The whole problem with socialism is that it’s like sharing a banana with a gorilla. You never get a bite of the banana. And you will probably get mauled anyway.
Young, socialist sensation Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got herself elected to Congress on the rosiest of promises about how the government can solve all your problems. Just give her all your money.
In gangster movies, this is called “robbery.” In politics, it’s called “governing.” This is why Miss Ocasio-Cortez and all the other socialist central planners are drawn to the government in the first place.
Who can blame them, really? That’s where all the money is. I mean, that is why criminals rob banks and not bathrooms.
Likewise, socialist central planners are drawn to government because that is where all the money flows and all the power resides.
But to keep the whole thing going, you have to con the people into thinking it is working for them. This is why socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders — an old and experienced man — goes to such lengths to hide his own high living, private jet travel, and multiple dachas. After all, the lavish lifestyle of socialist luminaries such as Adolf Hitler does not sit well with the American electorate struggling to pay all the bills.
Miss Ocasio-Cortez is young and unwise. So she flaunts it.
So thrilled she was to be included in a swanky Manhattan fashion party with the uber-rich that she ordered up a tailored dress that gripped her back end the way she wants to grip all the money you earned last week. You have to almost admire her for her honesty — and stupidity — for flaunting how socialism really works.
Under socialism, central planners like her go to $30,000-ticket parties with rich and powerful people while schlubs like you get to sit at home and watch on your crappy television.
She gets the whole banana. You get nothing. But, as always with socialism, there is the “big lie.”
In Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s case, she was wearing it on the booty end of her expensive fashion dress. “Tax the rich,” she had scrawled in red ink in a font that was described as that of the Chick-fil-a logo. Apparently, in perfect keeping with socialist kleptocracy, Miss Ocasio-Cortez stole the design from a California street artist named “The Velvet Bandit.”
Yet, all freedom-loving Americans know what to do when you hear a politician scream, “Tax the rich!” Grab your wallet and run!
But it is not just all the money that socialist central planners demand. They want a monopoly on everything, including all the speech and all the comedians.
Take the recently departed Norm Macdonald, who ended life in a tie with cancer earlier this week. The crazy Left and hopelessly unfunny despised him. Partly because he was truly funny, and they are not. But mainly because he refused to go along with their grand, central planned visions.
One of the funniest clips going around is where Mr. Macdonald went on The View twenty years ago and casually suggested that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster. Because he refused to stop talking about it, one of the hysterical ladies got up and physically tried muzzling him by covering his mouth with her hand.
Barbara Walters, who was old even then, squawked like a flustered hen who had been rousted from her nest while trying to lay an egg.
Mr. Macdonald famously got fired from Saturday Night Live because he insisted on telling jokes about OJ Simpson killing his wife even though the Juice was big golfing buddies with the head honcho at NBC.
So, they fired him.
Mr. Macdonald was hardly some kind of conservative. He told wildly offensive jokes about 9/11 and mercilessly lampooned 1996 Republican presidential nominee Robert Dole.
Mr. Macdonald’s crime was his refusal to pander. He seemed to love most when his comedy routine bombed because it was another opportunity for him to refuse to bow to the audience. He reveled in the awkwardness and the powerlessness of the mob to stop him.
Similarly, he refused to pander to the socialist central planners who control Hollywood and the media.
After the January 6 riot in the Capitol, Mr. Macdonald tweeted out a picture of protesters wandering through the building in a tidy line, careful to keep within the cordoned walkways.
“I loved when the violent terrorists made sure to respect the velvet ropes in Statuary Hall,” he wrote.
Mr. Macdonald spent a great deal of time wondering about a powerful God but was no preacher or politician. He was just wise enough to despise mortals here on earth clamoring for so much power over other mortals’ lives.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at the Washington Times.