RT just posted an article entitled “Sanders joins Biden livestream to give full-throated ENDORSEMENT” which begins like this:
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders made a surprising appearance on former Vice President joe Biden’s livestream to give the rival for the Democrat presidential nomination an enthusiastic endorsement against President Donald Trump.
Denouncing Trump as a “racist, sexist, homophobe” who “lies all the time,” Sanders announced he was now supporting Biden’s presidential bid. The self-described democratic socialist had suspended his campaign last week, saying he would stay on the ballot to influence party policy at the convention – but apparently changed his mind on Monday.
“I am asking all Americans — I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans — to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy which I endorse,” Sanders said.
Finally that SOB showed his true face, the face of an ultimate fake. His appeal to identity politics (“racist, sexist, homophobe”) also shows were his REAL values are, and that sure ain’t Socialism!
In the past, Bernie already showed his true face when he endorsed Hillary or when he backed the Israeli murderous attack on Lebanon (which, glory be to God, resulted in the “Divine Victory” of Hezbollah and arguably one of the worst defeats in modern military history for the Zionist entity).
I don’t like Trump any more than Bernie does, but I also realize that Trump is probably the main reason why we did not have a major war involving the USA (yet?), whereas Hillary and Biden are the ultimate pseudo-liberal war-mongers. I can understand somebody hating Trump and voting for a real pro-peace candidate, but being anti-Trump and pro-Biden makes exactly *zero* sense.
Yet both Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders did exactly that.
This proves their total hypocrisy which is now simply undeniable.
This entire debacle just shows that what the USA needs is not a different, putatively better, president, but what the US State Department calls “regime change”.
I am not a Socialist, but I do know Socialism (I took the time to actually *study* Marxism-Leninism) and I have always felt offended when US Americans referred to Bernie, or even Obama, as “Socialists”. This is utterly ridiculous and has no connection to reality. There are NO real Socialists (of whatever variety) amongst US politicians and only a terminally brainwashed population can mistake folks like Obama or Bernie for “Socialists”. Heck, some US Americans even believe that government bailouts of major corporation are also evidence that the US government is “Socialist”! The lack of political education of most US Americans is nothing short of amazing.
Now you know why Socialism (nevermind Marxism or Dialectical Materialism) is never taught in the USA, not even at a college level (and when it is, it is mostly fake; Michael Parenti would be a pretty good teacher, but he is one guy in a huge system, so nobody hears his voice).
Okay so now we know that the pseudo-liberal pseudo-Left has now fully endorsed Biden. This just goes to prove that the entire Dem Party is, and has been for a very long time, a tool in the hands of the Deep State.
I would like note that Trump succeeded in getting elected against the wishes of the folks who ran the Republican Party. This would be impossible in the Democratic Party, which just goes to prove that while both parties are corrupt to the bone, there is still some real diversity in the GOP. But the Dem Party truly walks in lockstep, probably towards its own demise.
For the time being, let us all rejoice in the fall of Bernie, the shyster and scumbag who tried to pretend that he was a Socialist while, in reality, being a safety valve for the Dem Party, a warmongering Zionist and a tool of the US Deep State. Bernie will go down in history as the ultimate fake.
The Saker
Bernie Sanders went down alright.
The Gorgias of Socialist Wish Lists made himself a millionaire by oratory skills, accusing the system on which he enriched himself of sins, all the while enjoying the maximum benefits for himself and his wife that system produced.
A con man at best. Disgusting pied piper.
His final political act, submission to political sodomy, in public, his pants around his ankles, squealing praise at Biden and cackling some defamations toward Trump. Bernie forgot the K-Y.
Millions of naive followers had to witness this sell-out, now disillusioned and angered by his personal pornography.
It was not a surprise that he capitulated – but to abase himself in this way – the man has no shame. Worse he is showing utter contempt for his supporters. We need a modern sans culottes movement. Is it wrong to dream of the guillotine ?
it would be wrong NOT to
We should all condemn death penalty. Read your Dostojewski.
That doesn’t mean we should not fight.
Not at all. God Himself instituted the Death Penalty. And it serves a useful deterrent function, no different than the 2nd Amendment or the MAD doctrine for severe crimes. As the Church teaches, it is also a good and merciful thing that expiates the criminal of the paying the penalty with his life (providing he also repents) before he stands before God.
