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Notes -
We Won
On Sunday Morning, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on ABC's This Week and proclaimed, "Woke 1 was crazy". The immediate context was AOC defending Wisconsin DSA governor candidate Francesca Hong, and so a lot of people are clowning on her for handwaving away everything that happened in 2015-2022. To the extent that this is about who you should vote for in the Wisconsin governor's race, I agree with the criticism, but I want to take a step back and appreciate how far we've come.
Think back to remember how it felt in the dark days of 2020 and 2021. It was far from clear that the reign of terror would ever end. Every week another subreddit or Twitter poster was banned. Facebook was removing posts supporting Kyle Rittenhouse as a policy. "Abolish the Police" was treated as a serious (if aspirational) policy proposal. Above everything else, the worst part was the psychological damage, the feeling that the entire world was going insane; that it was just you and a few guys from a Harry Potter fanfiction forum spinoff who were capable of the miniscule amount of critical thinking required to know that removing Aunt Jemima's face from bottles of pancake syrup did absoutely nothing to help black people.
The fact that even the left-wing of the Democratic Party is campaigning on health care, tax policy, and Palestine instead of racial humiliation is a big deal. There is a temptation to equate "woke" (more specifically "woke 1") with generic liberal Democrat stuff, but that's not really true. Conversely, it becomes easy to overlook some of Trump's greatest accomplishments. Turning DEI and Critical Race Theory into curse words and ending affirmative action were huge. People said it couldn't be done, and then they were done so fast that everyone forgot by the midterms.
As an aside: I never understood the people calling AOC unattractive, and still don't. I find the "Zendaya is ugly" thing easier to understand (not that I consider her unattractive either).
I suppose that’s a fair example of personality de-glamming the package.
Look at her mannerisms and overall presentation: tightly pulled-back hair and wears a coat, the overall style broadcasts “girlboss.” A lot of men, especially conservative men, find that combination either deeply unappealing or actively off-putting. And she's basically the mascot of woke polticis, which actively celebrates those traits, treats male preference as something to be overridden or mocked, and works hard to render any criticism of them low-status and socially costly. It’s a mismatch between desirable and celebrated preferences, backed by a status hierarchy that insists the mismatch is your problem.
She's still attractive in a girl next door kind of way, but that is the only vibe that would make her appealing. She's not hot enough that her girlbossing becomes tolerable.
And it cuts both ways, just look at the many dating threads here. You see the same recurring theme vis-a-vis female attraction, the asymmetric tolerance levels for misogyny displayed by incels vs hot Chadonis.
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