Posted on 01/14/2020 5:31:35 AM PST by Kaslin
The best thing about Bernie -- need I explain, in the year of grace 2020, which Bernie? -- is how a frosty-haired old coot, old enough to have been a high school classmate of mine, fires up kids who never heard of our era's icons: Leo Durocher, say, or Robert Q. Lewis.
This happens, coincidentally, to be the worst thing about Bernie. A youthful constituency for socialist measures and methods in the Bernie manner is a scary thing to behold. In a less mixed-up political environment than ours, candidate Sanders might rise, with some exertion, to the level of Marianne Williamson.
That is because of a once generally obvious point -- that America needs a socialist president, even a self-billed "democratic" one, the way it needs reparations for the War of 1812.
Mucking up things that run relatively well without government oversight and insistence is the vocational specialty of socialists; they remain among us, dreaming, Bernie-like, of the warm feeling that comes with narrowing the running room for human freedom.
Not that I chew my fingernails over the prospect of U. S. Sen. Bernard Sanders actually talking Americans into letting him run things. I can't for the life of me see him winning -- though peculiar things happen in the 21st century, e.g., the voter putdown of Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Here is Bernie, all the same, carbonating at the top of various polls in Iowa and New Hampshire while he enjoys the nearly $100 million his campaign received in 2019, mostly from small-fry contributors. Nonliberal columnists -- Jason Riley in the Wall Street Journal and Bret Stephens in The New York Times -- are assessing the possibility of a genuine Sanders connection with voters who could put him in the White House.
What goes on around here?
We don't quite know, I think. But we're learning. At a basic -- in other words, a human -- level, I confess to respecting my frosty-haired contemporary. Our personalities and tastes wouldn't have brought us together in our high school years, but I admire a man committed to telling what he sees as the truth -- even the wrong truth. Younger voters -- less experienced than Bernie's and my contemporaries in absorbing the disappointment of politics -- take with real affection to Bernie's way of talking.
If only he weren't talking, with his heart conspicuously on display, of enlarging the power of government over human beings in general. The theme -- government first; you second -- is an ancient one. Plato, in case everyone's forgotten, was going to let his guardian class oversee the important questions of life. Socialists, in their vanity, imagine themselves as guardians. They know. They have the big picture.
Sanders' socialism doesn't take in public ownership as the means of production and distribution; it's all about big government -- "Medicare for All" would be the biggest initiative -- signaling government's belief in its own superiority, its ability to make the right decisions for the incapable.
Under President Sanders, we're going to receive paid parental leave and a Green New Deal that results in the phasing out of fossil fuels. Really? We don't need an oil industry? Why didn't we think of that ourselves? It took good old Bernie -- our would-be guardian-in-chief, our philosopher king (in the Platonic mode) -- to awaken us to the deep needs we obviously hadn't considered. The I-Know-It-All attributes of the committed socialist are plainly in view here.
Could Bernie the Socialist capture the Democratic presidential nomination? It might better serve national purposes for the Democrats to go on and pick him so we can have it out, in November, over a major question: To wit, what's better for the country, a government that decides what's good for us in all important cases or one inspired wherever possible to let people figure things out for themselves?
Free market principles and human liberty -- conducive to the kind of boisterous economy we presently enjoy -- might benefit from a spokesman or promoter with a higher believability quotient than President Donald Trump. That's a secondary consideration. The primary consideration is blunter: How many Americans, way, way deep down, yearn for Washington to run the American show -- how many, I mean, outside the ambit of my favorite frosty-haired old coot?
Bernie wants to turn the whole nation into California. We can all crap in the streets with impunity
We must face the fact that this country now has a large, robust and growing constituency that supports socialism. We are going to be dealing with that for many years into the future.
I think the proggies are cheating, and will continue to cheat. I also think that Bernie has screwed over the Democrats for years and if he wins the Democratic nomination and loses, their revenge will be a sight to see.
You think? Don’t you know, that without fraud the rats can not win an election.
Young, uninformed, disaffected people love the idea of shifting life’s burden onto someone ELSE.
They’re positively GA GA about the idea of living without encumbrance, obligation, duty or necessity of ANY kind. They fantasize about living without obligation to work for anything, because everything will be free.
In itself, that’s wholly illogical and materially impossible. But, preying on the wild daydreams of the young and promising them an instant, perpetual Nirvana of idle and indolent existence is what Liberals do best.
It never occurs to the gullible and misinformed or their political leaders that a society so comprised will engender pointless, absolutely worthless lives and cultivate generations of dehumanized, demoralized people. It will exactly mimic the existence of the habitually unemployed, we see in all societies
A nation of fat, lazy cattle is no nation worth the name and will quickly become prey to greedy, ambitious and violent enemies (both foreign and domestic).
Bernie’s main support comes from a bunch of people who will be in the middle of midterms on election day. There has also been a lack of oppo research interest in Bernie since Vermont is fairly small. That will change. I hate to say it but this is one candidate I could see dying of natural causes on the trail. That could give the proggies a martyr figure of a sort (and proggies do love their martyrs). His veep pick could emerge with an unearned air of legitimacy.
I also think that Trump is the great destroyer of false narratives and Bernie is full of false narratives. Trump might just run over the veep pick too in memorable fashion and that would be the end of that.
“News” reports... yea! FLASHBACK: ABC’s ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015!
When their lies don’t work, they lie harder... LIE LOUDER!!! When their panic don’t work... they panic harder!
It would be more politically savvy of the party for him to die (of "natural causes") after winning the nomination, but before the convention. That way the Savior of the Party (either HRC or MO) can come in and take the nomination without having to go through the muckish primary contests.
The proggies would burn the convention down before HRC or MO would be substituted in.
I think they are talking tipping point by 2015 in all fairness. I have progressive friends and if I argued that I’d lose. The signs they had to take down about no more glaciers by 2020 was rare bit of specificity, but mostly their arguments are about a dystopian future without a specific time table outside of their deadlines for the demanded action.
This is why they can’t & won’t allow Bernie to get the nomination — the question is too plain. The only question that remains is exactly how the DNC will put its thumb on the scales this time?
It would be best for us if they can get the old fool to a doctor in time to save him should he keel over on the election trail. That way reality can set in with a vetting process without some sort of mythic messianic mandate taking hold worse than it already has. It would be better for the public, and better for the Democrats even, for this guy to be vetted. Then the pragmatists can take over the Democratic party and we can finally start moving forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsUAvh_PCWA&feature=youtu.be
James O’Keefe’s latest - but the guy on tape is just a low level mental case....
“I also think that Trump is the great destroyer of false narratives...”
I agree totally with that thought!!!
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