Ian Haworth: Fake Handcuffs For A Real Clown

All politicians are complete narcissists who relish the opportunity to make every celebratory event or horrendous crisis actually about themselves, whether that be hosting a winning sports team for a White House luncheon, or rushing to the site of a natural disaster to look concerned, hug victims, and leave.

But for our modern influencer-esque class of politicians, they’ve taken things one step further, with their entire existence being an act of theatrical make believe — a bizarre cultural cosplay, where the most politically-advantageous narrative is simply created out of thin air with shameless glee.

The most recent example is, of course, the performance of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others outside the United States Supreme Court. While being escorted from a protest by a police officer, Ocasio-Cortez pretended to be handcuffed, placing her hands behind her back while also flipping her hair for the cameras, pausing only to raise a fist in supposed defiance before returning to her faux state of imprisonment. Several other politicians appeared to do the same.

To put it bluntly, to call Ocasio-Cortez and her comrades clowns would be an insult to clowns.

Washington Free Beacon @FreeBeacon

AOC pretended to be in handcuffs when she was escorted away from the Supreme Court

July 19th 2022

What makes this example immeasurably worse is that Ocasio-Cortez was making a mockery of the act of being arrested. Given that she is an open critic of law enforcement and a vocal advocate for justice “reform,” surely she would be equipped with an empathetic understanding of the reality faced by those who are arrested? After all, for most, being arrested is more than a social media boost before driving home in a leased Tesla.

And then there’s the mainstream media, who happily embraced the false narrative being created by Ocasio-Cortez in real time. Images of Ocasio-Cortez — with her hands behind her back — spread like wildfire, with outlet after outlet reporting on her arrest. Suddenly, the context they claim to adore seemed so unimportant. I wonder why?

The reason the mainstream media casually embraced what would be condemned as a “shocking right-wing misinformation campaign endangering our brave law enforcement officers near the site of the January 6 insurrection” if a conservative politician pretended to be in chains is simple: they rely on the notion that the Democratic Party represents those outside of the establishment — a revolutionary class pushing back against conservative-dominated institutions.

But what they fail to acknowledge is that those days are long gone, with the American Left now controlling almost every institution that exists in modern life. The President of the United States is a Democrat, as are the leaders of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The media is widely controlled by Democrats, including the field of journalism, and this control extends to technology, “science,” medicine, sport, education, and art.

Think of any American institution, and it’s likely that it is either controlled — or at least heavily influenced — by the very people who would vote for Ocasio-Cortez in a heartbeat.

You can’t be a brave revolutionary if you would be the target of your own revolt.

That is why figures like Ocasio-Cortez resort to insipid displays of false victimhood: because insipid displays of false victimhood are all they have left…except for immeasurable amounts of power, of course.

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