I did not realize that AOC's tweet below was the first in a short exchange between her and James Fallows, a former Carter administration official. In chronological order:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Verified account
@AOC
At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior - it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it.
8:54 PM - 21 Sep 2019
@JamesFallows
Replying to @AOC
IMO, this is “false equivalence” of its own sort.
What Trump is doing remains objectively the biggest threat, scandal, and problem.
Second-ranking: the silent acquiescence of the GOP Senate.
Then: it’s time for House to act.
9:00 PM - 21 Sep 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Verified account
@AOC
Replying to @JamesFallows
It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him.
The integrity of our democracy isn’t threatened when a president breaks the law. It‘s threatened when we do nothing about it.
The GOP’s silence & refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.
9:15 PM - 21 Sep 2019
...
With those late night Saturday tweets Evita flipped the script of the impeachment debate. "Democratic Party," she told us, "don't get all morally righteous! Act! Do the right thing! Be courageous." Democrats, all of us (except Senate Republicans), see starkly, in black and white, how cowardly they have been and how morally ambiguous. The name for images like that on the header is "ambiguous image." Look at it one time and you see a white goblet; take a second look and you see two black faces in profile. AOC presents us as morally ambiguous. "You're staring in the face at evil and you are doing nothing about it!" She gave Democrats a lesson in moral courage in the words of genius.
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."-Albert Einstein
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." -Thomas Jefferson
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."-Martin Luther King Jr
AOC worked a paradigm shift and it worked.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Verified account
@AOC
At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior - it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it.
8:54 PM - 21 Sep 2019
@JamesFallows
Replying to @AOC
IMO, this is “false equivalence” of its own sort.
What Trump is doing remains objectively the biggest threat, scandal, and problem.
Second-ranking: the silent acquiescence of the GOP Senate.
Then: it’s time for House to act.
9:00 PM - 21 Sep 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Verified account
@AOC
Replying to @JamesFallows
It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him.
The integrity of our democracy isn’t threatened when a president breaks the law. It‘s threatened when we do nothing about it.
The GOP’s silence & refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.
9:15 PM - 21 Sep 2019
...
With those late night Saturday tweets Evita flipped the script of the impeachment debate. "Democratic Party," she told us, "don't get all morally righteous! Act! Do the right thing! Be courageous." Democrats, all of us (except Senate Republicans), see starkly, in black and white, how cowardly they have been and how morally ambiguous. The name for images like that on the header is "ambiguous image." Look at it one time and you see a white goblet; take a second look and you see two black faces in profile. AOC presents us as morally ambiguous. "You're staring in the face at evil and you are doing nothing about it!" She gave Democrats a lesson in moral courage in the words of genius.
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."-Albert Einstein
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." -Thomas Jefferson
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."-Martin Luther King Jr
AOC worked a paradigm shift and it worked.
