Signs of the Times

Yoho told AOC she was "disgusting" for suggesting that poverty and unemployment are driving a spike in crime in NYC during coronavirus.

"You are out of your freaking mind," Yoho told her.

AOC told Yoho he was being "rude."

"Fucking bitch," he said.https://t.co/ZgU9rauJez

— Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou (@misyrlena) July 21, 2020

My sympathies are with AOC in all things political.  They are also with her in the way she comports herself.  It's a posture that clearly annoys people who like their world uncluttered by complex truths.  Why am I not surprised Ted Yoho is one of those poeple?

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) was coming down the steps on the east side of the Capitol on Monday, having just voted, when he approached Ocasio-Cortez, who was ascending into the building to cast a vote of her own.

In a brief but heated exchange, which was overheard by a reporter, Yoho told Ocasio-Cortez she was "disgusting" for recently suggesting that poverty and unemployment are driving a spike in crime in New York City during the coronavirus pandemic.

"You are out of your freaking mind," Yoho told her.

Ocasio-Cortez shot back, telling Yoho he was being "rude."

The two then parted ways. Ocasio-Cortez headed into the building, while Yoho, joined by Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), began descending toward the House office buildings. A few steps down, Yoho offered a parting thought to no one in particular.

"Fucking bitch," he said.

At the risk of overstating the significance of this encounter (a patch of ice doth not a winter make, and all that), I've noticed over and over again that a moral stance, even a reasoned principal stance that looks at the consequences of actions macro as well as micro, will annoy some poeple to the point of anger, if not violence.  That anger is always inchoate, and is usually targeted at the messenger since you can't shoot the message.  And it usually means you're stating an uncomfortable truth.  Of course all truths worth stating are uncomfortable ones.  They point out we aren't as aligned with the Good as we think we are, and we don't like that disjunct being visible.  So where did this encounter start?

At issue were comments Ocasio-Cortez made earlier in the month during a virtual town hall with the mothers of two Black men, Eric Garner and Ramarley Graham, who were killed in recent years by New York police officers.

During the event, Ocasio-Cortez was asked about gun violence in New York, which has spiked this summer as the nation's largest city — which was clobbered by the coronavirus — slowly reopens from a months-long lockdown.

Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx, has long advocated for policies that cut police budgets and shift that funding to education, mental health and other social services. In her response, she stuck to that theme, suggesting the surge in crime stems from the economic hardship facing New York's poorest communities — and a failure of policymakers to fund programs aimed at leveling economic disparities.

“Crime is a problem of a diseased society, which neglects its marginalized people," she said during the July 9 event. "Policing is not the solution to crime.”

Ocasio-Cortez went on to propose that "economic desperation" caused by the coronavirus pandemic — combined with glitches in the delivery of federal stimulus checks and unemployment payments — has helped trigger the crime spike.

"Maybe this has to do with the fact that people aren't paying their rent and are scared to pay their rent, and so they go out and they need to feed their child and they don't have money," she said. "So ... they're put in a position where they feel like they either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry that night."

I have to say that my neighborhood has never devolved into violence and violent crime during good times or bad.  There are shootings near me, on occasion; many more than in all the years I spent growing up in the very white side of a very small town.  But there have actually been more robberies and at least one mass shooting on the other side of the freeway from me, the "rich" side of town.  I don't raise this to challenge AOC's assertion, but to support it.  I've seen wealthy people driven to violence because the strain of staying wealthy, or the fear of losing their wealth to an economic downturn, brought out the worst in them.  We can easily overstate the connection between economic security and violence, but we shouldn't understate it, either.  There are grounds for a public policy discussion here, in other words.  But that's not a discussion Ted Yoho wants to engage.

In fact, this is the level of engagement you often get on topics like this:

“There’s a big difference between shoplifting and cold-blooded murder, and for her not to know the difference is frankly astonishing,” former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) said last week on Fox News.

Yes, yes there is; and AOC knew that.  People who are scared to pay their rent and don't have any money might well resort to shoplifting; but that's not to say they will also resort to "cold-blooded murder."  Besides, if crime is up in New York City, which crimes are up?  Should we assume it's all "cold-blooded murder" because NYC and TV?  I know the 1970's era view of NYC is still popular in the media (from fiction to politics), but is it accurate?

Ted Yoho should be ashamed of himself.  Any Southerner knows that's no way to talk to a lady.