Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs. James Joyce

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will distort anything to deliver her distorted anti-capitalist message. She is one slick cookie.

Of course, now with her new attack on idioms, she can claim that she is not a "cookie."

Recently, she attacked the phrase, "to lift yourself up by a bootstrap."

Important point by @AOC: "It’s a physical impossibility to lift yourself up by a bootstrap."

She's right. 60% of all wealth in America is inherited.

“Pull yourself up by the bootstraps” is a cruel joke. pic.twitter.com/UNmo0ttHwu

— Robert Reich (@RBReich) February 5, 2020

Puh-leeze, AOC is that your best game?

And, yes you can attack me for using the word "game."

Bottom line: AOC is attempting to ignore the part of language whereby idioms exist that are not to be taken literally.

To make her distorted case, she even goes so far as to raise from the dead and use the term, "pulling one's bootstraps," the way it was used centuries ago rather than going with the way it is used now. Thus, ignoring that words and phrases evolve over time. Maybe she doesn't believe in evolution?

And, by the way, someone who might actually be AOC's equal when it comes to using the English language demonstrated how the phrase is currently used.

The Oxford English Dictionary cites James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) as its earliest example of the phrase in a way that illustrates the contemporary meaning: “There were ... others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps.”

-RW