I recently decided that I had to cull my old emails. There are more than 9,000 in my inbox alone. Many remain from the horrors of the pandemic in New York City. I accumulated them with the idea that, at some point, I would find time and inspiration to write about them. I still aspire to do that, but realistically it seems improbable.

In any case, in the course of reviewing them, and deleting as many as possible, I came across this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/aocs-speech-about-ted-yohos-apology-was-a-comeback-for-the-ages/2020/07/23/524e689a-cb90-11ea-91f1-28aca4d833a0_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

I don’t recall many things about our year in the epicenter of the COVID pandemic and I do not recall watching this. But I watched it today. Standing alone, it is remarkable in many ways. But it doesn’t stand alone. It is an exemplar, I believe, of the core problem that faces our country and indeed the world. That problem, our curse as a species, is the dehumanization of the “other” with whom I/you/we disagree about something/many things/everything. It is the problem that Donald Trump did not create but that he authenticated, that he promoted, that he legitimized in the minds of many.

AOC, you will observe, was not reading a speech, not following closely a long set of notes, not reading from a teleprompter. This one came from the heart.