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Like King Arthur in T.H. White’s The Candle in the Wind, Bernie Sanders led a rising against brute force, and lost, yet will be remembered for an historic moral victory. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
We knew (didn’t we?) that Bernie Sanders was never going to save the world, or our country. But wasn’t it grand watching him try, and succeed in doing things that everybody knew were impossible to do? Everybody knew it was impossible to finance a major political campaign without drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid of rich peoples’ money. Bernie did it. Everybody knew you couldn’t be a contender if you didn’t like war — all wars, any war, war all the time. Bernie was a contender. Everybody knew that you could not be competitive in national politics if you ever mentioned the words “climate change” without a sneer and a snowball. Bernie was competitive, after he identified climate change as the number one threat to the future of the United States.
Seems like everybody doesn’t know very much. Still, as they say, even stopped clocks are correct twice a day. Everybody knew that Bernie couldn’t win, because he’s a Jew, a “socialist,” too old, and for all the reasons mentioned above. Everybody was wrong about all the reasons, but right in the conclusion, as the state of New York confirmed yesterday.
Bernie is not going to make it. And that’s too bad. But let us temper our grief and rage (especially you young people, exulting in your rallies, your passion, your storming of the bastions of the status quo) by remembering: Bernie was never going to save the world. Had he been nominated, elected, and had he then declared the revolution under way, it would not — could not — have made much difference, given the number and gravity of the existential crises bearing down on us. It didn’t matter what color uniform the skipper of the Titanic was wearing, or what his or her race or gender or ethnicity or sexual preferences were. It made no difference to the ship. Or to the dead.
No one says outright that the President of the United States is a king. But candidates and pundits talk, almost without exception, as if he were. Is he going to dissolve NATO, deport millions, make Medicare available to all, go to war, end a war, rebuild the highways — or not? Not until way too late does it seem to dawn on anyone that the president of a democratic republic cannot spend a dime that Congress does not appropriate, nor do anything the Supreme Court sees as inconsistent with the Constitution.
One small example: President Obama has been trying for six years to close our prison at Guantanamo Bay, and he hasn’t been able to do it. You’d think the Leader of the Free World would have more clout than that. Did you really think Bernie would wave a wand, and college would be free?
Bernie knew better. He knows full well the lesson of the unstoppable Obama administration meeting the immovable Congress. That’s why Bernie has said from day one that turning our country around would not be accomplished by electing a different president, it would take a political revolution, fueled by people who would work tirelessly not only to elect the right people, but then to implement the right policies.
Well. We didn’t get it. It was beguiling for a while to hope for him (but see my essay “About Hope” on its own page on this site) even if all we hoped for was an honest, grown-up conversation about the pickle we are in, and some decent palliative care while rack and ruin run rampant.
Go home, Bernie. Rest, and savor the knowledge that you raised a magnificent light against the spreading darkness, that your decency illuminated, better than anything or anyone else, the mortal corruptions of our time. And vaporized, as never before, the pathetic argument of the amoral temporizers: “We don’t like the system either, but it’s the only way to get things done.”
But you could not have saved us. If, 30 years ago, we had felt the burn of the Sanders Revolution instead of the Reagan Revolution, we might be in a far, far better place by now. But we did not, and we are not. Instead, the morning after the New York primaries, we are feeling the Bernout.
WHAT?! You mean Hillary stole that one too?
http://robinwestenra.blogspot.co.nz/2016/04/the-stolen-vote-in-new-york.html
The Stolen Vote in New York
Sanders’ campaign condemns NY voter irregularities that leave 125,000 Democrats disenfranchised
Bernie Sanders’ campaign team has slammed reports of voting irregularities at the New York state primary as “absurd” after more than 125,000 Democrats were unable to cast their ballots due to a mixture of broken voting machines, missing ballots and purged voter rolls.
The figure of 125,000 accounted for voters registered in Brooklyn, the district where Sanders was born.
