@Ellen North

Unfortunately, this isn't just a political party problem. It's a global loose alliance of many of the most powerful and ruthless psychopaths in the world, involving giant corporations/billionaires/trillionaires backed by wealth sucked out of the rest of the world, as well as their political puppets.

That is completely true, which is why we can't be deceived by sheepdogs like Sanders who wish to lull us back to our veal pens to do nothing.

Why didn't the powerful Eisenhower 'have the balls' to do away with this monstrous machine back when it was far smaller and he was directly referring to only the military industrial complex? Why hasn't any person or group ever been able to do so?

Eisenhower for the most part agreed with the hysteria of all the Cold War bullshit. It was only near the end when he started to see the problem and even then he did a speech. And with regards to other folks? It's either a mix of either they were killed or they accepted it. Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Obama all accepted the machine with loving arms.

Why is Bernie the only one being castigated when he told us so many times that one man could do nothing alone, that change would have to come from the American people, en masse - of whom one could say that they apparently 'lack the balls' to rise up in peaceful protest against this overarching threat to fight for their lives and democracy, if one chose to ignore the circumstances to cast blame against them all for not doing so.

Because that is not America. It just isn't. Sorry to say it to you and Al, but America is not that nor will it ever be. America is a country of people who prefer to be slaves sorry to say. Americans prefer the loud rattle of slavery vs. the actual fresh air of freedom. I wrote an essay on here about it. Americans do not want to think for themselves -- they want to be led. Eugene Debs talked about the ease of which Americans are manipulated.

"I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands"

The thing that Debs got wrong is he needed to accept the fact that Americans will not just do things in a horizontal fashion. They required, no demand a vertical structure. Americans demand a leader. People in this country refuse to use their power. They will only use their power when someone orders them to do so. As I said, if Bernie started a 3rd party people would follow. But he refuses to do what is necessary. I don't have power to start that up. He does. Who would listen to me vs. the most popular and powerful politician in this country?

Bernie has never claimed to be Superman capable of saving the world all on his lonesome. He's a decent man, surrounded by psychopaths in a psychopathic corporate/military/political looney-bin, doing his best to keep the notion of government of, by and for the people alive in the public mind, despite those around him trying to kill the very concept of democracy - and, it seems, anyone showing signs of helping it revive.

I don't want a Superman. I don't want a King. Just someone in power like him to just give people the tools to do what is necessary. He's doing nothing about the notion of a government for the public. Sorry, that's wrong. What exactly is his answer? That we must vote for the imperialist, warmonger, capitalist, Wall Street monster Hillary Clinton? Good luck with that. Everything he fought for was nullified by telling you to vote for the complete opposite with Hillary Clinton.

How are we going to get single payer with "Single Payer will never ever happen" Clinton?
How will we stop the wars with psychopath war-lover Clinton?
How will we deal with climate change with fracking and oil imperialist Clinton?

All he does is lull people back into their veal pen. Nice speeches, a tranquilizing drug of hopey-dopey reform nonsense. You can't reform the Democratic Party. He could change American politics right now by starting a 3rd party and getting that infrastructure set up for future generations. He has that power, right now. But he won't use it. What does he have to lose? Don't take this wrong, but he's old. What does he have to lose? He sets up the 3rd party, gets the ball rolling with his popularity and other people take up the mantle. He would then fade back but would be known as the person who disrupted our political system.

If Bernie were to speak out and be silenced, who would carry the word of democracy and the notion of government working for, rather than against the public interest, to those Americans limited to the corporate propaganda machine that the US media has been converted into?

He silences himself.

Every office in this country could be filled with Democrats and we will not get single payer, free college, ending the wars, climate change dealt with, and more. But what does he do? Tells you to vote for them. No thanks. He tells you to vote for the very people who want to do all the things he rails against. Come on.

He has power. He has power that I do not. He refuses to use it.

What power is he using? He tells everyone to join the Democratic Party, the party completely against everything he is "fighting" for. You don't have to be Superman to see the giant writing on the wall that if all you do is take your enormous power and use it, you could completely change the American political landscape.