In the age of state-instituted medical suicides for the old and infirm and abortion for the children, it is utterly hilarious that this is the same culture that is so opposed to the Death Penalty. Perhaps because t reminds them of the inevitability of God’s judgement that they would rather prefer not to think about.
Is it true that a diet of carrots and drinking only white turnip maliu float has the side effect of hormonal imbalance as well as an increased desire for sunlight, which as we all know is a persistent danger to all Biden supporters?
It seems unlikely anything would have changed regardless of the candidate. Foreign policy is constrained by how overstretched they are, and internal policy and developments will follow from the extended lock down of the population (no matter what one’s opinion may be about the origin of the lock down).
I don’t agree at all. Once Sanders knew he lost then the target was getting Trump out and that is why he supported the winning candidate. He made the right choice BOTH times.
Both times, Sanders took a dive like any crooked professional in any sport. But if this is a “sport”, it’s a blood sport with real dead bodies and really ruined lives. In 2016, when the DNC stole the California primary from him, he refused to contest the theft. A legal challenge might not have gotten him the nomination, but it would have been a real step toward cleaning out the Democrat “party”. Of course cleaning out one of the two rotten parties did not interest Sanders. So other people took the DNC to court and the DNC told the truth: they were within their rights to steal the primary election exactly because their elections were a sham and the DNC, some 20 “chairs”, held the real power.
Ron Jacobs, who writes for Counterpunch, a site which went from a major bastion of anti-war writing to a stinking swamp of Trump Derangement Syndrome, has made a cottage industry of de-constructing the Bernie swamp-gas mirage. His efforts go back many years. Around June 2015, although now I can’t find the article, Jacobs exactly nailed Sanders’ secret role to bring the left-wing “strays” back into the Democrat corral. Jacobs pointed out that Sanders had a commitment from the Senate Democrat leadership that he would get to keep all his committee assignments in the Senate after the election was over. The Senate gatekeepers would not have agreed to such a deal if Sanders had not agreed to take a dive. Here is one of Jacob’s more relevant articles:
Ron Jacobs on Sanders April 30, 2015
Every election cycle, the Democrats had someone to sucker-punch the lefties and the anti-war crowd. The only interesting thing about this dishonest mechanism is that Bernie “quit” too soon, before he had rounded up the strays. I can only wonder at the timing.
Haha yeah that about sums it up. I warned my friends back in 2015-2016, during the original Bernie craze that the guy was a fraud, but this is the US and they love their hopium pipe, on both sides of the aisle, especially when its in the form of a politican.
“I am not a Socialist, but I do know Socialism (I took the time to actually *study* Marxism-Leninism) and I have always felt offended when US Americans referred to Bernie, or even Obama, as “Socialists”. This is utterly ridiculous and has no connection to reality. There are NO real Socialists (of whatever variety) amongst US politicians and only a terminally brainwashed population can mistake folks like Obama or Bernie for “Socialists”. Heck, some US Americans even believe that government bailouts of major corporation are also evidence that the US government is “Socialist”! The lack of political education of most US Americans is nothing short of amazing”
I’m in the same position as you on this entire paragraph. Even many channels i respect, and agree with completely on certain matters, get this topic completly wrong. I realize even those who are “woke” in the west are very selectively woke. I think they mean well, just things are really muddled unfortunately. I think it kind of started with the conspiracy craze after 911. They realized their gov lies to them, and started realizing certain events were not what they seemed. Fast forward a decade or so and now everyone has channels uncovering the “truth”, but sometimes the end up discussing subjects they don’t really understand. I’m pretty sure thats how the whole “Putin is a zionist” thing really got rolling, even though they only show speculative evidence. I can give many more examples of pretty funny things well meaning people believe to be a stone cold reality, which i know are erroneous. So this creates an avalanche of misinformation. I try to tell some to atleast learn socialism on its merits, but they think evrything is a zionist plot lol.
During this present crisis of Covid-19, there are more criticism in Switzerland with regard to the USA than before, for obvious reasons. However, the criticism in the media is too often only a criticism against Trump and this does not really help. Moreover, the criticism against Trump is not at all relied to a support for Iran, and even less relied to a support for Syria and Assad. So, this criticism (in the media) shows in fact essentially the wish for a „better“ Western hegemonism.
Goodness, that is a caustic post.
And I think you are right; his voting patterns give him away.
And Tulsi Gabbard was outed in Joe Rogan’s recent interview, imo. (and I said so here at the time)
So why do people there get their hopes up?
