Is AOC intelligent (my personal opinion)?

AOC is quite intelligent and self-aware. She knows what she is doing, and she believes that what she probably sees as the “short term” deleterious effects of her actions, can and will in the long run be made up for by the benefits of the collective to the poor and downtrodden.

In a certain sense however, it could be argued that she is “benefiting” from her youth and youthful naivety. She certainly must be aware that left-wing ideas as dangerously “over-applied” (in her view?) by historical figures like Stalin, have resulted in huge suffering and millions (tens of millions) of deaths. OTOH, she apparently believes that properly applied, things like the “Green New Deal” could have a tremendous beneficial effect— if they are applied by persons of good will, like AOC herself.

This is naive. It is an almost canonical attribute of youth (aided in part by a not-at-all-nice, will to power). All government programs to “help” some deserving group, are to some extent more or less “social heroin” — they might feel good at first but in the longer term, taken to logical conclusions, people suffer and (often) even die. It is okay in my book to assert that AOC is (however intelligent) certainly now old enough to know better.

“Laissez-vous faire” in spite of its seeming cavalier-to-cruel quality, along with good social order to include laws, courts, and policing; and free but regulated markets with class-neutral rules simply has a better long-term result for the general polity.

This is not to say that “social safety nets” are without social utility, but it is to say that “less” is better, particularly when/where the general economy is sufficiently productive so that individual people’s own natural generosity can be comfortably self-funded by the people themselves…