A Response to AOC’s Visit with Conservative Voters

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I happened upon this video by More Perfect Union. It features Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visiting conservative, presumably Trump voting people impacted by the construction of data centers in their communities. It’s a fifteen-minute video that’s worth a watch. So, I figured I would offer a quick two-cents version of what I thought as I watched.

Now one view is that this is just a photo-op to advance the aspirations of this nationally known political figure. It may even be a vehicle to help “moderate” her reputation for a future political campaign. I’ll concede to this likelihood. That’s just politics and whereas it is reasonable to respond cynically to such performances, as the saying goes, that’s politics. You can’t blame politicians for being politicians.

That’s why, when it comes to politicians and anyone in authority, my rule of thumb is, “listen to what they do.” In AOC’s case, she used this video to announce that she would introduce a bill to impose a moratorium on data center construction. That’s what she said. In fact, she and Senator Bernie Sanders have introduced this legislation (Here it is).

My first thought was, show me the conservative, or especially MAGA politician who has bothered to take time and energy to talk and listen to liberal voters in their own back yards. Show me where they have visited the homes of Democratic voters to get an understanding of the issues, to listen, and to try to rally support from those who otherwise disagree with them politically.

I’m serious! Show me. If there is an example of this happening, I would love to see it. From what I’ve seen, you can barely get a conservative in office to show up for anything other than FoxNoise or some other right-wing safe space.

And yet, here was a lefty politician sitting down in lawn chairs with voters who saw her as “fringe” or someone with whom they would never agree. They sat. They talked to each other. They listened to each other. They treated each other with respect. In doing so they were able to find some common ground. As one gentleman pointed out, AOC may not be his cup of tea, but on the issue of data centers, they agreed.

I submit that if given the time to do the same thing, to sit and speak and listen respectfully to each other, we will find that we agree in substance on most things. If we disagree, it’s often in the particulars, in the nuance of the issues. My theory is that human beings all intrinsically want the same things. We want human connection, to be loved. We want to be able to meet our needs. We want to live our lives unmolested by outside forces. We want to work at something meaningful. We want to contribute to our society in such a way as to make the world a little bit better today than it was yesterday. I first mention this theory in The Revelation of Herman Smiley.¹

Yet a great deal of time, energy, and money is expended to convince millions of us that this is not true. Our media and the algorithms on which they thrive and profit are designed around convincing us that though we may want these things, those people don’t want us to enjoy them. Those people hate us and want to take away our rights and deny us the fundamental values of what it means to be human. On the extreme end is the fascist discourse that we have to dominate those people before they dominate us.

It’s the Great Lie² of the power elite repeated continuously. It is designed to stop the kind of interaction we see in this video. The powerful must keep us divided between an ever more atomized conception of “those people” from “us people.” You can’t trust those people. Your only security is in the loyal embrace of us people. The minute the mass of “we people” sees behind this deception, the power elite must fear for their existence. In the face of the numerically superior Demos³ the position of the power elite is tenuous, if not perilous.

I feel that this video reveals the deception of the Great Lie in the examples of liberal, even leftist discourse used by these “conservative” voters. In a couple of cases, they make the claim that the government should intervene to regulate what the data centers do in the interests of the people. That’s what government is for, protecting the people. The government should also mandate that the companies building these datacenters pay for and repair the damage that has been done. This isn’t the kind of “free market” classical liberalism rebranded as conservative values that the Republican Party spins every election season. This is a progressive liberal, ‘yeah, we like capitalism but come on!” position espoused by contemporary liberals.

The one that caught my attention, however, was the woman who made the claim to having a “right to clean water.”

Whoa. That’s pretty lefty stuff. I mean, it shouldn’t be. In any rational world a concept like a right to clean water should be baseline for any political ideology. Water is the foundation of life. A politics that is contrary to clean water or is even “meh” to the idea of polluting the most important substance on earth should be impossible to promote in any rational polity. Conservative or liberal, we should all be able to agree that we don’t want to drink shit. Yet the political elite would have us believe that this is a contentious issue.

When I watched this video, I did so with the understanding that it was political theater. I have no problem with that, but I will approach such a work with a skeptical, even cynical eye. Regardless, some important truths about the other side of the aisle were revealed.⁴

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Footnotes

1. Look at Part 5: On the Cosmic Voyage ↩︎
2. They are different from us. We are better than they. ↩︎
3. In my work, the Demos is that part of the population that does the real labor that sustains our institutions. ↩︎
4. At least that side of the aisle that is operating in good faith, as these folks in the video seemed to be. I acknowledge that there are those in our political debate who are not honest brokers. They will advance any rhetoric, perpetuate any lie that empowers their particular reference group to the seats of power. We must also acknowledge, that this group currently wields disproportionate power. The reason way is a matter for a different essay. ↩︎