#8.1.1

Unfortunately, this isn't just a political party problem. It's a global loose alliance of many of the most powerful and ruthless psychopaths in the world, involving giant corporations/billionaires/trillionaires backed by wealth sucked out of the rest of the world, as well as their political puppets.

Why didn't the powerful Eisenhower 'have the balls' to do away with this monstrous machine back when it was far smaller and he was directly referring to only the military industrial complex? Why hasn't any person or group ever been able to do so?

Why is Bernie the only one being castigated when he told us so many times that one man could do nothing alone, that change would have to come from the American people, en masse - of whom one could say that they apparently 'lack the balls' to rise up in peaceful protest against this overarching threat to fight for their lives and democracy, if one chose to ignore the circumstances to cast blame against them all for not doing so.

Bernie has never claimed to be Superman capable of saving the world all on his lonesome. He's a decent man, surrounded by psychopaths in a psychopathic corporate/military/political looney-bin, doing his best to keep the notion of government of, by and for the people alive in the public mind, despite those around him trying to kill the very concept of democracy - and, it seems, anyone showing signs of helping it revive.

Nobody else has dared do as much as he has succeeded in doing from within the very belly of the beast, bringing the once-standard basics of what's now termed social democracy onto the corporate media, where once he and all such ideas as the Great Society were blacked out and reviled/dismissed in contemptuous passing.

Bernie stands alone, in more than one sense.

All of the following, and more, is being undone. Everything necessary for human survival on the planet is being despoiled.

If Bernie were to speak out and be silenced, who would carry the word of democracy and the notion of government working for, rather than against the public interest, to those Americans limited to the corporate propaganda machine that the US media has been converted into?

http://www.ushistory.org/us/56e.asp

56e. Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society"

...First, the Civil Rights Bill that JFK promised to sign was passed into law. The Civil Rights Act banned discrimination based on race and gender in employment and ending segregation in all public facilities. ...

...Johnson also signed the omnibus Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The law created the Office of Economic Opportunity aimed at attacking the roots of American poverty. A Job Corps was established to provide valuable vocational training.

Head Start, a preschool program designed to help disadvantaged students arrive at kindergarten ready to learn was put into place. The Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) was set up as a domestic Peace Corps. Schools in impoverished American regions would now receive volunteer teaching attention. Federal funds were sent to struggling communities to attack unemployment and illiteracy.

As he campaigned in 1964, Johnson declared a "war on poverty." He challenged Americans to build a "Great Society" that eliminated the troubles of the poor. Johnson won a decisive victory over his archconservative Republican opponent Barry Goldwater of Arizona.

American liberalism was at high tide under President Johnson.

The Wilderness Protection Act saved 9.1 million acres of forestland from industrial development.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act provided major funding for American public schools.

The Voting Rights Act banned literacy tests and other discriminatory methods of denying suffrage to African Americans.

Medicare was created to offset the costs of health care for the nation's elderly.

The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities used public money to fund artists and galleries.

The Immigration Act ended discriminatory quotas based on ethnic origin.

An Omnibus Housing Act provided funds to construct low-income housing.

Congress tightened pollution controls with stronger Air and Water Quality Acts.

Standards were raised for safety in consumer products. ...

Now, even the bare minimums of civilization are being strip-mined and poisoned; all for greed, and the world well lost. And one man is expected to be the super-hero who - at best - would not have media or any public access permitted if he ever lost it to the point of speaking as those (who I'd have thought were informed as to what's being faced) would have him do, when immediately silenced, one way or another upon that first attempt, when his interview mike can mysteriously die the instant he says anything TPTB would rather he didn't, as has already occurred?

Bernie does what he can, in the midst of the resurgence of 'the next generation' of a Fascist attempt at global take-over, Nazi/psychopathic influences and sympathizers having infiltrated and taken over the American government, while propagandizing the American public, over decades.

And that's more than most of us can do, or would have the courage to maintain doing for all of this time.

Take and use the good that Bernie can do and does and work in your own way, if you will, for the common good. But please, save the condemnations and absolute rejections for those who act out of pathological greed and malice, those controlling policy, government and the various civil, military/corporate forces of force.

Not those who can only do so much, and do whatever they must do to attempt to achieve that much good.