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No one asked, but my take on @AOC is that she’s demonstrating the power of representative democracy. Her district is more diverse (economic, linguistic, etc.) than almost any region in human history. Unless you’ve inhabited it, the diversity and density is almost unfathomable.
In terms of politics, policy, and style of engagement, she’s representative of her district as best she can be, jut like Reps from somewhere like Wyoming have also been of their district (whose whole state contains fewer people than @RepAOC’s district, by the way).
As someone from the spacious, quasi-libertarian mountain west, I know I could never have imagined what the 6 and 7 train neighborhoods are like. I still am in awe of everyone and everything that happens here. I never could have imagined how the social contract looks here.
Once biking to work in the Bronx, I passed by a nun in habit, a woman in a burqa, an active drug deal, and a woman on a horseback ride. A horse! There are multimillionaires amid recent immigrants living 10 to an apartment and running coffee carts.
These boroughs, at their best, incubate a social experiment the likes of which the world has rarely seen. At their best, they are more American in ideals than where I grew up. They say the pledge at school, they’re local communities, they encourage humility amid the cacophony.
When elections are open and fair, and then representatives really *represent* their constituents to the best of their abilities — in substance and style — there is nothing that can stop the United States from keeping and expanding the dream.
