auroraluciferi:

really love how ultra-conservative reactionaries seethe with unbridled rage at virtually everything that challenges their world view these days.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not a “radical leftist” by any stretch of the imagination - she is pretty much a normal millennial whose opinions are naturally informed by her background in the working class, as a woman, and as a Puerto Rican.

she hasn’t been indoctrinated by some hardcore, revolutionary communist cell to overthrow the United States. no “globalist” billionaire like George Soros is showering her with cash to undermine the traditional family unit or anything like that.

likewise, Pope Francis is not a Marxist heretic bomb-thrower or whatever it is reactionary Catholics fear. his status and perspective as the first non-European pope elected in over 1200 years notwithstanding, the sort of reforms he is meekly requesting are honestly closer to the original mission of the church as espoused by underground Christians in the time of the Roman Empire than any of the corrupt self-serving tripe that has flourished since.

right-wing zealots in politics, religion, and all across society have heart palpitations over things that young people in this country and elsewhere generally agree to be pretty cut and dry:

- capitalism is a cruel, arbitrary system that has resulted in an ocean of needless suffering and waste

- fossil fuels are an incredibly inefficient and reckless way of producing energy; orienting our entire economy towards their use is fucking stupid

- if we can spend trillions of dollars manufacturing weapons and creating a police state, maybe we can spend at least much that making sure that people don’t starve or die from preventable causes

- please just leave LGBTQ people alone, especially children. they just want to live and be happy like anyone else - they are not instruments of Satan

conservatives see this and they’re like “HOW CAN WE MAKE YOUNG PEOPLE HATEFUL AGAIN??” because for them, it’s an existential crisis.