The Green New Deal Essay

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AOC’s Zany New Deal: Analysis of a Political Editorial Cartoon

In a cartoon posted on the Washington Times website entitled “The Socialist States of the Green New Deal” by Gary Varvel (2019), freshman representative Alexandrio Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is depicted, arms outstretched, as standing in the middle of a map of the USA while all around her are highlights of her Green New Deal bill with visualizations of how her proposals would impact America. One can see a U.S. Navy air craft carrier using sails (instead of fuel) for power. There is an arrow pointing away from the States and two large yachts sailing off for other shores with the inscription below signifying that these are “The Rich” leaving the U.S. Large signs read “Free Stuff” and “No Fly Zone,” indicating how different the American landscape is to become were the Green New Deal to be implemented. The argument being presented in the cartoon is that AOC’s bill is not only completely antithetical to everything American but it is also completely impractical, unrealistic, and like something one might expect to find in a Dr. Seuss book—totally silly.

Varvel really emphasizes the silliness of AOC’s bill by showing two tracks of high-speed rail—one going all the way up to Alaska and the other going all the way out to Hawaii. The tracks careen out from behind AOC in the middle of the U.S. and shoot off into the Pacific like Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat. The rail has no regard for physics: it just goes for it, propelled onward by high hopes and dreams. The rail is a reference to AOC’s plan to overhaul and revolutionize land travel by installing high speed rail lines—which California’s governor has already rejected because of the fact that it would cost too much money and be impractical, geographically speaking (Klein, 2019). Nonetheless, AOC is shown here promoting it as part of her Green New Deal, which, Varvel indicates, is just one of the reasons AOC comes across as naïve.

The imagery is very effective in conveying the argument of the cartoonist.

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However, the images themselves would not make much sense without the words. For example, labeling the yachts in exodus as “The Rich” helps to make the point that were AOC’s bill to become law, there would be a mass exodus of the wealthiest as they would not want to see their wealth taxed into oblivion. Without the label, the image loses something of its argument as the viewer would have to stop and think about what he is looking at and what the possible interpretation might be. The label allows the viewer to not work so hard and just look and appreciate what is being shown. Another example is the image of the embarrassed milk cow, standing up and trying to hold in its gas: the label explains what is going on—“No Farting Cows”—the idea being that AOC’s Green New Deal would eliminate all toxic emissions—and the fact is that farm animals (i.e., cows) produce more toxic emissions than anything else on the planet (Lean, 2006). So the comical point that Varvel makes is that for AOC’s Green New Deal to work, cows would have to stop passing gas—which is not going to happen.

The visual imagery is helpful in persuading in ways that words are not by depicting ideas in a cartoonish and satirical manner. For example, there is the cow blushing and holding his cheeks, the “Free Stuff” sign pointing to the Government Health Care building, Navy aircraft carrier turned into a sailboat—these images convey in quick and easy ways exactly what critics of AOC’s Green New Deal might take whole pages of words to say. The ideas are so simple to grasp that a quick little cartoon can bare them for the viewer in a way that makes sense.

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