[ah, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway – the whole thing is fixed from start to finish]
Meanwhile, it’s 4/20 and it’s time to LEGALIZE IT, don’t criticize it . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=088FEHzCnQ0
Welcome back! While Bernie could be stopped by Congress from reducing the FIRE sector, or other initiatives, just having a president would did not expand war would be a huge improvement. As CIC could a president begin to quietly withdraw from empire?
I still harbour a hope that if Bernie hangs on, and Clinton starts to poll below Trump, the super-d.c.elite-delegates will have her indicted if Bernie continues to outpoll Trump. They might think they could control him more easily than Trump.
Tzu Lu (a student of Confucius) spent an evening at the Stone Gate. In the morning the gatekeeper asked him, “Where do you come from?”
“From Confucius.”
“You mean that wise guy who strove for a cause even when he saw that it was hopeless?”
(Analects 14:41)
Sadly, you’re exactly on point. Bernie was some kind of super hero for the conscious ones. But those of us who have had profound intuitions that what’s going on in the US and in the world goes much deeper than meer politics, already knew he couldn’t win and that even if he did, he would be rendered powerless by a system screaming for its final breath.
More than ever before, I feel an urgency for each and every American to think very seriously about getting to sanctuary and perhaps even leaving the US altogether. Just do it. The system is collapsing and doesn’t matter anymore (how much did it in the first place?) Save yourselves and those you love (if you and they even want to be saved… and that is a very serious question that I hold very soberly).
Kathleen,
It’s been a long, long time since Tom’s posted here and like the demise of Collapse of the Industrial Empire or Mike Lee’s over dependence on Mr Pray For Calamity, who prefers to remain anonymous (why he thinks he’s so important is beyond me) there seem to be less to say as we watch this decline continue to speed up at a rate we refuse to acknowledge. Obama is an utter failure, an liar and an fraud who tells people that what is happening is due to PTSD suffered followed the 2008 economic implosion.
By suggesting and believing that leaving the USA is some kind of “solution” is just more bread and circuses. This is kind of mind set that demonstrates how most humans (I am an INFJ, I make a leap here and state you most likely are not) are incapable of getting it. Leave the USA. Leave the USA. Like a mantra.
Really, leave the USA. Where the *#&! would you go? Why are you going? What’s your goal? What are your intentions?
Do you really believe the Great Barrier Reef isn’t going extinct? Do you not get that, despite Nate Hagen’s (a recent guest on denialist Alex Smith’s show) belief (like other morons) that humans are the most creative and adaptable creature in the known universe, the game is over? Tell how huge a boulder has to fall on you, Kathleen, for you to get it?
We, humans, are at the top of the pyramid. We are completely and irrevocably dependent on everything single thing below it and we (every single human on the planet) are responsible for the pickle we are in yet we behave as if we are “Masters of the Universe”.
Carbon levels closing in to 410ppm just last week, when just a year ago it peaked at 405ppm around June 2015.
I volunteer at a farm in Queens, NY where the level of discourse is about how widespread the Urban Farming movement (the emperor has not clothes) is from people who are working as bartenders because the farm only has a budget for them to work twice a week. Where the conversation is about a jerk from MA who has increased his food production enabling him to make oodles and oodles of cash from his high quality fresh produce that only the rich can afford. Conversation about “Saved By the Bell” and not end of life choices. And people claim I’m a cynic, a doomster, a negative nelly.
On every single front (all over the planet (San Paolo, Syria, everywhere, every single place) it’s falling apart and all we talk about are driverless cars, flying cars, moving to Mars, and the next release of the iPhone. We’re beyond wacky, beyond crazy, we’re certifiable and stain on the planet, every single one of us, and especially the environmentalists with their fantasy filled brains.
“What fools these mortals be.”
I was accosted by a man about my age (58) on my way to the gym in Manhattan just a block off Union Square Park who wanted me to donate to Greenpeace. I warned him to walk away from me, to pick on any of the other 4.5 Billion people on the planet, but if he persists I’m going going to leave him a puddle of water much like the Wicked Witch of the West. Sadly, for him, he persisted. Even more sad was that he read and was familiar with “The Limits to Growth” and even more disgraceful was that he was addicted to the drug I find more dangerous than heroin, the one called Hopium.
