You can still respect and admire a figurehead without worshipping them. The difference is whether you bend definitions and rules to make exceptions of them when they deviate from expectations.
I mean, the article linked is an AOC apologist quite literally bending “definitions and rules to make exceptions” for her after another columnist said she was “just a regular old Democrat now.”
Branding the progressive left the “AOC Left” is also problematic and indicative of some hero worship on the author’s part.
It absolutely is hero worship any time someone is put on a pedestal and their flaws are ignored.
That’s what the author of the linked article has explicitly done. He waves away the fact that she consistently defers to Democratic Party leadership—except for occasional, “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion” that she’s a hard-line leftist—and then holds her up as the face of progressivism.
You are treating “differs from leadership” as if it is indisputably a flaw, and assuming that a person having a flaw means we should discount their achievements. Those oversights are just as fallacious as the supposed hero-worship you are accusing others of doing.
You’re misunderstanding me (probably because I misspelled “defers” as “differs”).
I’m saying she, as a proclaimed “progressive,” generally isn’t that progressive at all and generally defers to centrist, Democratic Party leaders: she does what they say rather than sticking to her ostensibly much more leftist guns.
This article is reactionary, leftist apologetics for yet another “socialist” politician who’s being publicly called out because her political actions don’t really line up with her professed progressive views.
She’s clearly a decent enough politician, and yeah, she’s willing to compromise, but she’s also 1) disingenuously representing herself as something that she’s not, or 2) not self-aware enough to realize that she’s a social democrat and not a democratic socialist.
Either way, her behavior doesn’t line up with her professed leftism, but does increasingly align neatly with standard, neoliberal Democratic policy. She’s become a part of the establishment, and got there by riding the anti-establishment, socialist sentiment in young people. Not sure how that could be considering anything but problematic.
You can still respect and admire a figurehead without worshipping them. The difference is whether you bend definitions and rules to make exceptions of them when they deviate from expectations.
I mean, the article linked is an AOC apologist quite literally bending “definitions and rules to make exceptions” for her after another columnist said she was “just a regular old Democrat now.”
Branding the progressive left the “AOC Left” is also problematic and indicative of some hero worship on the author’s part.
Naming a movement after a figurehead is not worship, it’s just descriptive.
It absolutely is hero worship any time someone is put on a pedestal and their flaws are ignored.
That’s what the author of the linked article has explicitly done. He waves away the fact that she consistently defers to Democratic Party leadership—except for occasional, “token gestures of resistance to solidify the illusion” that she’s a hard-line leftist—and then holds her up as the face of progressivism.
If that’s not hero worship idk what is.
Edit: spelling
You are treating “differs from leadership” as if it is indisputably a flaw, and assuming that a person having a flaw means we should discount their achievements. Those oversights are just as fallacious as the supposed hero-worship you are accusing others of doing.
You’re misunderstanding me (probably because I misspelled “defers” as “differs”).
I’m saying she, as a proclaimed “progressive,” generally isn’t that progressive at all and generally defers to centrist, Democratic Party leaders: she does what they say rather than sticking to her ostensibly much more leftist guns.
Ah I see. I’ll gladly take that over someone incapable of compromise.
Ok, good for you, but that’s beside the point.
This article is reactionary, leftist apologetics for yet another “socialist” politician who’s being publicly called out because her political actions don’t really line up with her professed progressive views.
She’s clearly a decent enough politician, and yeah, she’s willing to compromise, but she’s also 1) disingenuously representing herself as something that she’s not, or 2) not self-aware enough to realize that she’s a social democrat and not a democratic socialist.
Either way, her behavior doesn’t line up with her professed leftism, but does increasingly align neatly with standard, neoliberal Democratic policy. She’s become a part of the establishment, and got there by riding the anti-establishment, socialist sentiment in young people. Not sure how that could be considering anything but problematic.