AOC and I were wrong (and why it should or should not matter)

The other day Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez conflated the names of two economists “John Maynard Keynes” and “Milton Friedman” into “Milton Keynes.” 

Milton Bradley was unavailable for comment.

This was particularly embarrassing since she had touted her economics degree in the process of her off the cuff talk. My social media was full of LOL abut the mistake: fair enough. This is funny and if you are no fan of this rising star’s politics (as I am not), then the temptation to draw . . .strong conclusions. . .is almost irresistible.

Everyone should resist, unless (if parent of more than one child) they have not called one child by the name of the other child. You should resist unless you have never known something and yet persisted in mislabeling the thing you know. I have a relative who sent me to X  though she meant to send me to Y, she was thinking X, but said Y.

Evidently our memory will often pull the file for “children” and dump the first name that comes to mind. If we are very unlucky, we will pull the name of “creatures we love” and call our friend by the name of our dog or so research suggests.

This . . .I have done. 

If you speak for a living, you do this in embarrassing contexts. I have thought about the Russian Royal family for years, wrote a novel about them, but once (in a different kind of mind blip) called the Tsarina “Alexandria”,  a city in Egypt. I have defined the synthetic and analytic distinction (correctly) and then reversed the terms. I call my children the wrong names (“LD, Mary Kate, Ian, Jane” is not one person, but all the children. I hate doing this). At the College and School, we bought three buildings that the previous owners confusedly named “Mays, West, 3.” I know the building I mean to say and sometimes reverse “West” with “3.” Recently, having written a book chapter on Aristotelian causation, linked to a correct definition, I then reversed primary and secondary causation.

Sigh.

That sounds like a lot, like anybody who makes a living speaking and is often recorded, I am glad there are not more cases! And believe me, LOL on me.

LOL, but Maybe No More 

Poking fun at a pol is a good republican virtue. Democracy thrives when we do not take our leaders too seriously. Most of us need a mild deflation of the ego. Making mistakes like this  is certainly good for me, my blushes on such mistakes are not really the actions I regret.

Things are less funny, if the LOL turns nasty. People who reverse or jumble names all their life are suddenly judged as losing it when they reach their seventies. That can be brutal. Folks with less “education” are assumed to be “stupid,” even if they really know, and can be shown to know. Minority people have been betrayed as “pretenders” to knowledge they do not really have, the Jim Crow stereotype.  As a result, particular care should be taken with any mockery that plays to such stereotypes. One need not be humorless to be charitable

AOC will never get elected to any office with my vote. I cannot imagine not voting for her opponent. Yet she has accomplished amazing things in a short time, building a movement, innovating on policy. She is an outstanding communicator. She has bad ideas, but she has an economics degree from a fine school On this, given how common the phenomena is, she deserves a chuckle and a “there but for the grace of God, go I. . . “

I hope my party works as hard as AOC.  Personally I think there are many better ways to go than her suggestions, but to call AOC stupid (as frequently happens in my feed) is stupid, especially based on slips like this. She has accomplished too much to do so. Of course, one can take every error she has made in a life lived on camera, put those into a whole video, and make her look even worse. Compile every mistake, every slip of the tongue. Everybody thinks some things are true, that are not. Find some of those.  Put all these errors together and you can make anyone look dumb. 

When I am tempted to do so, my conscience reminds me:

1. Don’t because it is effectively a lie.
2. Don’t because it is uncharitable and we should love even our enemies.
3. Don’t because it is best to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

If we never do what scientists tell us our minds often do, we can afford to sneer.

So have a LOL at the professor, the Congresswoman, the parent, who jumbles words, but do not be cruel. Or so I tell myself. I can oppose AOC’s politics, even regret her unctuous manner, without being cruel. AOC would not want to associate with many of my ideas, my religion, or my politics, but we are both people created in the Image of God.

Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.