AOC, Bad Bunny, and the sad reality that it doesn’t matter what progressives say anymore as long as they’re progressives

The left cheered for a performance in Spanish, whether or not they understood a single word, then they cheered for a performance in English, whether or not the performer said a single thing.

Last weekend, progressive firebrand Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went global, attending the Munich Security Conference in what many believe is an effort to raise her international profile prior to the 2028 elections.  To say she underperformed would be an understatement.  In addition to basic, inexplicable flubs like claiming Venezuela was below the equator, “It is not a remark on who Maduro was as a leader. He canceled elections. He was an anti-democratic leader. That doesn’t mean that we can kidnap a head of state and engage in acts of war just because the nation is below the equator” to being blissfully unaware horses were brought to the Americas by Spaniards and there is a rich history of Spanish-speaking cowboys known as “guachos,” “My favorite part was when he said that American cowboys came from Spain and I believe the Mexicans and descendants of African enslaved peoples would like to have a word on that,” she said in a laughable attempt to criticize Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the same conference, Representative Ocasio-Cortez was unable to answer basic questions or produce more than incomprehensible word jumbles in response to others.  When asked if the United States should deploy troops to protect Taiwan from China, about as longstanding a foreign policy question as there is these days, she couldn’t even provide a boilerplate response that keeping Taiwan independent is our goal, but any American action will be based on conditions on the ground.  Instead, she completely fumbled, unable to form actual words for at least fifteen seconds before punting and misstating the actual policy, which does not include troops, “Um, you know, I think that this is such a, you know, I think that this is, this is of course a very longstanding policy of the United States.  What we are hoping for is that we want to make sure that we never get to that point, and we want to make sure that we are moving in all of our economic research and our global positions to avoid any such confrontation, and for that question to even arise.”  While discussing President Donald Trump’s more aggressive approach to foreign policy than his predecessors, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez claimed that we are a victim of too many “hypocrisies” and “paradoxes” to see straight, “Too often in the West, we look the other way for inconvenient populations to act out these paradoxes, whether it is, you know, kidnapping a foreign head of state, whether it is threatening our allies to colonize Greenland, whether it is looking the other way in a genocide, hypocrisies are vulnerabilities and they threaten democracies globally, and so I think many of us are here to say we are here, and we are ready for the next chapter, not to have the world turn to isolation, but to deepen our partnership on greater and increased commitment to integrity to our values.”

Though some left leaning individuals had the courage to admit the overall performance was less than stellar, far more immediately rushed to Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s defense, insisting that those criticizing her performance for its lack of both knowledge and substance were somehow out of line if not outright racist, intimidated by a powerful person of color who seeks to become more powerful.  The New York Times, for example, insisted her critics refused to engage with the “substance of her arguments” claiming that instead, “it was her on-camera stumbles when answering questions about specific world affairs that rocketed around conservative social media and drove plenty of the discussion about her visit, as political observers speculated whether they would make a dent in a potential presidential run in 2028.”  According to the Times, the substance was a “warning that wealthy world leaders must better provide for their working classes or risk their countries sliding toward authoritarianism” and Representative Ocasio-Cortez was “frustrated” with how “her performance was microscopically dissected through the lens of what it meant for a hypothetical White House campaign” which overshadowed the message, but what kind of message was she attempting to communicate beyond the emptiest possible platitude?  Setting aside that socialist countries can easily slip into authoritarianism as the government is given more and more control over the allocation of resources, is it somehow groundbreaking news that poor people don’t want to be poor and if they remain poor forever, they might turn to some less than desirable means to change their lot in life?  Some outlets were downright effusive nonetheless.  Jacobin, for example, compared the verbal stumbles of the obviously out of her depth congresswoman to FDR, claiming “Working-class economic populism is necessary for both Democrats’ electoral success and the defense of democracy itself. Not many Democrats since FDR have recognized this, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the few who does.”  As they saw it, “In an appearance at the Munich Security Conference that has the chattering classes buzzing about a 2028 presidential bid, she, too, channeled Roosevelt’s warning. She suggested that her party had betrayed working-class politics and that ending such betrayals is required to stave off the continued march toward authoritarianism.”  Similarly, The New Republic chimed in with, “You Know What? Maybe the Time Is Right for an AOC Presidential Bid,” insisting “Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sure looked like a presidential candidate this weekend. She attended a policy conference in Munich that often draws potential White House hopefuls, including Governor Gavin Newsom and Senator Ruben Gallego this year. Her aides previewed her remarks to the media and told reporters who had advised her on them (former Bernie Sanders foreign policy aide Matt Duss, for one), as presidential campaigns often do. And in multiple appearances on stage, Ocasio-Cortez spoke in broad, presidential-y language, calling for a ‘rules-based order’ and ‘working-class centered politics.’”

