Ocasio-Cortez showed that it is possible to run on a social democratic platform, against the machine, and win. Not everyone in DSA is all that committed to electoral politics. The meeting that heard back from the campaign also heard from direct action groups who work on housing justice and immigration, as well as those connected to the revival of Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign which is mobilising the religious left. The DSA is a big-tent organisation.

An Australia where everyone in public speaks and writes in rhyming poetry with the cadences of Henry Lawson. This is the most prized ability in the whole land. School children are prepped for gruelling contests of rhyme and wit, often with improvisations on a wide range of topics. All debates in parliament are rhymed, as is the evening news. The news takes on somewhat anecdotal quality, favoring a good yarn over factual accuracy. A whole country of Lawsonian Homers sings itself into legend by sheer metrical virtuosity.