April 17, 2019

"We can be whatever we have the courage to see."



That's called "A Message From the Future With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

Meade watched that over my shoulder as I played it. I was fascinated by how fast that hand could paint, and I guess if I had the courage to see my own hand painting that fast, I could speed paint perfectly too — and without ever dipping the brush in paint or cleaning it between colors.

As for Meade, he made it hard to hear the audio track, because he insisted on singing this song:


I'm doing fine on Cloud 9...
You can be what you wanna be
Cloud 9
You ain't got no responsibility
Cloud 9
Every man in his mind is free
Cloud 9
You're a million miles from reality
Cloud 9
You can be what you wanna be
I'm feeling fine on Cloud 9

96 comments:

mccullough said...

Nice painting. If you look closely, you can see in the background the boot stomping on the face.

JohnAnnArbor said...

No, you can't. I can try to visit the center of the Sun, but if Elon Musk were to send me, I'd never make it.

Not everything you can dream works. Important life lesson.

TrespassersW said...

Where are the Oompa Loopmas? I want an Oompa Loompa! I want an Oompa Loompa NOW!

Anonymous said...

My God, that voice. Is that AOC's voice? I quickly checked out some other videos...yes, it is, isn't it?

Why does everyone in this country under the age of 50 (and not even then) sound like an adenoidal teeny-bopper?

I should have known better than to suspend my habit of not listening to time-wasting videos. But I didn't listen long. Because....the hideous voices from hell....

Nonapod said...

Socialists love trains. And the newer variety of Socialist also love windmills. They have a sort of 19th century mindset. In a sense it's almost as if they can't imagine much beyond the industrial revolution. When they try to envision what the future might be like it's always old technology with a new futuristic looking veneer.

They can't imagine what real innovation might look like. They can't imagine what robotization will mean, or they discount it or dismiss its effects. They can't imagine what technologies like gen IV nuclear power and eventually fusion will mean for energy generation. In short, they're unimaginative.

Michael K said...

Time lapse photography can fake stuff very well

Ann Althouse said...

"Why does everyone in this country under the age of 50 (and not even then) sound like an adenoidal teeny-bopper?"

It's one reason I cannot watch the news commentary shows anymore. The women all sound like children. Why did that happen? It's so bizarre. I would have thought that gaining confidence would cause a voice not to sound babyish, but that is clearly not true. AOC is very very confident.

Ann Althouse said...

Maybe that mature voice is what women use when they are feeling unconfident.

Static Ping said...

It's excellent propaganda. If you are not paying attention and are ignorant of all the particulars, it sounds really good.

Unfortunately, I have heard this story before in Russian. And Chinese. And Spanish with a Venezuelan dialect.

eddie willers said...

My God, that voice. Is that AOC's voice? I quickly checked out some other videos...yes, it is, isn't it?

She needs to take up Lucky Strikes.

jaydub said...

AOC knows propaganda. What she doesn't know is reality. Freeze in the dark, bitch.

Static Ping said...

Also, it is one of the greatest self-insert Mary Sue fanfics ever put to video.

Kevin said...

What are the side effects of AOC? The commercial didn't go into detail like they would have to on TV.

mccullough said...

The Side Effects of AOC are 100 million dead and 260 million in total poverty.

Martin said...

Oy vey!

Sad as the propaganda is, it is far sadder that so many people are so ignorant that it will be effective.

readering said...

I helped a colleague about AOC's age prepare for her first federal appellate argument. After, against my advice, she watched the tape. She was appalled at how her voice sounded, to my amusement (although that's not why I told her not to listen). Is it the end of smoking that has changed women's voices? I think it's the dominance of untrained youth on film and video.

Quaestor said...

Bullet trains.

Some kind of fast expensive and stupidly redundant mass transport system is the lunatics' solution to everything, particularly those without the educational background to grasp even how a train operates. Bullet trains operate on electricity which comes from what? — Say it with me folks. — Coal or uranium. Those nasty things that makes AOC's eyeshadow run. They don't run on sunshine or wind (Hell, if realistic efficiencies are considered, you'd sooner get a bullet train operating with sails than windmills.)

"You can't do what you can't see"

Yeah, she's right. Those carbon-defeating unicorn-friendly rainbow bullet trains aren't an idea for the Deplorables. It's more of a Shelbyville idea.

rhhardin said...

It's a movie storyboard. I'd have an asteroid to make it interesting.

rhhardin said...

There's a shocking lack of white faces. I assume they've been deported.

rhhardin said...

You want mortar trains, not bullet trains. Suborbital trajectories to get you and your luggage to your destination quickly.

rhhardin said...

