In Defense of ‘Meh’: Enough With this AOC Character Already!

This post was written for April 1st.

By Jim Miller

Recently, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took an unwarranted shot at the heart and soul of American Democracy: the moderates.  As NBC news reported, AOC opined that:

“Moderate is not a stance. It’s just an attitude towards life of, like, ‘meh,’” she said, shrugging her shoulders for emphasis. “We’ve become so cynical, that we view ‘meh,’ or ‘eh’ — we view cynicism as an intellectually superior attitude, and we view ambition as youthful naivete when … the greatest things we have ever accomplished as a society have been ambitious acts of visions.

“The ‘meh’ is worshiped now. For what?” she continued to cheers.

What can one say about this impudent snark other than, how dare she?

I, for one, think this dismissal of all things moderate is a clear sign of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s deep immaturity and lack of understanding that it is the middling not the visionary that Made America Great.  Like the other radicals-in-Democrats’-clothing who use terms like “corporate” or “neoliberal” to describe their betters, this unpleasant upstart has the eminently bad taste to judge the present by the standard of history and claim we aren’t cutting it.

And while it is certainly clear-headed and responsible to call out the left for their extreme and divisive views, chastising moderates for their cynicism is indeed youthful naivete.  What Alexandria and her social media minions fail to understand is that the moderate, like your mother, is the giver of oatmeal rather than ice cream.

The moderate disappoints you for your own good.

You may want to fight economic inequality in some “real” fashion, but you fail to recognize that challenging inequities in our capitalist system is not just in bad taste, but it is bad for fundraising. Furthermore, notions like “class solidarity” are relics of the past only to be pulled out at Labor Day breakfasts, if at all.

Taxing the rich and corporations?  You may as well hope a herd of unicorns will come to your birthday party.  And no, I don’t care what the polling on the issue says.

You think it makes sense to call for things like the Green Dream or whatever it is in the face of catastrophic climate change but you just don’t seem to understand that while we know we have to recognize that climate change exists (at least rhetorically), we simply can’t be bothered to do ANYTHING about it, no less actually try to do something big.

To be blunt, calling for “transformational” things is a little embarrassing, and we’d rather not talk about it at all, thank you.  This business about only having a decade to act has to go too, as we’d prefer to slide toward ecocide in a dignified fashion without all the fuss and bother.

Go dance in a video or something instead of talking about extinction and getting the youngsters all stirred up.

And please don’t start with your immigrants’ rights ranting about abolishing ICE and such.  While we like to talk about strong women of color, we prefer them to share our views and not scare white people who will never vote for a Democrat anyway.

Instead of this “AOC” with her callous insensitivity to acceptable political norms, give me a stolid moderate who relentlessly talks about bipartisanship in the face of creeping fascism.

As long as we crabwalk our way there, I’m good.

Give me a New Democrat who knows how to patronize the base while not disturbing our faceless masters.

Are you listening Koch brothers?

I want a stern lecture about electability, responsibility, and the assurance that I can’t ask for too much because some things will never happen—ever . . .

Compromised incrementalism that sacrifices one core principle after another is what really gets my blood pumping!

For the love of God, sell me “meh” wrapped up as hope and make sure I don’t get too demanding when it comes time for results.

All we need is not love or hope or revolution or other silly aspirational ideas.

No, all we need is “meh,” so shut up and go home with your scary socialism and scandalously unprofessional sexiness that powerfully disturbs me—buy a pantsuit for Christ’s sake!