This Greenpeace fool believes we can turn it around (and how many of you reading this blog know someone with similar POVs or even know someone who thinks something is wrong) while moving all about him are woman with watermelons walking about ready and willing to drop their load and add to the possibilities that one of of those new offspring will create something that will usher in a new age of utopia.
Babies, babies and more babies. Consumption, consumption, consuming. That Sally Fallon the epitome of Weston Price encourages woman, and by extension their mates (male or female) that to breed is why we exist. The Dula’s graduating from “The Farm” are as much a missionary as those Christians from the USA going around the world to “save” others for Christ. Why aren’t the dulas promoting vasectomies and tube tying?
So what would leaving the USA mean? Why exactly is leaving supposed to accomplish? Like Morris Berman who relocated to Mexico while all the Mexicans are coming North to find jobs to send money home what’s the guy accomplishing? As Daniel Drumwright asked Guy McPherson, “What are trying to accomplish by flying around the world giving your presentations?” It’s a valid question and one McPherson ought to reflect on instead of allowing it to fall away from his toxic teflon like exterior.
What impact would your going somewhere else have on the place you are going to? Stay where you are and make a last stand much like Custer’s. It’s the least you and others can do as payment for all that we’ve taken from the planet and our oh so beloved offspring (if we’ve had any) that we’ve left nothing for them.
Philip B.
A proud, loud and out misanthropic cynic
From Dave Cohen’s Decline of the Empire a quote I find accurately gets to the point of my own experience.
“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” –George Bernard Shaw
Wow, Phillip. Okay, first I want to say that I do not deserve the way you have framed my response as one that is unaware of “what’s really going on”. You have no idea about what I have witnessed, what I have decided to act on, and just how much I DO get what’s going on in the world. I have been proactive and continue to be so, which sadly, is more than most people who read this blog and others can say.
For you to take what I wrote out of my own observation and use it as an excuse to off-gas your own tensions about what’s going on in the USA and beyond, is unfair. How do you know I wouldn’t agree with the points you’re trying to make and the way you have been digesting what’s happening?
You may be feeling reactions to what I feel about trying to continue life “as normal” in the USA, which is fine, but I refuse to get into some intellectual debate about it when there really isn’t one right now, from my perspective. The typical way of life is falling apart, which is all I was addressing and to me it seems obvious that we all need to be proactive, whatever that looks like for everyone individually, regardless of their geography. For me it was a no-brainer choice to leave the USA behind even though it seemed impossible. If that’s not the answer you feel for yourself, then that’s fine. It was and is for me and for many others as well. Nowhere else is perfect, and I get that. Everywhere in the world right now has problems. My choice to live where I am is about lifestyle and ability to live more sustainably, in a climate that allows food to be grown year-round and therefore we have a lot of self-sufficiency. It is still illegal to try to live this way in some states.
I’m definitely not the one you need to be ranting at and I hope you can sense that now.
Kathleen
Kathleen,
We are all to blame for what has occurred. Some more than others, but in the end it makes not a whit of difference.
By the by what others see as a rant I proudly say is great passion, but whether I’m kind (which I’d been for years) and patient (also for most of my life) those traits made not a bit of difference all along the spectrum.
In my own past I was radically changed during the 80s as I watched all my friends shrivel up and die looking like old men (they were barely into their 40s) so I may not know you’re past (and I’m willing to read about it), but my own was fraught with facing my own mortality many, many, many years ago. I realized that allowing the BAU crowd to continue controlling the situation would really result in concentration camps and massive deaths of the group I was part of.
Echoing in my head was my first generation parents (also both dead of cancer during my 20s) telling me what happened in Europe during the 30s could never happen here. Oy vey, what cowards and liars they were. For myself it was only by becoming involved with ACT UP that I managed to feel some empowerment as we had to humiliate or convince enough of the BAU crowd to see the financial potential of hooking queers up to drugs.