Which of the following are not mythical
1. Unicorn
2. Platypus
3. Centaur

Bay Area Guy said...

High quality propaganda. Well done! Joseph Goebbels wouldn't been proud (assuming AOC knows who Goebbels was. That was a while back)

rhhardin said...

She imagines a world where women are listened to.

Milwaukie guy said...

It starts with all women. All the evil people are men until about halfway through. Taken as a whole there are but a few white, male allies.

Those of us not in camps are in work boots, making or fixing stuff off camera. Except the oil workers in retraining who are restoring a wetland.

rhhardin said...

Green energy for the Augean stables. No more methane.

rhhardin said...

Maldoror perceives that inside his youthful interlocutor's head the blood boils: the nostrils flare, lips froth forth a fine white spray. He takes the boy's pulse: its beat races. Fever has overtaken the frail frame. Maldoror fears the consequences of his words. He makes himself scarce - the wretch - vexed at not being able to converse longer with this child. When in maturity it is so difficult to master the passions, balanced between good and evil, what about a mind still brimming with inexperience? And what relative amount of energy does it further require? The child will get off with three days' stay in bed. Heaven grant that maternal care may bring peace to this sensitive flower, fragile envelope of a fine soul!

- Lautreamont

Quaestor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Quaestor said...

I wonder if AOC or any of her young, dynamic, black/brown/yellow fellow female Congress critters, has ever wondered about the environmental impact of extracting 3.09 x 10^16 watts of energy out of the atmosphere. Weather, which includes rain-bearing clouds, doesn't move of its own accord. Every watt extracted from the wind to power AOC's personal vibrator is one less watt able to move rain clouds, which mostly form over the ocean where there's lots of evaporation, to places far inland like Kansas where the rain feeds the crops that make the glutten-free artisan breads Brooklyn hipsters eat with organic honey.

reposted with glaring grammatic error expunged.

Michael K said...

I would like to see that train to Hawaii. I wonder if the two idiot Senators from HI are on board with the Green Nude Eel?

Michael said...

Oh, for Christ's sake (literally), save us from the Progressives of New York and the Modernists of Paris. Even if you don't believe in Christ as such, the Idea of Christ is much to be preferred to the ideas of Rousseau, Marx, Nietzsche, and Derrida.

TJM said...

Shows how worthless a modern day college "education" is.

Tommy Duncan said...

Watched the video. Lost interest at the bullet train from NY to DC. Threw up a little in my mouth.

Is AOC a freshman or a sophomore?

Birkel said...

AOC believes her video will be effective.
What audience does she imagine?

I Callahan said...

The women all sound like children. Why did that happen?

Women smoke less now. Nothing to alter and deepen women’s voices anymore. Listen to Lauren Bacall or so many of the other female voices back in the day. Lucky Strikes did the trick...

Fernandinande said...

"We can be whatever we have the courage to see."

That slogan is obviously false, which is what makes it as inspirational as it is!

rhhardin said...

Nietzsche, and Derrida

Read Derrida's _Spurs_ on Nietzsche on women and see what you think. Skip the preface by somebody else. Very short (facing English and French pages, and thin to start with).

Yancey Ward said...

Obviously, this video needed the Elizabeth Holmes voice.

Maillard Reactionary said...

The great Temptations had better reality orientation than Occasional Cortex displays, and by the way left a legacy of great popular music that will be remembered long after AOC retires from her next job dusting the bottles in a shot-and-beer bar somewhere in New York.

Regarding female voices, our Hostess said: "Maybe that mature voice is what women use when they are feeling unconfident."

Go back and watch "To Have And Have Not" with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I understand that Bacall was 19 or thereabouts when that movie was made. No squeaky voice from that babe, then, or at any other time.

She always exuded self-confidence and was able to go rounds (both alcoholic and pugilistic) with Bogie. She showed just enough vulnerability to rope him in. You can see how he can't stay in character in that movie in the scene where she delivers her line about how to whistle. He smiles with that "She's got me" look at the end.

They don't make them like Lauren Bacall any more. Sigh.

Yancey Ward said...

Yes, we can!

gerry said...

There's a shocking lack of white faces. I assume they've been deported.

Deportation has a large carbon footprint. Other methods of elimination are far more efficient and beneficial. They become practical once the dictatorship of the green proletariat has grown powerful enough to overcome the yokes of hoarders and wreckers.

Francisco D said...

Socialists love trains.

All the better to control people.

Another convenience is that the trains will take us non-believers to reeducation camps, after they outlaw conservative and libertarian speech.

Tommy Duncan said...

I like bullet trains that crap Skittles on their 35 hour trip from DC to Los Angeles.