I have the advantage of not being American, and living far from it. Distance helps with perspective.
I just do not understand how anyone can be so sucked in and manipulated by the reality tv show theatrics.
Ad nauseam … Every 4 years!
This is their religion.
And if I ever tune into their so called tv news casts etc — and even some of the daily writing — it is almost impossible to not see it as 20% news information dressed up with 80% opinion setting “how to think today” diatribe. There is zero critical independent thinking encouraged and is seems to an outsider as if everyone one there is simply tuning in for their daily script rehearsal for the day’s movie take. Totally fake.
As for: “This entire debacle just shows that what the USA needs is not a different, putatively better, president, but what the US State Department calls “regime change”.”
Here again, I think you are perhaps exhibiting some captured prisoner syndrome.
They have exactly the government structure and operation that reflects the culture.
There is no national culture per se — there is a national corporation and all the implicit celebrations and rituals centered around human resource management ethos; get rich quick schemes; and ‘smartest guy in the room’ bankruptcy scams. The cult of exceptionalism ignores the fact that debt is not wealth.
And the military industrial complex flip-side just plays the Major General Smedley Butler “war is a racket” protection scheme.
There is no room for, nor capacity to, undertake regime change.
All that would happen is nothing more than flicking from one tv station to another.
Perhaps a different program on at that moment but still tv land produced and directed by the usual Edward Bernays orientated actors.
Individually, many are good people trying to be who they think they should be.
But it’s shallow and founded on two blind spot ‘sins’ — fear and deceit.
The indicators are, respectively, the guns and the inability to use them (except for the occasional regular mental school massacre).
Biden 2020? … here is something from 2010 to remember what’s coming. Back to the future…
” “So Long To Ya, 2010″ | The JibJab 2010 Year in Review!”
https://youtu.be/CCuoLd0K4lY
Had you been born there, went to school there, been indoctrinated there, lived there all your life, there would be no mystery, you’d be like them. And there really is no beauty in being on the other side of the fence either………the grass may appear greener, it’s still grass.
It is correct there is little independent thought in the US. While Europe appears better, I continually wonder why they don’t chart an independent course. It should be staring them in the face by now that the ship is sinking.
Regarding Bernie: While it is certainly true he is a sellout, at least he raised important issues like the need for “Medicare for all”. Trump raised important issues as well regarding the “deplorables”, but of course he sold out his followers as well.
red1chief,
Just like yourself, I have also often wondered why Europe does not see that, as you put it, “that the ship is sinking.”
I think that answer is this. Probably most of the citizenry and many of the middle (and even upper) functionaries in EU understand quite well that the “ship is sinking.” However, the Merkels, the Macrons and the Johnsons of the world are joined at the hip to the wealthy Atlanticists who have profited mightily from the many decades of Reagan-Thatcherism and its misbegotten progeny – Globalism. These people are not going to see the writing on the wall until the walls start coming down. That is the way it always is with exorbitant privilege. Privilege blinds them to reality.
@red1chief
Since WW2 ended in 1945 all Western European countries have been occupied by US military forces, who ultimately force compliance with US dictates. The expansion of US controlled NATO to the Russian border has also been a nail in the coffin of democracy.
“There are NO real Socialists (of whatever variety) amongst US politicians and only a terminally brainwashed population can mistake folks like Obama or Bernie for “Socialists”. Heck, some US Americans even believe that government bailouts of major corporation are also evidence that the US government is “Socialist”! The lack of political education of most US Americans is nothing short of amazing.”
America is hostile to anything that remotely evokes Socialism or Communism because it seeks to impose its predatory brand of Free Market Capitalism (aka the Washington Consensus) on the entire world–not to mention within its own borders.
American Free Market Fundamentalism is the USA’s true religion and is hostile to any government barriers or obstacles to the unhindered ability of America to privatize and thus plunder workers and resources around the world.
As the revered American humanitarian, Al Capone, put it best: “Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.”
I trusted Bernie and I trusted Tulsi.
They both betrayed that trust.
If they taught me anything, it is that change within the “system” is impossibility.
Then this is a good day for you!
I never trusted Bernie, and I had no hopes for Tulsi, but at least she looked sincere to me. Now that she also endorsed Biden, I flushed my mental toilet of her name.
And yes, this system CANNOT be reformed.
And it is not viable.
But, sooner than later, this system too will collapse. In fact, it already is.
So please NEVER lose courage or despair!