It truly was the squeaky wheel that go the grease. Read Larry Kramer’s play or see the DVD of it from a few years ago, “The Normal Heart”.
Philip
THANK YOU “philip b” for daring to say the emperor has no clothes. sometimes i feel nuts for seeing (like you) the rapidly approaching cliff, while my “good green” friends talk nonsense about “sustainable development” and “green growth”.
just enjoy these remaining good days, because there is NO WAY this will end well.
so, thanks again for being a “reality anchor”. what we are facing is our own, unavoidable, self created extinction. pretending the titanic will not sink is a wonderful distraction… but i prefer truth to nonsense.
Shastatodd,
Thank you for responding. It’s a shame that saying the emperor has no clothes, when he doesn’t, causes those of us who do say so so much aggravation (that’s really too innocuous a term).
Yes, there is no way this will end well.
Although one of the woman I work at the farm with (her life is a mess as well) says I’m too gloomy and dark. That she believes we (humans) are transforming. When pressed by me I ask what are we transforming into? What’s the time line? I say to her the only thing I see us transforming into is compost she visibly recoils. She doesn’t seem to think that turning into compost is a nice thought to have, yet she claims to love nature and composting.
I too prefer truth to nonsense, but each person does seem to have a variation on that theme of truth (me included).
I can tell you that the week the news of the Great Barrier Reef came out I cried constantly (and thought I was insane). I was acting up all that week in my yoga, stretch, Pilates, MELT, meditation, Fluidity classes. I would announce to the room that I’m celebrating, celebrating the ingenuity and creativity of humans. That we should be proud that we’ve managed to accomplish something so unique as to completely destroy the Great Barrier Reef.
You’d think that the people teaching these classes and preaching peace, energy, love and life would get it, but it BAU even with these so called “teachers” and enlightened ones.
If, as I believe, we have passed several critical tipping points and are in the terminal phase of progressive Industrial Civilization, and very likely the existence of human beings on this beautiful planet, rather than insisting that others share my view and chastising them if they do not, I choose, as long as it does not damage others, to allow each individual to exercise their right to deal with the challenges they face with the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources they possess. I am fast approaching my 81st birthday, so it is unlikely that I will see the worst of what I believe is yet to come, however I have children and grandchildren who may not share my good fortune. I do not see the benefit of insisting that they, or anyone not so inclined, accept the notion that they are facing a horrific future. My task, as I see it, is to be supportive of that which gives them a sense of fulfillment in the here and now. In a darkening time we must be guided by empathy and compassion.
Rael,
I’m sure it’s just me, but somehow your comments strike me as passive aggressive as if you’re above it all.
I complete understand those who believe if we could only “educate the masses” (Hansen says this over and over and over, and he’s not alone) hold onto that opinion to keep from facing reality. That education is not the answer. That people won’t change no matter what until they are in PAIN and not even the. The belief in education as the medium of changing our direction is it’s own form of denial or hope. “Educating” does nothing and will not bring the result Hansen believes it will. This attitude is more of an indication of how “stupid” Hansen really is and unable to accept reality. Head of NASA or not does not make one capable of really seeing what’s around.
I don’t try to educate, but I have no patience for fools. I’m not standing on street corners (any longer) and shilling for an organization who has enough money for it’s CEO to travel and dress in style far more privileged than I’ll ever enjoy. So, if you don’t let me pass (as the drug dealers in Washington Sq Park didn’t the other night) then I’ll act in a way that will force you to regret not letting me by peacefully.
Had to endure on a subway car the sad tale of woe of a 19 year old girl who was rejected from a shelter because they couldn’t accept her in for insurance reasons due to her being pregnant. Was this true? It could be. Was she really pregnant? I have no idea. I told her to terminate it as she walked by me (not very loudly (so call me a coward)), but the population clock runs in my head and another human we do not need. This young girl seemed to not feel for the extinction of the Barrier Reef.
