The New Left’s New Narcissists

[Riddick]

Edited & abridged from Paul Kengor's article:

Conservatives, remember how we complained 20 years ago about our government schools and their toxic self-esteem movement — the latest Deweyan fad of the day? We feared it was coddling and creating a nation of mediocrities puffed up with overinflated pride. Well, welcome to the egotistical results. The children of the self-esteem saps are now seeking affirmation and taking power, and (not surprisingly) with a striking arrogant ignorance.

Proclaiming his Presidential run announcement “a defining moment of truth for this country,” Beto O’Rourke exudes a steady certainty that the electorate will not be able to get enough of him. Part childish, part girlish, he smacks of an American version of Justin Trudeau — i.e., a train-wreck.

At 29 years old, with no life experience beyond college, waitressing, and bartending, one marvels at the sense of self-omniscient confidence of this singular woman we’ve all been waiting for: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Vowing no less than a fundamental transformation of history’s most extraordinary nation, she bears the wisdom of a thousand Ruths, a thousand Solomons, albeit one who has never met a payroll.

Typifying the new narcissism of the New Left, Beto and “AOC” are two shiny kids in the left’s ideological candy-store, clamoring for attention among the progressive kiddies who fawn over them like prom-king and prom-queen. They bask in the attention.

They also typify its dimwittery with their inane statements condemning capitalism. At a coffee shop at a presidential-campaign stop in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, Beto airheadedly referred to capitalism, and specifically American capitalism, as “racist,” a distinctively human trait not typically applied to an economic ideology — but no doubt something Beto would have learned at Columbia University.

“It is clearly an imperfect, unfair, unjust and racist capitalist economy,” surmised Mr. O’Rourke.

Shame on him. Such is the slop that passes as enlightened thinking in our silly universities, which Beto and Ocasio-Cortez are complete products of. And yet, true to form, Beto hastened to pander and add generously: “I consider myself a capitalist.” Well, then, by his own standard, Beto is a racist.

For her part, at something called the “South by Southwest Conference & Festivals” in Austin, recent college grad Ocasio-Cortez held forth on the "irredeemable" vagaries of capitalism and the virtues of “democratic socialism.” Explained Ocasio-Cortez, “When we talk about ideas like democratic socialism, it means putting democracy and society first.”

Does she know that isn’t how Marx or Engels or Lenin or Trotsky would define democratic socialism, nor even Ocasio-Cortez’s organization, the Democratic Socialists of America? Probably not. But neither do most of those drooling over her.

Your call as to which of these two is Dumb, and which is Dumber. These are the new stars of the new left, of the new Democratic Party.