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Dear Leftist: Stop Attacking AOC

We should not do the billionaires’ work of dividing us. They have enough money to do it for themselves.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) and Bernie Sanders (right) on the tour at Mullett Arena in Tempe, Arizona,

Recently a Facebook friend of mine—whom I’ve actually known since before Mark Zuckerberg started at Harvard, and whose political activism I hold in high regard—surprised me by posting an article entitled “AOC is a genocidal con artist.” I can’t tell you what the article said because I’d be as likely to read an article proclaiming that “AOC is a lying communist child-murderer” as I would that one.

And really, the particulars of the article concern me less than the spectacularly myopic political stance on display. Political —allowing smaller or infrequent differences to outweigh broader agreement on larger issues—is always going to be a hazard for a group of intensely committed people whose concern with an issue extends down to the smallest detail. It is, however, a tendency we really can’t afford to fall into if we aspire to actually achieve goals like winding down the nation’s war machine or supplanting our corporate-dominated economy with a democratically controlled one.