Scott M said...

Nice painting. If you look closely, you can see in the background the boot stomping on the face.

Mic drop.

TJM said...

AOC is a reflection of our braindead national media. There is simply, no there there anymore

Scott M said...

It's one reason I cannot watch the news commentary shows anymore. The women all sound like children. Why did that happen? It's so bizarre. I would have thought that gaining confidence would cause a voice not to sound babyish, but that is clearly not true. AOC is very very confident.

Less teen and college smoking? Nobody's scathing their vocal chords anymore for that dulcet, breathy dragonlady voice anymore.

Anonymous said...

Where is that wonderful cartoon woman, Julia, living her life since the Obama Era, when she is so very, very much, needed once again?

WK said...

I imagine that the bullet train will ultimately end up like the one in the movie “Snowpiercer”. If you haven’t seen it: an experiment to counteract global warming (which is based on a real plan) causes an ice age that kills nearly all life on Earth. The only survivors are the inhabitants of the Snowpiercer, a massive super-luxury train, powered by a perpetual-motion engine, that travels on a globe-spanning track. A class system is installed, with the elites inhabiting the front of the train and the poor inhabiting the tail.

Big Mike said...

I made it to the 1:00 minute mark. Then she references a 1977 presentation by an early climate alarmist — apparently not realizing that his work has been debunked. Or probably not caring.

rehajm said...

Socialists love trains. And the newer variety of Socialist also love windmills. They have a sort of 19th century mindset.

...and bikes! Don't forget bicycles...

rehajm said...

Recent history suggests women who affect a deep voice could con just about anyone. Now that's confidence.

rehajm said...

AOC's message from the future reminded me of this.

Somebody's joshing us...

tommyesq said...

Soylent Green New Deal - that's where the white folks ended up.

Scott M said...

AOC believes her video will be effective.
What audience does she imagine?


The customer base that drove adult coloring books into prominence a few years ago.

Darkisland said...

Blogger Quaestor said...

I wonder if AOC or any of her young, dynamic, black/brown/yellow fellow female Congress critters, has ever wondered about the environmental impact of extracting 3.09 x 10^16 watts of energy out of the atmosphere.

What a stupid, ignorant, question, Quaestor. Of course they haven't! They don't need to, they only need to believe.

There has been a fair amount of research into this, actually. 6-8 years ago I was at an energy conference where the effect of windmills was actually discussed. The upshot was that the impact was trivial. But only provided the number and size, and power generating capacity of the windmills was trivial.

It's a serious issue.

Similar to solar. Every acre of solar panels displaces an acre of trees, shrubs, grass weeds etc. (Unless it is in the desert or on a rooftop) Folks like AOC exhort us to plant trees but how can he when they also want solar panels.

Trees or solar panels, pick one. You can't have both. No matter how hard you wish. No matter how deep your dreams. Reality bites. Every time.

The effect of all that solar energy being converted to electricity instead of warmth is another issue that only racist, homophobic, science deniers ever ask about.

(In another venue I was once called homophobic because I said that the 5,000 windmills, many defunct, in the Altamont pass are an eyesore. Don't ask me to explain the logic.)

John Henry

HoodlumDoodlum said...

I know it's not something we're supposed to talk about, but AOC's narration sounds so childlike it almost has to be on purpose. I've heard her speak and she usually doesn't sound like a little kid, but she sure does in that video. Odd!

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

She gave birth to herself - a deity! Come worship.

pacwest said...

In the '80s there was a made for TV movie about the consequences of a nuclear conflagration. Jason Robards was one of the actors, and I think it was called 'The Day After'. My oldest was in high school at the time. About a week later he started asking a lot of questions about how bad a nuclear war would be. I tried to calm any fears he had, but being honest I told him the possibility existed. Several years later he told me that all of his classmates were scared shitless by the possibility, and the feelings went on for months. Note that this was a single movie.

I am reminded of the recent scene where a teacher and her minions confronted Fienstien about global warming. The kids were adamant that something had to be done NOW. They were going to suffer greatly if not.

Kids are bombarded daily by the devastating effects of global warming and the surety of their demise. AOC isn't talking to the adults. She is telling boogeyman stories to the children and setting herself up as their Savior. Savoir of the world. These are the future adults who will direct the course of our nation. AOC is scary. We are doomed.

Darkisland said...

Blogger WK said...

powered by a perpetual-motion engine, that travels on a globe-spanning track.

Is the track of Reardon Metal that lasts forever?

And, sshhh. Don't tell AOC about perpetual motion. She will decide that, since she can dream it, it can exist and she will develop an entire economy based on it.