Kind regards
The Saker
I suppose you are right. It is a good day.
I used to consider the Democrats to be the “lesser of the two evils.”
Now, I consider them to be the “other of the two evils.
In any event, I wash my hands of the American political system.
As it is aptly put in the American Declaration of Independence:
Amen.
If they ever need to stay in the Democratic party, they had no choice but to pull for the team. That’s how I see Tulsi. She still has a long career in politics ahead and is not going to fall on her sword this very moment.
Sadly, winning in democracy and politics is about timing. I have more hopes for her than Sanders. He is the ultimate deep fake.
I suspect that they are blackmailed and / or threatened.
Yes Corto, a ride in a black Cadillac convertible, cruising past a grassy knoll was shown to them!
I cannot see Tulsi … Joe is in the way.
Saker is right right right.
For me, I knew Bernie was a fraud in 2016, when he was clearly acting like a sheepdog. I remember when his wife went to him on the podium and said something like “they don’t know” referring to the audience as, I think since I can’t clearly remember exactly, not knowing that Bernie was betraying them by capitulation and endorsing Hillary. That’s what sealed it for me.
When Bernie endorsed Hillary, I was surprised but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He had had a long track record of supporting the public welfare as it related to domestic social issues. Accordingly, I assumed he had cut some sort of a deal with Hillary for her support on some key social legislation.
Whether that was true or not, you can’t explain the endorsement of Biden the same way. Biden doesn’t have a snowball’s change in hell of getting elected – so endorsing him gets you absolutely nothing.
I was really disappointed in Bernie – as I was with Tulsi. But the upshot of all this is that you simply cannot trust anyone in the Democratic Party. If people – who are as seemingly as legitimate and Bernie and Tulsi – will sell out their constituencies like this – who can you trust?
I think that the answer is that you cannot trust anyone in the Democratic Party at all – under any circumstances.
That is useful information.
The Republicans are simply shills for the ruling class. That has been painfully apparently for a long time. Now, it is obvious that the Democrats, and every last one of them, are no different at all.
Only critisizing Hillary et al. behind closed doors for the Dnc manipulations at the time already clearly showed that allegiance to the party has highest priority for him. Politcal tenets and convictions are subordinate.
““I am asking all Americans — I’m asking every Democrat, I’m asking every independent, I’m asking a lot of Republicans — to come together in this campaign to support your candidacy which I endorse,” Sanders said.”
I wonder how many times young progressives will allow the party they support to pull the rug out from underneath them? Polish the rhetoric of an anointed politician, and these people will flock just like ravens to a shiny object. Then – pull away the shiny object and replace it with…
Joe Biden. Hummm. Even a life-time left-winger like Joe Rogan can see where this leads. A Trump – Biden match-up in November. “Like Mike Tyson versus a 3 year old.”
Personally I wish these people would wake up and see that it’s time to change the guard. It’s really time to vote in new blood. And it would be nice if the new blood had a new set of ideals. The country desperately needs positive change which the current crop of US politician will never bring to the table. The ‘business as usual’ paradigm needs to be shattered. We’ll see. Perhaps a generation out-of-work kids up to their eyeballs in debt will become the catalyst for change. Them, or the new “silent generation” that will follow in their footstep. Time will tell.
The democratic party is unable to set forth any “new blood”. They produce Betos’ and Bookers’ and Butigegs’ and OACs’.
There is no novel thought or any understanding of economics or world dynamics in any of them. All of them are typical Russia/China hating and some hate the US to boost. The only question is would they ravage the US or the world more. The dems are just obsessed with identity politics and they will go with whoever hits most check-marks.
Time for a new Confederation, perhaps?
I don’t listen to politicians, because politics in the USA is a con game. Tell the people what they want to hear, get in office, and sell your influence to all bidders. Get rich, pass the buck, lie about everything, and above all, keep the terrorism going so that the powers that be can steal whatever they see, where-ever it is.
You’ll know that a politician is an honest person when he starts making statements like this:
“The US is the greatest terrorist organization in the world, a rogue nation that needs to be brought to justice.”
“The US does not have wars, it has campaigns of terror.”
“The US is a country founded on genocide and theft, and those characteristics continue to this day.”
“The root of all US evil is the love of money.”
“The rightful name of the USA is the United Snakes of Aterrorka.”
But the Saker is right, there cannot be honesty or truth in this “political” system. It’s not a political system after all. It’s a looting operation.
