and Twitter, to reach her constituency directly.  She takes advantage of social media's platform, which emphasizes the use of video, to present herself talking about issues in informal settings.  Conservatives have scoured over this video repeatedly in an attempt to find what they consider to be gaffes in order to question her intelligence.

On the campaign trail, for example, Ocasio-Cortez spoke at her alma matter, Boston College.  She cautioned supporters that even if the Democrats won big in the election, they would not get everything they wanted right away.  "[A]s much as I would love that. I would like to get inaugurated January 3, January 4 we’re signing health care, we’re signing this, we’re signing de-incarceration.  But really, it is that we have a duty to always fight and maintain the strength of our values."

Taking Ocasio-Cortez's words out of context, Fox and Friends presented the video, saying to their audience that she lacks the requisite knowledge of how government works.  Specifically, they laughed, it is only the President who is inaugurated and signs bills into law.

First, while members of Congress are technically "sworn-in," the dictionary definition of "inauguration" includes "the formal admission of someone to office."  Indeed, when she was sworn-in, news media, including NBC, referred her speech that followed as an "inaugural address."  Nit-picking over a word that conveys the same meaning just made Fox News, and others who repeated the criticism, look silly.

Second, when viewed in context, it is clear that Ocasio-Cortez was tempering the expectations of her supporters, and noting that progressives like herself have a lot of work to do before legislation could be passed.  The use of the word "we're" indicates that she was not speaking of signing bills herself, but of progressives like her passing legislation into law consistent with their agenda, such as expanding health care coverage and addressing criminal justice reform.

Likewise, conservatives attempted to attack her working class background.  A video showing how she dressed in the first days of the new Congress were meant to show that despite her claims that she personally had little money in the bank, that somehow she could afford expensive clothes.  A video showing Ocasio-Cortez dancing with friends while attending Boston College was used in an attempt to argue that her self-portrayal of understanding the struggling of the working class was inaccurate.  These attempts failed to convince a wider audience, and only demonstrated the pettiness of conservative criticism.

Ocasio-Cortez represents a political movement where women of color have started to gain inroads to governmental positions.  She joins Ilham Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley, affectionately known as "the Squad," as freshman Representatives of color who vocally oppose President Trump and the Republican agenda.  Members of the Squad have not been shy in exposing the cruelty of Trump's immigration policies.  Upon visiting detention centers along the southern border, the Squad exposed abuses asylum-seeking families faced, such as lack of medical care and being forced to find drinking water from a cell's toilet.  Threatened by this revelation, Trump infamously responded that members of the Squad should "go back to where they came from."  Never mind that three of the four Representatives were born in the United States, and Ilham Omar was a Somali refugee who earned U.S. citizenship.  Opposing Trump earned the Squad racist criticism from the President.

Concerning her policy positions, conservatives love to remind the public that they amount to "socialism," a word meant to invoke fear in the electorate.  The conservative's playbook is to label a proposal they oppose as "socialism," and then cite a country, such as Venezuela, as their proof that socialism is bad.  Never mind that socialism is an economic system, not a political one, and that the political instability in Venezuela is due to authoritative overreaching of the executive.  Conservatives ignore that popular programs in the United States are socialistic in nature, such as social security and subsidies to farmers hurt by Trump's trade war.  President Trump loves to cite Norway as a model country.  Yet Norway implements socialist policies, such a free secondary education.

Conservatives also like to exaggerate Ocasio-Cortez's policy proposals.  Ocasio-Cortez, for example, became a spokesperson for the proposed House Resolution 109, known as the "Green New Deal."  The proposal was not legislation, in the sense that it created no legal obligations.  Rather, the Green New Deal was simply a list of goals divided into two parts.  The first part set goals for the United States to combat climate change, such as reducing carbon emissions to net zero within ten years.  The second part recognized that this would be a radical change in the economy, and that the Government should do what it could to protect those who would otherwise be displaced by the changes.  The resolution made nothing illegal, and contained no proposals on how to reach the goals.  It was meant simply to start the serious debate needed to address climate change in the hopes of avoiding catastrophic change.

Critics, of course, represented the resolution as banning popular items of Americana.  Thus, the proposal to build high speed rail was represented as a ban on domestic air travel.  The goal of eliminating America's dependence on fossil fuels was represented as a ban on cars and office buildings.  Proposed reductions in carbon emissions was represented as an attack on bovine flatulence, and thus a ban on hamburgers.  Thus, conservatives chose to oppose Ocasio-Cortez's proposals through misrepresentations and scare tactics.

Recently, Ocasio-Cortez has made a new ambitious legislative proposal, addressing the plight of the working class.  The proposal includes limiting rent increases, enforcing a living wage, redefining the poverty line to include expenses not originally contemplated such as child care and internet access, and ratifying the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

These proposals recognize problems that the working class poor face in their daily lives, such as inflated housing expenses, and a minimum wage that has been frozen at $7.25 per hour since 2009.  To conservatives, they are radical ideas which threaten the interests of big business.  Ocasio-Cortez will certainly face strong opposition to her legislation.

Nonetheless, Ocasio-Cortez is serving an important function in U.S. politics.  She is using the attention that the media is giving her to start important conversations over policy, and ensuring that the interests of the working class are being addressed.  With a divided Congress, it is not likely that her proposals will pass and be implemented.  But calling attention to those against whom the deck is stacked is vital if America is to be true to the value of equality before the law.

By:  William J. Kovatch, Jr.