Is it just me, or is it more than clear she could’ve said anything at all and the response from some quarters would have been the same?  For better or worse, we got somewhat definitive proof of this a week earlier in a completely different context when Bad Bunny performed in Spanish at the Super Bowl halftime show and despite that the majority of typically white progressives had no idea what he was saying, they proclaimed him brilliant, joyful, and delivering a message of unity anyway.  Participating in this meme at a minimum, were The New York Times using “joyful” itself, People, “joyful” and “filled with symbolism,” and Vanity Fair, a “joyful act of resilience–and resistance.”  For its part, Time Magazine went with an “exuberant act of resistance.”  According to Andrew R. Chow, who is actually a technology correspondent who covers crypto, AI, tech regulation, and culture, quite the mix there, and who does not speak Spanish as far as anyone can tell, “For rulers abroad, the Puerto Rican people were mostly a nuisance to be managed. But despite all of this, Boricuas found ways to thrive. They created their own music, food, oral traditions and businesses, forging a fiercely resilient and joyous culture that has now been exported to the world. And Bad Bunny, in just a few minutes of television, communicated all of this: the oppression, the ingenuity, the joy of his people.”  Because the “show arrived against the backdrop of the U.S. invading another Latin-American state to gain control of its resources; and of masked government agents abducting Latinos from their own homes” – things which have not actually happened in the way described, but why let facts get in the middle of all the exuberance –  it “was a fierce act of resistance, and a triumph on many levels. It was an exuberant exercise in spectacle, stagecraft, choreography and camera work; you could have not understood a single word and still had a blast. It was also a sharp cultural and history lesson of Puerto Rico’s past and present; of what it means to live under colonization. Above all, it was a 13-minute capstone to why Bad Bunny is—and deserves to be—the biggest pop star in the world.”  In a sense, it appears Mr. Chow was correct and ultimately hit on the truth, though I don’t think he intended it that way:  Millions of progressives who don’t speak a single word of Spanish declared the show a massive success, writing the sort of peons to Bad Bunny’s genius that could have been put together before the show even aired, and pretending that late-middle age white people who couldn’t even properly identify the genre of music (I put myself in that category) were now huge fans while having no clue what he actually said.

The irony is even richer when you consider that Bad Bunny could not have sung in English on broadcast TV even if he was inclined to. In fact, the show could not have been subtitled due to the vulgarity of his lyrics, which were rather incredibly toned down for the occasion.  From the very first song, he declared “Let the ones I already fucked smile In a VIP, a VIP, ayy,” “A Dominican who is a fresh hottie, ayy, Fresh, fresh hottie, The one from Barcelona that came by plane And says that my dick is fire,” and “She took a pill that made her horny, She fucks in the Audi, not in the Honda, ayy If I give it to you, don’t call me ‘Cause this is not to make you love me.”  Later, he described grabbing women, though he didn’t confirm whether it was in their private parts, “Dancing perreo, baby, grinding, baby, Tra-tra, baby, all the way down, baby, I’ll grab you, baby, in the club, baby, Ayy, ayy, ayy.”  He went on to sing about “hanging out drunk with my cousin,” “Buzzing high over in Washington Heights,” how “The coke is white,” going “to the bleachers to light up a blunt,” “Coffee in the morning, rum in the afternoon.” While I have certainly sprinkled my dialogue with profanity from time to time, am not averse to an early afternoon beer, and have been known to partake in other now legal in NJ substances, I wouldn’t suggest that any of these activities were optimal for an event that people watch with their families.  Nor do I think would most progressives, bringing us back to the idea that they didn’t know what Bad Bunny was saying and didn’t care because of it.  If, on the other hand, the event was subtitled and someone’s ten year old daughter asked what it meant for the star performer’s dick to be “fire,” the person in question probably would have noticed.

One of the few things Bad Bunny said in English, however, was essentially a preview of Representative Ocasio-Cortez in Munich, and therefore elevated the performance in progressive minds, even beyond being known as Trump–hating, ICE-loathing fellow traveler beforehand.  When he said, “God bless America,” he couldn’t simply leave it there.  Instead, he rejected the typical notion of America in that phrase referring to the country, the United States of America, and replaced it with a reference to the landmasses of North and South America.  “God bless America, Doesn’t matter if it’s Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, Brasil, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, the Antilles, United States, Canada, And my motherland, my homeland: Puerto Rico.  We’re still here. Now!” But of course it does matter.  It matters to conservatives because that’s not what “God bless America” means or has ever meant, anymore than when Brits say “God save the Queen” they’re referring to the Queen of Prussia, and it matters to progressives because making it seem America is no different or better than the rest of the world has been a favorite pastime for decades.  Thus, this statement alone, plus Bad Bunny’s progressive bonafides was more than enough to garner effusive praise even though most had no idea what he was saying and if they did, they would’ve rightly had a lot of questions.  Bad Bunny is, of course, a performer and a celebrity, and should be subject to far less scrutiny for obvious reasons, but sadly the same logic applies to Representative Cortez, who will likely attempt a race to lead the free world.  She said nothing meaningful, faltered and flubbed more than she was coherent, but a significant portion of progressives are still talking her up for President.  There’s no real way to explain it except that words don’t matter anymore.  It could’ve been gibberish, at some points was gibberish, but they clapped like seals anyway.