Civil War on the Left, Ch. 65: It’s an Amazon Out There!

I like to say that half of the problems with the world today are linguistic, specifically, softheaded thinking follows soft language. Back when we referred to “the jungle,” it was something we wanted to cut down, but now it is the rain forest, and we can’t touch it. No one much cared about trash when we took it to “the dump,” but now it is called the landfill, so we have to sort our trash like we sort our whites and clothing of color for the washing machine.

But the existence of Amazon—the Bezos kind, not the river in South America—is causing problems, because it seems to be a contemporary transliteration of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle on account of its supposedly insidious tentacles into every corner of American life. You can see how this confusion will unfold: Amazon Rain Forest, good; Amazon Rain Forest Crunch Ice Cream, bad!

The confusion is on full display today in New York, where Amazon has decided to cancel its plan to open a new regional headquarters in Queens that would have employed about 25,000 people. To be sure, Amazon extracted some unwarranted subsidies from New York, but the fun part was watching Alexandria Occasional-Cortex, whose district would have been much affected by the new HQ, oppose Amazon’s plan, and she is elated at today’s decision:

I especially like how AOC thinks anyone who works for Amazon is “exploited.” We’re back to the good old days where Democrats love workers, but hate employers.

Now the fun begins when you realize that opposition to the Amazon HQ came overwhelmingly from people in Manhattan and Brooklyn—the trendy rich parts of town—while minorities and the residents of Queens and the Bronx favored the Amazon plant, as Nate Silver notes:

Way to go, AOC—selling out the interests and views of low income minorities for the benefit of wealthy white folk! This isn’t sitting too well with the Democratic member of Congress from the district right next door to AOC, whose constituents would also have benefitted from Amazon’s office:

And Governor Cuomo is none too pleased with AOC’s agitation either:

Chaser—how about some leftist billionaire-on-billionaire action:

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