Why Bernie can't stop now. This isn't a friggin game!
It's because of "us" that Bernie keeps fighting. He gets booed by his own peers when he speaks of "the battle of ideas".
And, he is accused of a "total display of self-obsession." It is quite the opposite. The very reason that Bernie continues to fight for "us" is at the very core of his message all along: it's about the people, not the 'game' of winning and losing.
He could have easily abandoned us and said, "Okay, I tried. They won. Let's all get behind the nominee." It would have made his life easier. He would have been a hero to his peers. But to Bernie, it was never about being a 'hero'; instead, it's been about those of us at the bottom who need a voice. Every time they ridicule him, they are stating flat out to us: "Hey, 99%, you don't matter to us." And, it only makes him fight harder for us.
What the democratic party doesn't get is that this is not a game. In pro sports, the big money goes to both teams. Advertising, liquor sales, souvenirs, t-shirts: big money being spent all around and the 'winning' and 'losing' is strictly about which side can yell the loudest, which team is having a good day or bad day, who can cheat the best without getting caught, and how the referees call the plays. While this might be how the 2 party system works, in the 2016 democratic primary there has been a new twist: principles rather than the 'win'. Many of us are now trying to veer away from the 'trophy' mentality where the 'winner' can demand higher pay-to-play windfalls.
In this primary, we have been talking about (partial list):
- whether or not we can save the planet from climate change: will the planet live or die?
- will the economy continue to hemorrhage jobs: will the lower/middle class live or die?
- can we fix the healthcare system: will people live or die?
- what wars are we willing to wage: will innocents live or die?
- what should we do about our energy needs: will the sources help us to live or cause us to die?
- should we invest more in education: will the empire live or die?
This primary has been about life and death on massive scales. And yet, Berners are called "sore losers" as if we just all came home from a football game and our team lost -- so just get over it and let's just assimilate into the 'winning' team so that we can all be 'winners'. It is that exact attitude that makes us fight harder: life and death is not a f#cking game!
Look at every stadium photo that was packed with Bernie supporters. Do the dems think that because Bernie was speaking in a sports stadium that it is no different from a game? Do the dems think that these people were no different than fans at a concert listening to songs that they could forget about later? The people in those photos were not attending a game or a concert -- they were heeding a call to a progressive world.
Look at every march, every post, every movement that arose from his campaign. Do the dems think that it's some kind of childish fad -- like a pet rock or a mood ring -- that will just be replaced by a new fad in a few weeks? Can we negate the philosophies of the ages to merely 'fads' (yeah--that's sooooo 1776).
The reason that Bernie got so far in this 'race' (again a sports term) is that millions of people were willing to eat peanut butter sandwiches instead of hamburgers -- just to donate to the progress of the 'ideas' that he represents. And there are democrats who scoff at that? Really? Is the democratic party so out of touch with the people who USED TO BE their base that they can now ridicule them -- and then with a straight face, ask for their vote?
It isn't Bernie that they are dismissing -- it is all of US:
- who still believe in progress for a better country
- that believe $27 donations matter
- who really feel that this is a life and death struggle
- who can't stomach the superbowl mentality being brought into matters that affect our very existence
Bernie can't give up any more than we can. It's in our souls. It's in our survival reflexes. It's in our hearts. It's in our compassion for our fellow travelers on this planet. The political revolution continues -- no matter what the democratic party chooses. We still choose Bernie.
crossposted at TOP
Comments
Excellent essay
Well put.
Marilyn
"Make dirt, not war." eyo
Well said. I am appalled that he was booed!
I bet you're getting creamed over there. Glad to see you're here too!
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How the fight continues
What is that old saying?
He who makes peaceful revolution impossible makes violent revolution inevitable.
Well, that plus growing income inequality equals violent protests, riots & insurrection. It won't happen this year .. and probably not before 2020. But it will happen unless we abandon neoliberal economics.
We're going to start seeing a new meme: instead of two groups: the 1% (who have much) and the 99% (who have little) ... we will see that second group spin off a percentage that have nothing.
Perceptive people fear the have-nothings because they have nothing to lose (ie. no stake in the game called America) and that makes them very dangerous. Those who have little may keep supporting an unjust system because they are afraid of the game table being knocked over and them losing the little that they have.
The 1% cannot image a world where game tables are knocked over and continue blissfully ignorant.
But the ones who have nothing have no reason to support the system. They may even have reasons to fight the system, like a homeless person committing a small crime on a cold night so he can spend the night in jail (indoors).
Why not throw rocks at cop cars? (Or squirt superglue into their door locks
Why not drop bricks off bridges into freeway traffic?
Why not vandalize America's already crumbling infrastructure? (Break traffic lights, steal signs,
sabotage railway crossing sensors - the shit kids are already doing occasionally).
It only took 1/3 of the colonists to win freedom from the world's biggest army in the 1700's - how many 'have nothings' do you think it'd take to bring America to a screeching halt? If all of the homeless started acting like teenage vandals, that would do the trick.
American society is more fragile than we think... or at least more fragile than we dare think.
Not Sure I Can Take Much More
Uprated because I think that you are explaining
how the situation could devolve not that it should break out in chaos.
In other words, the situation is getting desperate for some people who may feel no hope and we could possibly expect a backlash at some future date. I'm assuming that you are not recommending such violence.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when we are afraid of the light.