BTW: Lots of people think AOC is Puerto Rican. She is not. She is Nuyorican. Someone of Puerto Rican (and Irish in her case) ancestry. We got plenty of crazy down here all on our own. We certainly don't need people throwing her on us.

John Henry

Darkisland said...

A question I would love to hear AOC answer:

So Ms Ocasio, you spent $100,000 or so getting a double degree in economics and politics and then settles on a career as a bartender? Is that the best use you could find for your education?

John Henry

HoodlumDoodlum said...

It would be funny to do the identity-politics thing and count the number of people of different race/gender combinations represented and then compare those to the actual relative population of those combinations in, you know, America.
I mean, if people of my particular race/gender are vastly underrepresented in this video (vs our actual percentage of the current population) that's a form of violence, right? Isn't that how it works??

n.n said...

She is, ironically, a little green, but hopeful.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"You can't be what you can't see?"
So Tliab can't be a female Palestinian congresswoman? She never saw w=one of those before she became one.
It's a stupid slogan. It's not true.
You can even become what you cannot now imagine. Stop putting limits on people, Dem slogan makers!

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

race/gender combinations

Race, sex, gender, and choice.

pacwest said...

And on the 7th day AOC rested. And she looked out the window of the bullet train and was pleased with her labors.

Obama can't hold a candle to this woman.

Darkisland said...

Blogger pacwest said...

About a week later he started asking a lot of questions about how bad a nuclear war would be. I tried to calm any fears he had, but being honest I told him the possibility existed. Several years later he told me that all of his classmates were scared shitless by the possibility, and the feelings went on for months. Note that this was a single movie.

I spent the first half of the 60's scared shitless of being blown up and radiated. Much of the propaganda drummed into my head in school (books like on the Beach, Alas Babylon and a hundred other end of the world books) as well as movies and TV. In the 4th grade I was convinced that a "Cobalt Bomb" could actually blow the earth into a bunch of asteroid sized smithereens. I got freaked out by a cobalt glass vase my mother had. I just knew it was going to blow us up. We had Strontium 90 in our milk that was going to kill us. The news was filled with ever bigger atomic bomb tests and so on.

It never occurred to me before but my silliness and stupidity in believing this stuff is pretty close to the way many people who should know better think of climate change today.

John Henry

Darkisland said...

For a taste of what it was like for kids growing up in the 50s and 60's watch the documentary "Atomic Cafe" I think it is on Youtube. If not, Bing or DDG will find you a copy.

"Duck and cover" drills where elementary school kids hid under our desks and scrunched our eyes shut were a real thing. And our teacher promised us that this would protect us from an H bomb dropped across the Potomac.

She was a real nice lady. I hope she didn't really believe it. But we kidlets did.

John Henry

wildswan said...

"We can be whatever we have the courage to see."

I see myself exposing eugenics so that it never rises again plus ending abortion on demand and I have had to the courage to go after that for 25 years. But ... So what I wonder is: what happens when what you have the courage to see conflicts with what others are courageously seeing, like the ones courageously bringing in infanticide or the ones who courageously worked for the election of Hillary Clinton or the Venezuelans who would courageously like to eat. What about Ilhan courageously seeing how "it's the Benjamins, baby?" What about Holocaust survivors seeing "never again?" What if you live in a country with people who disagree with you on major issues? Should you courageously try to exclude them from national life? from Facebook? Should you courageously punch them in the face when they aren't expecting it? Plow a truck into them? This isn't a country that will reach agreement even on a simple obvious issues like abortion or bullet trains in 7 years. Nor is it one that will disappear in 12.

narciso said...

That was ABC's version HBO had count down to looking glass, BBC had testament and threads

rehajm said...

Why does AOC have Alexandra Cabot hair?

narciso said...


Oh well theres that:


https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/aoc-blew-amazon-out-of-new-york-in-2019-over-tax-breaks-but-demanded-one-for-herself-in-2012

Static Ping said...

"Duck and cover" drills where elementary school kids hid under our desks and scrunched our eyes shut were a real thing.

Those drills would actually be effective if you were far enough from the blast. The point is to protect yourself from the blinding flash (covering your eyes) and the blast that would turn the windows into a rain of glass projectiles (under the desk). If you are too close to the blast there is literally nothing you can do other than hope you get lucky.

Big Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Big Mike said...

As to the voice of Ocasio-Cortez, I think she sounds like a little girl because intellectually she is a little girl. I mean, if you could just hear the tone and ignore the visuals and the words, you would think you were listening to a first grader doing show and tell. Golly gee whiz sort of thing.

Wince said...

