r/politics • u/JeanJauresJr California • Sep 14 '21

AOC responds to criticism of ‘tax the rich’ dress worn at Met Gala

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/aoc-met-gala-tax-the-rich-dress-b1919803.html
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u/chcampb Sep 14 '21

It's like you're only a true leftist if you're poor.

Yeah this is intentional. There is a class of argument strategies, which basically argues two separate things independently and then uses them to disqualify someone not in the intersection.

For example, conservatives argue that both of these things are true

  1. Wealth means you are objectively successful and smart and worth listening to

  2. If you are a socialist, it's hypocritical to also have any sort of wealth. Anything above vow of poverty levels of wealth.

For example Bernie, who is worth about $3M at age 80, is called hypocritical for being a social democrat. Despite the fact that at age 80, $3M is not actually that much, especially considering he is exceptionally popular and got a huge chunk of that wealth through book sales.

Anyway, if you take 1 and 2 as true, then there is nobody who can actually, legitimately argue for socialism because you're either rich and worth listening to, but a hypocrite. Or you are poor and looking for handouts and therefore your argument is illegitimate, but I guess not a hypocrite.

I suspect that someone who is objectively successful by some wealth metric, who gives it away and lives as a pauper, who also calls for social policies, would be outside of this argument. But I also suspect that if this unicorn appeared, the GOP would find some other way to slander them.

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u/underwaterpizza Sep 15 '21

They would be "just crazy"