As for discussing socialism, I gave up on intelligent discussion with USians decades ago. There’s no intelligence in this country, with a few exceptions, including the Saker, his commentors, and people like us who look and see and consider…
Patrick
You want honesty, quoting from memory, Trump, several days ago, on national tv, stated something along the lines of “look at the ME, we went there to bring democracy, spent billions, and basicly destroyed the place, left it a mess”, blew me away, that he said it, said it on national tv live, no sound delay that day. Yesterday, regardless of what one thinks of Trump, at his presser, he had the cannons out and was on a tear…………….where, ever have you seen any politician in our life time play whack a mole with the utterly deranged and fake press? Live, in front of everyone. I don’t like him, mainly for supporting the current Genocide being carried out by The Apartheid Regime occupying Palestine. But anyone who kicks the MSM press in the balls, gotta give credit where it’s due.
If you recall, that’s the same ‘bait’ he used last election cycle, at about the same time in the cycle. You can assume it will be the same ‘switch’ this time as well..
Trump was lying…the US destroyed the ME for three reasons. First, to control the opium trade in Afghanistan which the Taliban had eliminated. Second to both control and steal Iraq’s, Libya’s and Syria’s oil.
And third, to enforce US dollar as sole currency. So he was lying even then, though he got it right about spending trillions and destroying it.
The US destroyed the ME. Trump did not destroy the ME. And he admitted it, off the cuff. He inherited a mess. Afghanistan is not part of middle east. The origional post 9/11 plan was to attack Iraq, go read some history. The BEIC (read; MI6) manipulated all known data (Russia Gate, Putinpuppet Gate, Impeachment Gate) and the plan was changed. Attack Afghanistan first. Who controls the Opium, Brittian did. Who freed it up for them post Taliban, MI6’s CIA division.
When you are dealing with over a century of imperialist corruption of a republic…………….things have to be done incrementally, and Sean is correct to point out that DJT is incrementally stepping it up.
Most of the rest of the comments from non-Americans remind me of some of the childishly impatient Trump voters in 2017:
“OK, I have interrupted my (pleasure-seeking, vacuous, banal) life now ………….for six LONG weeks!!
Still NO arrests! I’m getting SO tired of this!!! If there are no arrests…If Clinton, Obama, Brennan, Clapper are not in Guantanamo….next week……I’M outta here!”
Infants in need of a diaper change.
Hang on a little longer. No…actually get over it, and hang on for the rest of your potentially more meaningful than your ever believed it might be …….life.
Watch these two former stuntmen from Hollywood in the just released documentary Out of Shadows in its entirety …….. before you entirely write of “Murica”….or Europe or the human race like some, whose despair is so complete they wish for species suicide….if not personal suicide (that persistent Ego…and its own survival instinct!) just quite yet…preferring to bask in self-satisfaction til The End:
https://youtu.be/i07CP5o_LvQ?t=9
For at most, at best IMHO Trump by the end of 2024 might open a few clean up opportunities up…………that will need followup for the rest of our lives…….and beyond.
Which is a Great Thing….potentially (sorry, no guarantees, children).
Real Purpose. Real meaningful life’s work. Not complaints. Real human identity.
Some people call it “socialism”. I don’t, but I know what some of you mean……and I don’t think it is completely antithetical to what the two stuntmen in the documentary………..or Liz Crokin (second half) now has, as her clearer purpose.
Bernie??
I just searched for Jimmie Dore’s take on Bernie’s endorsement of Biden. Looks like that show isn’t out yet, but former Progressive (and Bernie) supporter Dore does clearly see the handwriting on the wall…yesterday, before the endorsement of biden, it seems:
https://youtu.be/OkxPmgoktIw
All ya gotta do here is watch the first minute or two where Bernie (still in the campaign……..days ago….really??? ) answers a talk show host’s question, “Do you think Biden can beat Trump?” with an
“I DO!”
Does that make Bernie more senile than Joe??? Probably. So why run, Bernie???
Pathetic.
But it’s all good!
There are important, massive “deltas” on the American political landscape if you know how to spot them.
Although they are so incremental the impatient and cynical will not yet be able to see the forest for the trees, preferring to self-righteously beat their chests and complain.
Regarding White House circus, nothing comes as surprise, and frankly, I don’t think it is worth our time debating whether any of the current possible scenarios (Tulsi, Bernie, Biden, Trump …) can make a real difference (except postponing doomsday outcome for a year or two). They are all trash. We can only argue, who stinks the worst.