--Plato
I agree
I have said for a long time that when the system creates such an underclass that people feel as if they have nothing to lose, the oligarchs should be very afraid. The most dangerous people are those who have nothing left to lose. FDR understood this better than probably anyone in our government.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Absolutely on point.
Bastille Day is coming--July 14. Storming the Bastille, a prison, was the first major violent act of the French Revolution. Why did things come to that? Let's remember Marie-Antoinette's famous state "Let them eat cake". She was so fucking out of touch with the people as not to know the peasants barely had bread, let alone bread. It is quite different when you have not a lot but sufficient food to stop your hunger compared to when you and your fellow citizens are starving--also, homeless, murdered by police, imprisoned for being black or brown. Hillary can't even get into the NYC subway without someone guiding her too-manicured hands into the token machine.
We all already will have
We all already will have nothing left to lose - they'll kill the global life support system in very short order. There may be insufficient oxygen to support life on a dead, polluted, war-trashed planet within a few decades or less, under unrestrained corporate rule.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I agree with you. There are alternatives.
Fight to the bitter end at the convention. If that fails, try to persuade Bernie to go Green. If that fails, go Green anyway. Make the Dems a marginal party.
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
YES! Thank-you!
YES! Thank-you!
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
"American society is more fragile than we think..."
It has been this way since before the first attempt to topple the World Trade Center towers in 1993. Bin Laden knew this when he authorized the airplane hijackings. And PNAC knew this when they called for a New Pearl Harbor to get us sheep into the fold to be led to eternal war for corporate profit.
Just think back to how much has changed since Ronald Regan hijacked the 1980 election with the help of some obsolete but still useful tax-payer funded anti-aircraft missiles traded for an Iranian promise to never release Americans held hostage as long as Carter remained president. Our own kids never knew the America we lost in 1980. They don't know what freedoms we once had which are now lost forever.
Under current conditions, I can't be certain that major figure like JFK lost to assassination now wouldn't cause an eruption of a more extreme national security state than we now have.
Lastly, too many Americans no longer care about traditional American freedom. Look at Drumpf supporters and their calls for clearly unconstitutional acts directed against those deemed The Enemy, as Drumpf himself just enunciated recently.
This nation is already broken beyond repair. It just takes sheep awhile to recognize the inherent dangers.
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
One only has to look at places like Iraq
Streets filled with angry young homeless jobless men and boys with no prospect for a future. Can't help thinking of Janis Joplin .
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose "
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
The Orange One's supporters have more in common
With the Isis recruiting pool than they realize.
We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg
good essay
I feel ill when I hear/read people say, "I'm a Bernie supporter, but I'll vote for Clinton" {now that we've shoveled dirt over Bernie's corpse.)
Hillary is a neo-lib zombie and Bernie ain't no corpse!
I still believe
in Bernie. I don't know what his next step will be, nor what message he has for us in Philly. I can't see him selling us out to the $hill.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
It really isn't a matter of "believing" in Bernie.
He taught you what was possible. Now you (we) have to take the reins and keep it going. We who knew better had become complacent. The youth didn't even know what opportunities there were. Now we all know. And we all have to keep it going. The fools over at TOP only care about winning and losing. They don't care about what they've won. Just went over there to see how this diary was received by the geniuses over there. Damn, they're so predictable.
Excellent essay! (n/t)
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
If anyone's self obsessed
it's that odious Clinton person, with her desperate quest for the WH. So much of her life and personality is wrapped up in it, it's scary.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Yes, I got scoffed at over at TOP
I said I juggled my bills to make sure I could donate because it is THAT important to someone in my circumstances. It is, ultimately, life or death for me. BBB sneared then and then subsequently quoted me later and how foolish I am to him.
'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member
BBB is a consummate dick.
You should be proud of his scorn. Clearly you touched one of his few remaining nerves.
“What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
YES!
Fixed it:
"The Democratic Party IS so out of touch with the people who USED TO BE their base that they can now ridicule US and then with a straight face, ask for - nay, DEMAND OUR vote"
After all, Drumpf is the LOTE and where else can we go anyway?
Vowing To Oppose Everything Trump Attempts.
‘I AM STILL SANDERS’
Sports analogy...
Very nicely stated. I wish I could write like that. Seriously.
George Orwell was an optimist.
So what's this about?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-in-talks-for-...
"But in America particularly, a deep worry is now consciously gnawing the ruling class—they can see it, feel it: that the American Empire is on its last legs, close to collapse."-- Simplicius
She is willing to be in talks with Bernie
because even though the indictment didn't come, the damage has been done.
Comey's outlining of the many things she did wrong is having more of an effect than expected.
Of course, this is only Lucy holding the football and expecting that once again Charlie Brown will trust her. Then Lucy (Hillary and her cronies) will walk away laughing as Charlie Brown (those who fell for it) lies there on his back wondering why he ever thought that this would finally be the time he would get to kick that football to the moon.
There is no way that she will actually follow through with any thing that will help the 99%. She is a liar and will say whatever she thinks she needs to say to try and get votes!
Yaldabaoth, Saklas I'm calling you. Samael. You're not alone. I said, you're not alone, in your darkness. You're not alone, baby. You're not alone. "Original Sinsuality" Tori Amos
Take the gloves off, Bernie!
Put on the brass knuckles and hit Hillary hard!