The Bracket Club

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had not been born yet when “The Breakfast Club” was released. That was back in ‘85, though by itself the timeline is irrelevant. I mean, let’s keep it real: generational bragging rights are lame. So when the dog-whistlers at FOX News recently “outed” AOC’s celebration of the film, AOC’s reply was refreshingly well played. As dancing goes, her interpretive middle-finger to false conservatives was a welcomed breeze of fresh air in swamp-land. Her brief reenactment outside her D.C. office was a classy je ne regrette rien STFU to the rage peddlers at FOX. Way classier in fact than her freshman colleague, US representative Rashida Tlaib, with her “motherfucker” crosshairs remark. Nothing to do with the language by itself, gender, or ethnicity - Donald Trump doesn’t sound smarter when he says it either.

The reason it is relevant that Ocasio-Cortez had not yet been born in ‘85 is key context. Since we are talking about a powerful American tradition here - the induction of an incoming political freshman class - the dance bit was poetic-assist in AOC’s case. Whether she was aware or not, she was being introduced to the old Potomac Two-Step. 

Back in 1985 the Soviet Union was still a very real and present danger. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The mutually assured destruction of our planet as we knew it was something no other generation had ever experienced. It was a world gone m.a.d. indeed (we even coined a clever acronym for it). So, no: the Breakfast Club dance was not exactly the celebration of life AOC interpreted. As the language of dance goes it was a brave new wave - not quite salsa (AOC’s Caribbean roots may have betrayed her there). Our Breakfast Club fab-five were definitely not expressing sensual joy, that’s for sure. It was a time of awkwardness, a time to be tense.

As the gods of evolution would have it, the tension finally blinked. Somehow we survived armageddon. The daily threat of a nuclear holocaust stopped, sometime around the fall of the Berlin Wall. Political pundits like to credit the Kennedy-Reagan era, with fair credit where credit is due. Others may be more pragmatic, calling the Soviet collapse a failure to engage with an inevitable global capitalism. Either way there was a “roaring nineties” feeling in the air, a celebration of sorts as the world watched the implosion of the mighty Soviet. Amidst champagne and red carpets, Hollywood proclaimed that "greed is good".

Enter class warfare, back from the sidelines of nuclear preoccupation. Where there is unbridled wealth, there is greed. And where there is greed, there are tax brackets. No one really ever wonders much about the existence of tax brackets, probably for good reason (watching paint dry, etc.). But it is worth a quick reflection. Let me try to unpack it by keeping it simple: tax brackets are essentially a mathematical punishment on greed. Some American voters who have been around the block more than once might recall the flat-tax proposals, resurrected every other presidential campaign. It is typically presented as a way to fix a convoluted tax system. A system that admittedly has evolved into a god-forsaken hydra monster. Sure, those who make little enough to fit their income into a 1040-EZ form are typically not in the line of fire. But if the 1040-A does not quite cut it for you either, my condolences: off to the serpentine hydra’s mouth you go.

Which brings us back to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and her recent casual remark that the very rich should be subject to a 70% tax bracket. Well. If she ever wanted to be targeted as the enemy of half the people she sure is a smooth-talker. It’s not just the 1% that have rattled their sabres on that declaration of war. They have savvily enlisted an army of 49% to fight on their behalf. A 49% that, to every American liberal, remains an enigma wrapped up in a mystery, inside a puzzle. Just like a Russian nesting doll.

Unless Ocasio-Cortez learns how to dance to the awkward tension of socialized capitalism, her politics will become irrelevant in the evolution of the great American experiment. Her Bracket Club dance reduced to a less-than-memorable flashdance. Back at the Breakfast Club, (spoiler alert)... that dance ends with a fist pump to the sky. Unforgettably frozen in time. A celebration of how five corners of America walked in as irreconcilable differences, and walked out with unspoken respect for each other. It was a fist pump in defiance to all those who grift the life divisive.

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

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