We were more than a little charmed when, with her Instagram fans watching, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discovered a growling, "terrifying" beast in the kitchen sink of her new Washington, D.C. apartment, hungry to grind up anything she threw into its maw.
She's a New Yorker, after all, and garbage disposals were rightly illegal here for decades, deemed too hard on the pipes and sewer system, before they were finally rolled out in a limited fashion starting in 1997. (Nor did Ocasio-Cortez's childhood home in Westchester have one, apparently.)
We _ Donald Trump included _ lived without an environmentally suspect modern convenience that Real America takes for granted and, whadya know, we survived. Call it the Green Old Deal.
We supposed coastal elites also get by with fewer dishwashers and washing and drying machines than most.
Dark streets don't frighten us. Nor do big crowds, or giant rats, or complicated commutes, or cars that never signal before changing lanes, or loudmouths who throw their weight around.
But machines that pulverize your leftover gristle and green beans and baked potato and send it down the drain, that's the stuff of suburban dreams. And urban nightmares.
