Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s first legislative proposal – the disastrous “Green New Deal” – contained plenty of laughable claims and suggestions. In fact, the proposal was so absurd that not one senator, Republican or Democrat, was able to bring themselves to vote in favor of it when the proposal was brought to a vote on the Senate floor.
In the wake of this embarrassing defeat, though, Ocasio-Cortez is now trying to walk back some of the proposal’s more ridiculous aspects by saying that they were nothing but a joke all along.
One of the more eyebrow-raising claims found within the “Green New Deal” was Ocasio-Cortez’s assertation that the world is going to end in exactly twelve years if nothing is done to combat climate change.
After facing criticism for this claim from both sides of the aisle, the young socialist declared that this claim was simply “dry humor and sarcasm” and that it was her detractors who were too unintelligent to catch the joke.
On Mother’s Day, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted out, “This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and ‘fact check’ it. Like the ‘world ending in 12 years’ thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows.”
When Ocasio-Cortez first proposed that we were nearing the end of the world, though, she certainly wasn’t laughing. Speaking in January at a Martin Luther King forum in New York City, Ocasio-Cortez said, “I think the part of it that is generational is that millennials and people, in Gen Z, and all these folks that come after us are looking up and we’re like, the world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change. And your biggest issue, your biggest issue is how are going to pay for it? — and like this is the war, this is our World War II.”
Her remarks were delivered without the slightest bit of humor and drew a rousing round of applause from the event’s progressive audience. No one at the time considered this claim to be an attempt at humor.
It certainly didn’t seem like an attempt at humor when she again claimed the world will end in 12 years in her “Green New Deal” proposal, nor did Ocasio-Cortez appear to be joking when she parroted the claim in interviews and tweet out the claim after another.
After months of being the laughing stock of Congress, though, Ocasio-Cortez seems to have decided that playing the whole thing off as a joke is the best way to salvage what’s left of her reputation.
To be fair, one can’t expect much better when a millennial waitress with no political experience and very little real-world experience is suddenly thrust into the public spotlight and made one of the most powerful figures in the American government. When we play stupid games, we win stupid prizes – and Ocasio-Cortez is now the “prize” that our country must contend with.
Nevertheless, Ocasio-Cortez’s inability to own up to the fact that she is responsible for one of the most absurd, laughable proposals to ever come out of Congress is just as troubling as the fact that the “Green New Deal” was the best she could come up with in the first place.
While those with “the social intelligence of a sea sponge” may accept Ocasio-Cortez’s excuse that the entire thing was a joke, the rest of the country isn’t going to be fooled.
The reality is that Ocasio-Cortez has found herself in so far over her head that even the idea of treading water as a Congresswoman is a lost hope.
Ocasio-Cortez’s absurd claim that the world is going to end due to climate change in twelve years may have not been intended as a joke as she now claims, but her entire rise to political power is indeed little more than a cruel joke.
Unfortunately, Ocasio-Cortez is a joke that comes at America’s expense. One can only hope that New York’s 14th Congressional district grows tired of the lunacy by 2020 and decides to put an end to the theatrics by voting in someone – anyone – besides Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