Basically, yes. That has always been the whole idea, regrettably.
re: sell-out pseudo socialism. This article made my day… it’s a better and more telling diatribe than even the classic ones by Lenin against the social democrats of his day who were far more principled in their usual opportunistic unprincipled way than even blustering Bernie could manage.
Yes, looney tunes, USA is broken but, I do love my peeps…the young ones ( tee-shirt manufacturers from small home work shops) are busy making masks, getting criticized for quality, improving them, getting competition and I am buying them and passing them out.
Seriously, there are no masks available. I gave a paK to the UPS driver and he acted like I had gifted him with a bushel of top of the line toilet paper. So sweet. I love my peeps. And the ruling monsters are not my peeps.
There’s no doubt that we have passed peak everything, human race, politics, reason, hope, the gods in space are using Earthly humans as their experimental amusing ant farm, they need us like they need another hole in the head.
Which explains why they were so unprepared in furthering human evolution beyond its current point, one direction is unacceptable, and the other direction is impossible.
We get to go on in years for some reason, but the direction has no logical conclusion.
The meaning of life is that which you give it was my father’s philosophy.
The older I get, the wiser it sounds.
He had no time for and barely any interest in politics.
Lucky (smart) bastard.
Being raised and “educated” in McCarthy’s America in the ’50s and ’60s, I’d be interested in learning more about your insights and opinions on socialism/communism. I am tired of the rah-rah brainwashing in the MSM, education system, and public “discourse”.
”This entire debacle just shows that what the USA needs is not a different, putatively better, president, but what the US State Department calls ’regime change’.”
Exactly, and what is absolutely crucial here is that just like US imperialism’s regime change violence in foreign countries, regime change against the US must be plotted from abroad too. Indeed, it wouldn’t take much to rile up violence-addicted morons such as the Pindos. Let them wreak total havoc on their own country and on themselves. Good riddance to bad garbage.
Agreed Nussiminen.
It doesn’t take much to raise the hackles of the gun-toting American public especially now in the era of Corona where everyone’s edgy.
It may even arise “in naturo”, so to speak, without outside intervention — an ‘accidental’ shooting of a black or a Latino suspected of stealing a can of Coke by one of America’s finest may be the erm…trigger.
There’s also the possibility of a hitherto ‘unthinkable’ consequence to the widespread social unrest — a power grab by the great US military in order to ensure ‘law and order.’
@Stand Easy
You make a most interesting suggestion here:
”There’s also the possibility of a hitherto ‘unthinkable’ consequence to the widespread social unrest — a power grab by the great US military in order to ensure ‘law and order’.”
Actually, that could materialise against the backdrop of US domestic mayhem and murder spiralling out of control with prisons already overflowing. If so, it would probably bring entirely new draconian oppressive measures in its wake. One such that springs to mind is turning Alaska into a giant penal colony with no one coming out, ever. On the plus side, that would very much dent the prestige of the US in the eyes of the Euro-trash, since the ’intellectual tenacity’ of the Euro-trash will instantly be slandering that as ”Stalinism”.
I am not so sure whether there is no Socialism in the US. I am sometimes wondering whether the US system is like Siamese twins – capitalism for the one half, and socialism for the other, the military. It seems to me that the US military lives in a kind of Socialist parallel society, they have their own housing areas, services for the family, health services, schools, university careers, territories with complete infrastructure, pensions, everything more or less well planned – it looks if that is the prime reason for being still attractive to quite a share of the population. The other part lives in a brutal rat race, if one has been able to accumulate wealth (or usually inherited it), you are a master, if not, you are in the misery of daily struggle or hopelessness. Most people hide it, if you carry the smell of poverty, you are out, so better smile and show enthusiasm at any occasion. Do not look like a looser, since it is deadly.
Astute observation, Kassandra.
Two other sectors live that style of life in the US: Federal Officials, elected and appointed, who work and live in gated, gardened environments of sorts. And have the best pension and healthcare with rings of personal security provided free to them.
And, the higher levels of academe. Ivory Tower is also a physical separation from the rest, and over the last twenty years, they have managed to rape the young people for massive costs and fees and making themselves wealthy. They live a separate life, built on a social system few can enter.
That’s the nomenklatura.
