OK if all she put out was one tweet, then she has in fact dropped it. I wish she had weighed the matter before tweeting. Is she going to move the needle in the right direction or in the wrong direction with her comment? I don’t see a plus to this from the Democratic side- the last thing we need is to give something for the tightie righties to say “see? Democrats hate Jesus”. I think it doesn’t make those few people in the middle want to move left, it anything it drives them away. So the sponsors are terrible people, I agree. But if we condemn positive messages from terrible people, it makes us look intolerant.
The Democrats have spent at least forty years trying to avoid Republicans calling them Jesus-hating crime-loving perverts. They try this through a mix of self-censorship, apologies, and distancing themselves from anyone who says anything even the tiniest bit controversial.
In the past forty years, have Republicans stopped calling Democrats Jesus-hating crime-loving perverts?
They have not.
I’m unconvinced that continuing this strategy is wise.
Did you see Boebert’s tweet about the Super bowl?
They don’t need anything to say that, they just lie and make stuff up. It really doesn’t make a difference.
So, if someone condemns the “Boys need men in their lives” commercial, and the OP is all up in arms about how liberals hate men and don’t think that they should be a part of raising children, would you side with the right wing and tell those criticising a message from terrible people to shut up, as you are demanding of AOC?
Depends on what side you are on. If you want the Democrats to retreat and be useless and unwilling to take a stand on anything, ever, then it’s a great strategy.
OTOH, if you want any sort of social change or progress, “dropping it” whenever you may offend those who deliberately take your words out of context and misrepresent them is a losing proposition.
All of this fear as to how the right will react to anything that is said by the left is self defeating.
She did weigh the matter. She thought something like, “Hey, these assholes are trying to make fascism look benign. I should call them out for that.”
And to the extent that a single Tweet, that no one will remember in a week, moves the needle at all, this Tweet moved it in the right direction.
There’s an agenda, alright, but it’s a lot more basic than “suppress the gays”, or so I suspect. The evangelical churches, especially the Southern Baptist Convention, have been pushing evangelism hard in the past ten years or so, as they’re watching church membership decline. Especially among the 18 - 30 demographic, who are turned off by the evangelicals’ weaponization of Christianity, political partisanship, and homophobia, as well as the burgeoning sexual abuse scandal in the SBC. The “spiritual-but-not-religious” crowd is the fastest-growing segment of the American religious landscape, and “He Gets Us” is an attempt to lure them in. That Super Bowl ad was exactly that, an ad; it’s meant to get butts in pews and bux in collection plates.
Oh, absolutely agreed. The issue, of course, is that this ad campaign suggests those churches are hoping to attract those young “spiritual-but-not-religious” people, specifically by obscuring who’s behind the ads, and thus downplaying the other parts of their philosophy and agenda.
I don’t know about that.
The progressives will, and the right probably will, too. But the self styled “centrist” tone police will keep on about it long after everyone else has moved on.
Yep, just an ordinary ad.
They’re just trying to recruit people.
The fascist organization is just trying to recruit people. No reason to to be concerned. Move along. Nothing to see.
Definitely. In a year or two, it will be “I don’t like AOC – remember when she called some ad (or Christians) fascist?”
By then it will be, “AOC said that Jesus is a fascist.” with lots of people bending over backwards to claim that that is what she really meant.
Exactly. The whole concern-troll campaign* of “oh it was misguided for AOC to claim that this ad is fascist!” ultimately exists only to spread a distorted picture of what she said and meant.
Her meaning is perfectly clear: the benignity of the ad’s content is a smokescreen for the fascist attitudes of its sponsors.
* Not that I’m saying anyone in this thread is deliberately concern-trolling or misrepresenting AOC’s words, just that the campaign has been effective enough to have sucked in some well-intentioned people. These people encounter the propaganda about “AOC called this ad fascist!” and assume that it’s a spontaneous reaction reflecting how most people naturally interpreted her statement, rather than a concerted PR effort to misinterpret her statement.
And her calling Jesus a fascist will be cited as the main reason for any Democratic election loss anywhere in the country. Don’t forget that part.
Slightly raising an eyebrow at how by this point in the thread it’s the “centrists” who are the threat…
They’re not actual centrists, they’re Enlightened Centrists. Sort of like how Nice Guys aren’t actually very nice.
Not real centrists, but “centrists” who think the right answer has to be somewhere in between the Dems and Republicans, no matter how crazy the Republicans get. No one in this thread, but some here seem to have fallen for the propaganda.
Yeah, but I wish politicians didn’t feel the need to weigh in on everything. I seriously doubt that, had she refrained, anyone would have said, “I wonder what OAC thinks about this?” If it’s important enough, introduce a bill, hold hearings, or issue an official statement.
I like her. I think she is a powerful speaker who has a bright future in leadership of some sort. I can’t recall ever disagreeing with her. Yet, I still wish she’d trash her twitter account (and all other politicians would do the same)
Don’t confuse “centrists” with “moderates”. Moderates avoid extreme positions. Centrism is a posture of taking whatever position is exactly between the two poles. But in reality their critiques of the right are aesthetic, while their critiques of the left are ideological.
This is proved by their constant warnings that they’re being pushed rightward by left extremism, yet right-wing extremism never seems to push them anywhere. Moderates are legitimately cautious or indifferent or under-informed. Centrists on the other hand are very much right-wingers who pretend they aren’t right-wingers.
And they understand very well that most people aren’t fooled; they take great pleasure in playing the non-denial game of “what, me a conservative? prove your accusation, sir!”
Agreed (mostly). I enjoy her Twitter account quite a bit. (Well, I did enjoy it before it got deboosted). She gets into a lot of slapfights that are satisfying to see, but probably don’t help anything.
But neither the ad, nor the website, points people to the direction of the SBC or AoG or Evangelical Churches… someone could just as easily walk into an Episcopalian Church after watching it. If someone watched and assumed that progressive churches were behind it, they’d go to those religious institutions, no?
Oh, no question they’re looking to spread their hateful version of Christianity, none at all; I certainly didn’t mean to imply their agenda is innocent. Just that their first, pressing concern is stanching the hemorrhage, and getting their membership numbers back up. Og forbid they admit that most Americans, even most American Christians, reject their hate-cult. If people aren’t flocking to their Jesus, the solution is to Jesus harder.
But we all know now who’s behind the campaign, don’t we? It’s generated buzz, and led to media coverage that didn’t have to dig too deep to discover who’s funding HGU. The Hobby Lobby guy publically announced his donation.