I know we’re getting perilously close to Julie Principle territory here. The Congresswoman says and tweets so many ignorant, logically flawed, impulsive and silly things so often that it seem ungallant to keep swatting at them.

On the other hand, elected officials, especially members of Congress, have an ethical duty not to make their supporters, followers and the public in general dumber and more ignorant than they already are. The tweet above does that: it misrepresents laws, law enforcement, the nature of abortion, reality, justice, too much to process, really.

It also shows seriously damaged critical thinking skills and an abysmal grasp of analogies. “Right?” No, NOT right, you fool. Abortion bans target the intentional taking of what these laws deem human life. Got that? Intentional. No ICE agents set out to cause the deaths of premature babies that were, in fact, placed in peril by their mothers who endangered them by bringing them along as they attempted to break U.S. laws. There is no valid comparison here. None.

I regard a tweet like this as signature significance: nobody qualified to hold high office, make laws, debate policy, or represent the public in a representative democracy says or writes anything this confused, at least not without immediately retracting it and explaining that she has a closed head injury or something. I doubt Ocasio-Cortez is the dumbest member of Congress, or even close. She does parade her ignorance and poor reasoning skills more than the others though.

We have to stop electing stupid people, ignorant people, and badly educated people. If only we had a non-partisan, trustworthy organization that could objectively register Intelligence/Ignorance warnings for candidates for office at all levels of government, a bit like the American Bar Association does for judges nominated for the Supreme Court, except that, of course, the ABA is partisan, and thus is not trustworthy.

Here’s a digression, though a related one, via another tweet from Democratic Congressional candidate Emily Raffi:

When social media gigglingly pointed out that it was Rafi who apparently doesn’t understand impeachment (there was no “after impeachment” with Nixon, who was never impeached) while being condescending about it to boot, she doubled down, tweeting back that the “impeachment inquiry” was “impeachment” because it is part of the impeachment process.

This is approximately the same as calling a grand jury proceeding, which is aimed at determining whether to indict, an indictment, or calling a hearing to determine if a trial is warranted “the trial.” The tweet is also bad history and bad analogy: before the Nixon impeachment hearings, the public knew literally nothing about the misconduct and crimes uncovered during the course of the televised hearings. President Trump’s approval ratings have already been knocked down—by design—from the constant publicity airing imaginary Democratic grievances and contrived “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and there is no reason to assume—as the Democrats do, or, I think,  pretend to—that an impeachment inquiry will uncover anything substantive, shocking or new. The Nixon inquiry also was universally viewed as  fair and largely non-partisan, which this inquiry, like the Clinton inquiry, will certainly not be.

If I had to bet, I would assume that impeachment hearings would raise President Trump’s poll numbers, and bring the ratings of the Democratic Party down….which is why the party will continue to just bloviate about impeaching Trump, but never try it. That’s unethical too, but it isn’t stupid.