AOC is right about one thing

Over the past year, I probably should have dedicated a weekly column to condemning, laughing at, mocking, and blasting Congress. It certainly deserved it.

Between clownish antics and flagrant corruption, virtually no one respects Congress anymore. If — whatever you may think of January 6 — the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol truly represented an attack on American democracy, then the “seat of our democracy” looks pathetic and is doing more than anyone to undermine its own reputation.

This humiliating decline in legislative esteem has had a devastating impact on the integrity of the once-important “congressional hearing.” Nowadays, we all see through the flimsy pretense of professionalism and know that these hearings are more about promoting hollow showmanship than making progress. They provide our listless representatives with the opportunity to say, “I may not have accomplished anything, but at least I talked about hot-button topics. See? Here’s a video of me in a ~super important~ congressional hearing to prove it.”

This they do, of course, only after editing out the less-than-flattering parts — the fights. The vicious, ugly, and all-around useless fights. 

Entering last week, very few of us, I’m sure, had an insult-laced spat between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (better known as AOC), Majorie Taylor Greene (MTG), and Jasmine Crockett (still waiting for her WWE moniker) on our congressional Bingo cards. But, boy, were we in for a treat!

It all started on Thursday when the perennially smug MTG (to our relief, she ditched the Cruella de Vil-style fur coat) subjected a congressional hearing (ostensibly) about Attorney General Merrick Garland to her totally off-topic questions about Donald Trump’s criminal trial.

“Please tell me what that has to do with [the subject],” Crockett reasonably rejoined — before reason was thrown out the window.

“I don’t think you know what we’re here for,” Greene retorted. “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up your reading.”

“That’s beneath even you,” an unidentified voice cried out. Pandemonium ensued.

That’s when the perenially vapid AOC (to our relief, she ditched the Tax the Rich gown) chimed in, motioning for the committee to strike Greene’s words.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” the indignant representative shrieked. “How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person.”

“Are your feelings hurt?” Greene inquired. “Aww.”

“Oh, girl. Baby girl,” countered AOC. “Don’t even play.”

Miraculously, Greene agreed to strike her words, but she made it a point that she would not apologize. Then, she lobbed another insult.

“Why don’t you debate me?” the not-so-gentle lady from Georgia quipped. “You don’t have enough intelligence.”

Pandemonium… again.

The real zinger arrived moments later when Rep. Crockett, allegedly for “clarification” purposes, wondered aloud what would happen if she insulted a certain fellow committee member’s “bleach blonde, bad-built, butch body.”

At the risk of sounding redundant, I regret to inform you, dear reader, that what followed this cleverly alliterate (but no less childish) slight was, well… more pandemonium.

“Ya’ll wanna play games with me,” she continued, drowned out by the shouting match around her. “Don’t tell me to calm down. Y’all talk noise, and then you can’t take it. Cuz if I come and talk [expletive] about her, y’all gon’ have a problem.”

Wow.

One might wonder if I mistakenly confused the Mean Girls’ screenplay with the congressional record. (I mean, seriously. Who would have guessed that the legislative house once occupied by the likes of John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln would one day echo with low-brow insults such as “Baby girl, don’t even play”?) Unfortunately, no mistake was made: the above words were actually uttered.

The drama spilled over into the weekend when Senator John Fetterman (not exactly a shining exemplar of congressional excellence himself) fittingly compared the feud to an episode of Jerry Springer.

“In the past, I’ve described the U.S. House as The Jerry Springer Show,” he joked. “Today, I’m apologizing to The Jerry Springer Show.”

But this was all too much for AOC, who retaliated, “I understand you likely would not have stood up for your colleague and seem to be confused about racism and misogyny being a ‘both sides’ issue. But I stand up to bullies, instead of becoming one.”

Huh?

Despite this moralizing, angry, and inarticulate rant from Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, I must admit, much to my chagrin, she’s right about one thing: her colleague is a baby. They all are.

A congress that resorts to ad hominem attacks about eyelashes, butch bodies, and bleach-blonde hair is a congress full of immature, emotional babies — or, at best, gossipy, insecure high schoolers.

I do not say this to stoop to their level but simply to point out that professionalism, decency, intellect, and reason are all but foreign to the U.S. Capitol.

“The intelligence of our leaders hasn’t just declined, it has plummeted like a meteor out of the sky and formed a crater in the ground that goes five miles deep into the Earth,” described The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh. “But it doesn’t have to be this way. We know that, because it never was this way until now. There was a time when our nation was led by men — and it used to be mostly men, let’s face it — who were articulate, intelligent, dignified, composed, and most importantly, boring.”

Well, Congress certainly isn’t boring anymore. But in exchange for drab, arid statesmen, we have ushered in an era of blathering name-callers and noise-makers who only purport to advance our values.

It’s time to radically reform the entire broken system. Enough pretending like these clowns can actually fix the country. No, they cannot even make it through a congressional hearing.

With an Article V convention, “We The People” can do the job that Congress refuses to do. The federal government will never limit its own power, jurisdiction, or terms of office. Instead, the American people must do it, and Convention of States — built on the Founders’ constitutional framework for curing federal dysfunction — provides the way forward. So, if you’ve had enough of “mean girls” running Congress like a high school cafeteria, sign the Convention of States petition below!