August 12, 2016
By Mickey Friedman
In the end Bernie was Bernie not Martin. He began as a politician and ended as one. While many millions put their faith in him to bring transformative change, Bernie voted to retain the privileges of the inside life rather than remain true to the movement he said he was building. Remember when Barack Obama told us he was building a movement. Ultimately he gave us a TPP presidency.
As Martin Luther King understood, real movements for social change are built from the outside.
So Bernie smiled sadly as those who mugged his movement sat above with smirks while he lied to himself and his followers about what a good President Hillary Clinton would be.
Trying to sell those who worked so hard for real change that sweet words in a meaningless platform document meant victory. Pretending along with Elizabeth Warren that the woman whose campaign was financed by lobbyists, the woman who along with her husband took hundreds of millions from energy companies, banks, insurance companies, GE, a panoply of the powerful corporations who’ve shipped our jobs overseas, and gouged us for prescription drugs, would now magically be the one to bring them under control.
Bernie must have wanted that lonely seat at the big table so very much to have played that part on such a public stage. Imagining they would actually welcome him. When, really, that seat belongs to Debbie Wasserman Shulze who earned it with her enduring immoral loyalty.
I don’t need you to tell me about Trump. I’ve watched him rip the thin veneer of pretend off the festering American racism that has never really been dealt with. Paraphrasing H. Rap Brown, racism is as American as cherry pie.
Unlike Hillary, Trump’s people understand the crippling reality of powerlessness that infects the reality of the white working poor in this nation. They are haunted by the myth of greatness – an illusion as essential to Democratic politicians as Republicans – a greatness that has eluded them their entire lives.
But the threat of Trump is doubly real because the Democrats won’t accept responsibility for how they too sold the American dream to the highest bidder. Instead, we’re offered sentimental claptrap. While pretending to care so much more than the Republicans, they’ve taken money from the same lobbyists, waged the same unwinnable wars, provided inadequate health care with their falsely advertised Affordable Health Care Act – crafted by insurance companies and Big Pharma. As if the people struggling to pay their doctor wouldn’t notice.
For a few months, Bernie mattered. Mobilizing those who hadn’t been involved; transforming disbelief into hope. Of course, the bought media ignored the great numbers of folks who came out to cheer Bernie and with a combination of voter suppression, misplaced votes and compromised superdelegates, the DNC did what was needed to assure the victory of their corporate candidate. They won and we are losers. Not the least because their victory makes a Trump presidency that much more likely.
Those who swoon over Bernie’s embrace of Hillary are at the end of the day the beneficiaries of the new order. They still have their jobs, their new cars, their healthcare, their kids in college. With good reason, they’re with her.
Sympathetic to the idea of the poor, they have no idea what it is like to wake at three in the morning unable to pay bills. To rely on food stamps or food pantries. And because they don’t know the rage that never goes away, they have no clue how Trump resonates. It’s easier to see the many racist yahoos while underestimating the great numbers of Americans who are just downright furious that those people, Washington, the politicians, have ripped a decent life from them.
It hasn’t taken much to build the convincing Donald: the take-no-prisoner, no BS anti-politician. Liberals have never been terribly comfortable with the poor, so it’s not surprising they’ve miscalculated every step of the way. All they could see was Trump the Joke, not the millions of pissed off people behind him.
Bernie was the most potent alternative. Because he could acknowledge that anger, respect it and channel it. If he had one great failing it was his initial awkwardness and unwillingness to reach out with passion and purpose to people of color. To experience and channel that anger and disappointment. Perhaps he was afraid it would seem like pandering. But that’s something the Clintons have done without shame for decades. Bernie, at least, would not have betrayed their communities.
And as much as liberals need to believe that Hillary cares, and despite the saccharine recitations of her constant caring, the multimillions she’s taken from global corporations and her penchant for war tell a different story.
It’s time to say goodbye to Bernie. He chose Team Hillary. He has sacrificed and burned.
And America has lost yet another chance at redemption.
_________________________________________________________________________________
For more information:
Matt Taibbi of the Rolling Stone on the DNC emails:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows-mechanics-of-a-slanted-campaign-w430814
The Intercept on the neverending war Hillary is likely to continue:
https://theintercept.com/2016/08/01/u-s-says-new-bombing-campaign-against-isis-in-libya-has-no-end-point-at-this-particular-moment/
Election Justice USA Study Finds that Without Election Fraud Sanders Would Have Won by Landslide
https://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/7/29/1554022/-Election-Justice-USA-Study-Finds-that-Without-Election-Fraud-Sanders-Would-Have-Won-by-Landslide
The Obama Administration Has Brokered More Weapons Sales Than Any Other Administration Since World War II
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-obama-administration-has-sold-more-weapons-than-any-other-administration-since-world-war-ii/
On the contradictions of being a critic from the inside: Bernie and the F-35 boondoggle:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/09/bernie-sanders-loves-this-1-trillion-war-machine.html
“The Burn” was first published in the August 4, 2016 edition of The Berkshire Record.
3 comments for “The Burn”