Hasn't California already tried all of this?

What they're really after now are the limitless printing presses of the Federal Treasury.

That's the real Green New Deal.

bagoh20 said...

I see myself free of tyrants while wannabe tyrants see themselves in charge of everything. How can both of our visions live together? They can't. One of us has to go, and I'm willing to fight and die to be free. Are they?

Anonymous said...

I taught my four daughters to "lower the register of the voice" by not hearing them until the register was low enough not to hurt my ears. It worked. They all have lovely, low register voices without cigarettes. They are all quite successful also.

chickelit said...

AOC has become an attention Hogg.

Mark Jones said...

Pacwest mentioned, "The Day After."

I remember that movie. It was blatant propaganda, and badly done at that. The only scene that affected me in the least was a bunch of rural deplorables in flyover country staring up at the rocket plumes of our own launches, thinking (and saying), "Well, ****. They actually did it. That means we've got about 20 minutes before the Russian nukes hit us."

Otherwise, it was a huge, expensive exercise in explaining to us that "Nuclear war would be bad, you know." As if we weren't already aware of that.

chickelit said...

As for her voice. -- she's certainly not Presidential timbre. But she's young and could take lessons.

narciso said...

it was a commercial for the nuclear freeze, that the luminaries like Kerry, biden, panetta and co, all fell for, Obama didn't think it went far enough, between his tokes and snorts, as his sundial piece suggests,

bagoh20 said...

I get all my data and serious analysis on climatology from bartenders. In fact I get all my info on everything from bartenders. They know how to present data in a way that makes you feel comfortable, and eventually you feel like a god-damned expert on everything. I love how they do that.

I've always considered bartenders pretty good psychologists and counselors, and it's probably good for the profession to now branch out into climatology as well. They have enormous flexibility and range.

bagoh20 said...

We already have over a decade of nations and states trying this stuff to some degree. Where are the success stories? It is a failure in all of them that I know of like Germany and California. The United States has lowered emision more than any other country by mostly not doing these things, but instead fracking and expanding natural gas production, but no climate change warriors suggested that. In fact, they opposed it.

William said...

It's effective propaganda for people under the age of eighteen. Well, definitely sixteen. Lots of bright colors and a cheery outlook for the future........I'm an old white man. Not the target audience. I couldn't help but notice the lack of white men--except for those greedy oil executives who were all overweight. I can't help but think that I'm the target rather than the target audience........I think AOC is pretty and far more likable than Bella Abzug. I definitely prefer AOC to Bella Abzug.

Jon Burack said...

I guess if this keeps her from doing her job, as in say writing actual legislative proposals or something, it serves a useful purpose.

Ken B said...

Have these people no self respect? This is embarrassing.

Shouting Thomas said...

Corporate PowerPoint style. I remember it well.

Everybody in HR got very excited over these things.

Fen said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fen said...

AOC believes her video will be effective. What audience does she imagine?"

K12. Every classroom.

And she's rewriting the future, not the past. Showing the kids the "future" they want to be on the "right" side of.

If she gets a few terms under her belt, she could be effective. Especially if she avoids things like facts. And math.

I believe it's time to launch Operation Pelosi.

Seriously though, we should be exploiting the Left's tribalism to maximum effect. Identify which victim group displaces the other and push tgem to tear each other apart. It's their inherent weakness, they are not a melting pot they are a balkanization.

Gunner said...

AOC doesn't sound moronic because she doesn't smoke. She sounds moronic because she's a moron. She also thinks WW2 was mainly fought on our side by black men, black women and white women.

Paul Zrimsek said...

Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Amsoc.

Francisco D said...

AOC doesn't sound moronic because she doesn't smoke. She sounds moronic because she's a moron. She also thinks WW2 was mainly fought on our side by black men, black women and white women.

She is a product of the American miseducation system. There will be more AOC types in the future.

RK said...

AOC's New Green Deal will become a reality when those newly inspired girls-of-color grow up and develop all the needed technologies.

Anonymous said...

Heinlein once said something to the effect of “we should never describe our adversaries as evil if their conduct could just as easily be explained by stupidity. But from Marx to Chavez it’s hard for me find an instance where evil wasn’t the more accurate description of a socialist.

Today’s new breed of Democrat sees 1984 as a how to manual rather than a cautionary tale. Terrifying.

Anonymous said...

I watched the whole thing, and, until the end credits, was convinced it was parody.

0_0 said...

She is generally correct. For the first 3:28.

Then she takes the fantasy offramp, and soon is driving the wrong way down the Totally Stupid turnpike.

And why does the illustrator exclude white people except for the bad news gang at the beginning?