Let’s play “Choose Your Own Adventure.”
Do you remember the “Choose your own adventure” children’s books? They were mostly fantasy books, where in every chapter, you’d have two options on how to act, and then flip the pages to where you learn the outcome of your decision.
It’d be like “There’s a knock. If you open the door, go to page 35” or “You jump out of the window to escape pirates to to page 42.” These books were a weird way to learn about life, but useful, because they tell you that seemingly decent decisions might lead to kidnapping by pirates. (For readers older or younger than me, I am not making this crazy shit up, it was a thing in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
So, Choose Your Own Adventure, 2024. “Genocide, or Beyond.”
In 2018, in a lone bright spot during the dark age of the Trump era, you pull off an incredible, shocking electoral win, after tirelessly trodding through your district, door to door, explaining your vision for a better, fairer America.
The results come in. Your beautiful face lights up with ecstasy on the TV screen; it turns out that you walloped your opponent against all odds, your opponent being a dead-on-the-inside Democrat party hack, who hasn’t given a fuck about his constituents for years.
(Obviously, I’m talking about AOC. I was having dinner with my friend Meredith, when our phones lit up. “Holy shit. AOC won!” she exclaimed. I hadn’t even been paying attention to the race. She wasn’t in my district and her win seemed impossible. But, it happened.)
Let’s say you’re said politician, six years later. You’ve done great stuff. Really good. You haven’t been perfect, but you’ve done great stuff. There are tireless efforts to paint you as a bimbo, but you shut them down by coming better prepared to House meetings and asking smarter, more articulate questions, than everyone else. Because you’re very smart and charismatic, and not 100 years old, you wield social media like a samurai sword to knock out your haters, who end up looking like bitter losers who are mad they can’t date you.
Some time passes. You’re 34. In eight years, it might make sense to run for President, because you’ll be Bill Clinton’s age when he won.
Understandably, you edge closer to the Democratic establishment. They give you a prime speaking spot at the DNC conference. You give a rousing, beautiful speech.
Then you tell the lie that, among other things, Kamala Harris is working tirelessly to cement a ceasefire in Gaza.
“She is as committed, to our reproductive and civil rights, as she is to taking on! Corporate! Greed!” you (AOC) shouts. “And she is working tirelessly! To secure a ceasefire in Gaza! To bring! The! Hostages! Home!”
This is a lie. It just is. Harris’s job right now is campaigning. Antony Blinken, whose actual job it is to secure a ceasefire, goes to the Middle East, meets with Netanyahu, gives press conferences looking like a defeated, dead, grey worm, and no ceasefire is reached, because Netanyahu has no reason to want a ceasefire.
You’re AOC. You’re smart. You know this.
Because you’re very online, you likely see this video. It’s a video of a toddler with his skull half blown off, the remnants of his brains and scalp bobbing up and down as a screaming man carries his corpse. There’s a glimpse of half of his beautiful face, what’s left of it. And, while you’re currently a “childless cat lady,” in the parlance of J.D. Vance, you’re human and you know kids and were once a kid yourself and your best friends have kids, and you love them.
Choose your own adventure. Do you: break with the Democratic party establishment on this (especially given that the DNC will jettison you the second you come near to enacting progressive policy anyway), or do you sell your soul for short-term political advancement while abetting genocide?
Flip to page 35 to find out!