Compassion. Empathy. I’ve got plenty, but where’s the line We’re all going to be making some pretty difficult decisions in the coming years and where does that leave empathy and compassion. And where was the young girl’s compassion and empathy for the other species on the planet.
“as long as it does not damage others”
Well bully for you Gael, you’re unique, how are you able to be so completely objective in determining what is damage? Who determines if others are being damaged? You? Me? Obama? Trump? Janet Yellen? Caroline Baker? George Clooney? I must have missed the memo?
Great Barrier Reef. Hey, what does that have to do with me? I met a jerk yesterday who started to talk to me about we humans creating a new form of coral that would be resistant to bleaching and acid water. The price of progress and all that.
Gael, that line about your being 81 and not seeing the worst of it is pure denial crap. You could live to 103. (if you’re lucky you cold drop dead tomorrow and I’d be envious). You could be the character of Sol played by Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green. You could outlive me. What kind of rationalization is is to say/write/think “well I won’t see the worst”. Maybe you will see the worst. Maybe what you’re witnessing right now is pretty bad in itself. I was always told (by those well meaning environmentalists) that what’s happening now would never be allowed to occur as we’re (humans) not that stupid.
Gael, be more direct in what you’re trying to say. I felt angry because it seemed as if you were responding to some of the things I wrote. That’s the story I told myself and that’s all I’m reacting to is a story in my head, but were you. It seems you took a self righteous attitude, but hey that could be all my stuff. All I can do is recommend you read the book “Difficult Conversations” as you are never too old to learn. We are ALL Teachers and we are ALL Students.
The old adage about “Chop Wood. Carry Water. Gain Enlightenment. then Chop Wood. Carry Wood.” is always excepted at face value, but that’s a fallacy. You may still be chopping wood and carrying water only after gaining enlightenment you are no longer chopping wood or carrying water as you did previously for you have changed and see the world differently. It may appear to be the same tasks externally, but not internally.
By the by I was just in a reading group at my local library where we discussed the Book “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant” by Roz Chast. It’s a graphic novel (hope you’re not above this sort of thing) that details Roz’s experience with the last decade of her parent’s lives. More of us should read it, but it was so funny hearing the opinions of the group I was part of. Most of them were in their late 60s and mid 70s, but the book was seen as something they couldn’t really relate to you. The majority of the group focused on the mother (the evil queen) and not on the substance of the story. How sad. But, then again one of the group (a good catholic pair) were so proud of the 5 daughters they produced and the tons of grandchildren. All white. All “educated”. All successful.
What I constantly learn is that the number of years you’ve lived is no prerequisite for wisdom and in many instances it’s only a excuse for being limited and narrow minded.
We are all indoctrinated to automatically assume that politicians are the decision makers, the force behind various programs, the shining examples who have tirelessly worked toward a better world.
This assumption is analogous to fans confusing their favorite movie stars with the parts they play. Movie stars don’t often write scripts, and politicians don’t create policy.
The real power behind the movie remains mostly unseen, and just like Woody Wilson confessed so long ago, there is a mostly unseen power behind politics, one that few want to admit is the puppet master.
I agree with Philip in that with all the planetary tipping points going down like a domino show we humans have truly laid that last cornerstone to bring about our demise,I had a friend the other night say smugly that with out humans the earth could at least recover ,I feel that statements like that deserve their balloon to be popped ,sorry I say just all those Nuclear reactors going into meltdown with out their keepers is enough to leave this Planet uninhabitable (except for some tough as shit microbes) so there goes that Hopeopium dream.
That being said I merely wanted to say that Bernie Sanders at least gave me the satisfaction of acknowledging Climate change as the gravest threat to our shared human existence and was not shouting meaningless drivel about how awesomely great the good old US of A is and that Jesus is just holding our country in his wounded hands and (sniffle,small tear just thinking of this) out of his Pie Hole.