PhilipTheBucket

Okay. I'm upset that people are using this absurdly skewed framing of this whole event and trying to blow it up into the whole of AOC's Israel stance and ignoring the backdrop of her entire vigorous opposition to Israel in both word and deed. Since I'm upset, can I come to your house and throw a bunch of paint over your doors and windows and write slogans about you? I feel like that would be a good way to "remind" you about good principles of political progress and online discourse.

Or is that something we're only doing to prominent successful leftists when we're upset, and that scenario would be a completely different story?

It was a very, very early instance of the horseshit lie that is easy and bite-sized, and sort of reality adjacent, where anyone who's trying to explain the reality sounds like they're making some kind of lame excuse and is easy to shout down and dismiss. In retrospect, it should have been an all-hands-on-deck emergency to make sure that strategy didn't work and take hold.

Someone whose primary purpose is the cred and self-aggrandization, and not the political impact

The bill providing funding for Israel, she voted against. Pretty sure I mentioned that.

So further if your metric for being able to support a vigorously left-wing politician who's been voting against aid for Israel, calling it a genocide, yelling about it on the house floor, and so on and so on, including pushing for justice for working people whose voice is basically nonexistent within the US congress, is that never once do they say one dumb thing on Twitter, then I would wonder who in or out of politics you would be willing to support. This is like the people who are yelling about how Mamdani is a "fake leftist" and as a good leftist they can't support him because he's just a fake for the Democrats and they won't get fooled again...

Why are you arguing that the person burning that police car must be "progressive"?

I mean, I'm not real into extended arguments about what words mean what things. The main point I took is that this kind of political vandalism is much more commonly the tactic of right-wing agitators, especially when the target is conveniently one of the highest-profile left people in power in government and the grounds for the attack are so flimsy and nonsensical from a standpoint of actually trying for change for the Palestinian people by someone who cares about Palestinian people.

I agree with that point. If you want to get into extended semantics to distract from that argument into some kind of hair-splitting about particular words, I'm going to take it as you don't really have any substantive way to disagree with it.

So, we're far shy of "good" when it comes to her voting record, and there's plenty of issues to be legitimately upset over.

Can you name two or three, without changing the subject and getting all aggressive and pivoting to some other argument instead?

(Not this vote, this is horseshit as I've explained elsewhere in the comments.)

She basically just does whatever Russia tells her to, and if there are no orders, she wanders around like the village drunk causing trouble. I don't really know why she got involved in this particular thing, and maybe this sounds like raving paranoia, but I actually think her being set up to introduce an amendment which could be used to criticize leftist politicians for being "pro-genocide" no matter which way they voted on it is a moderately likely possibility. I mean, look at what's happening, anyone who wants to do that with it is able to do a pretty effective job with it.

If the car was instead an AOC campaign office, then yes, I would wonder if this was a Trump supporter, because it would make a pretty decent amount of sense for them to hate her. For a pro-Palestine person to hate AOC makes literally zero sense whatsoever at all.

Edit: Wait... pro-Mexican person? That's not the Palestinian flag. What are you even talking about?

Maybe. It's real hard for me not to notice the pattern recognition of "Kamala Harris supports genocide!" "AOC supports genocide!" "Bernie supports genocide!", basically literally any person in American politics who's trying to do some kind of leftist thing with any level of popularity, there's some kind of bizarre moon logic whereby they must support genocide and we've got to start screaming it at them and never support them again.

I will agree with you that some stupid features of the left tend to provide some nice dry powder for this kind of thing but I don't remember this kind of thing happening in American politics any time previous to the social-media-mass-shilling age of political discourse. Like circa 2000, there was a super vigorous protest movement, but it was aimed at shadowy neoliberal quasi-governments, fascist police, war machines... you know, the enemy. No one was out screaming at Al Gore for destroying the climate and throwing red paint at his offices.

We're so cooked it's not even funny.

We've been through worse than this. You're not wrong, but also, this is not the end of the story, never has been.

Here's her vote against the appropriations bill in full, including both the offensive and defensive weapons systems funding: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025212

Search the comments for "Hobson's choice" for a more complete explanation

It's more bad-faith horseshit to get leftists to destroy one another, which a lot of leftists love to lap up because their critical thinking isn't real strong and they love nothing more than being "holier than" some kind of previously respected icon.

MTG's amendment left intact the funding for offensive weapons, but cut the funding for defensive weapons for Israel. So there is literally no way AOC could win. Leaving aside the fact that it was a kooky MTG amendment that was never going to pass in the first place... If she voted for the amendment, then everyone who is currently screaming that she's a fake leftist who supports genocide could say "See? SHE VOTED FOR KEEPING ISRAEL'S FUNDING INTACT, SHE SUPPORTS GENOCIDE!" Since she voted against it, they are currently screaming "See? SHE VOTED AGAINST DEFUNDING ISRAEL, SHE SUPPORTS GENOCIDE!"

It's just more can't-win, let's-eat-the-leftest-person-because-we're-super-leftist-I-promise horseshit.

Here's AOC voting against funding for Israel, in an actual bill that was actually a non-Hobson's-choice opportunity to vote against aid for Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/biden-meets-with-aoc-in-wake-of-her-vote-against-military-aid-for-israel/

And her voting against the actual funding bill providing aid to Israel: https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2025212

I've also seen people say Bernie is a Zionist, because he says "ethnic cleansing" instead of "genocide." Both Bernie and AOC's vocal opposition to genocide doesn't matter to these people. Actually, it's that genuine leftism that they represent that makes them dangerous, and worthwhile to engineer cooked-up horseshit to use to get other people to turn on them, so the Marco Rubios of the world can take over un-contested.