I call Bernie the “The Grand Old Duke of Democrats” where he marched them all up the hill, and them marched them back down again. In Bernie’s entire political career he achieved nothing other than the destruction of the middle class.
Saker, totally agree with you. Sanders has shown again what kind of scumbag he is.
Lets be honest.
What does everyone expect from a former 16 year congressman and a current 13 year US senator, who already endorsed Hillary Clinton 4 years ago, who cast votes affirming military actions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and after 9/11, a person who actually supported the brutal Israeli assault on Gaza and Lebanon during the war that killed more than 1000 Lebanese civilians when he voted Yea to House resolution 921 ?
That he would suddenly denounce the 2 party system ?
That he would run as an independent ?
That he would start a revolution ?
Sanders simply operates within the political system and the political class, who happens to have some good views on certain topics. Nothing more, nothing less. To be honest, the senator had a good list of executive orders that he wanted to execute, but again, he is operating within the Democratic party and there is no guarantee that he would make good on all his promises.
So why does senator Sanders always operate within the Democratic party and has never run as an independent presidential candidate ?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-on-why-he-wont-run-as-in-independent/
Well, he actually believes that if he runs as an independent, he would steal votes from the Democratic Party, helping the Republicans win the election. So in other words, Sanders truly believes there is no way he can win as an independent. He believes that there are not enough US Americans (as the Saker calls them ;-) ) that will vote for a third party candidate. Besides, the constitutional US electoral college system and the many laws/regulations are actually rigged in such a way that it makes it very very difficult for a third party candidate to get elected.
Does that make Sanders seem more interested in defeating the Republican candidate than to take an ethical stance by protesting his political beliefs and convictions in the form of for example and independent candidacy ? ……Absolutely ! ……But what did you expect ?
—
As a side note:
From a technical point of view, Sanders cannot win as an independent candidate, at least not at this moment in US history. When you take all the factors combined: the political partisan climate, the constitution and laws that include the electoral college system, the presidential money chasing, etc., there is no way he can win as an independent without some fundamental changes that are too lengthy to mention right now.
—
As the Saker correctly mentions, the American people lack political education. The same societal and cultural ignorance in US foreign policy/relations also translates to ignorance in their own internal US political system.
When a people are stuck and want change, they have to ask themselves many questions:
How do we implement changes and what changes do we want ?
How is our current system impeding our progress ?
How can we change our system ?
How do we organize these changes ?
Who can lead us towards these changes ?
Which group of truly educated people are willing to stand up to represent their communities ?
Can these leaders work across different communities and divisions to unite the people ?
How can changes be implemented on a state level and how does this translate to the federal level ?
However, there is one single factor required for such a change, and that is Unity.
The US lacks unity, and whatever kept them united, if they were ever united, seems to now be unraveling. There is extreme polarization, partisanship and division in the country.
It would be nice to hope that poverty and struggle could unite Americans to change, however there needs to be a will and a leadership to achieve this and to educate the people. The people need to be willing to listen, to understand and to compromise. It requires a cultural and societal change in the mind set.
I felt that way in 2016 when Bernie Sanders compromised what I thought were his principles and supported Hillary Clinton in spite of her being a loud-mouthed spokeswoman for the deep state. I thought he was being naive. How much worse to be so betrayed by him again, when he now supports Joe Biden, another agent of the deep state. He cannot even try the excuse for being naive a second time. He has no more principles that the other running-dog lackeys of the deep state.
Kids 5 and under can be naive. But 70+ years old man cannot. Although, if they really are, that tells me they are mentally challenged. Bernie has very good rhetoric skills that match what younger people believe is fair and honest and just. Younger population are not naive they are simply idealist. I know that, because I was once young. But, life taught me not to look at what people say but what people do. Even Bernie knew that everything he was pushing for (now it’s proved being fake) was not going to happen within democratic party. And there is a video on youtube where he says exactly that. Yet, he stayed in democratic party “hoping” change will come somehow. He voted for every war, he voted everytime against people but for corporations. Including the last time where he had the leverage to hold it until ordinary people get something. And he did not do anything.
Israeli dual citizen. Look it up.
If you have proof,post the links.He denies it and no media report shows it.As much as the Dems wanted to destroy him,if he was they would have leaked it.
https://conservative-headlines.org/
Sanders’ name is not in that one.
I remember digging during last election cycle, did not keep links, don’t care to dig them back up. Just look, dig.
Primary, secondary, peripheral, social and financial and political bonds to all concerned? Associates? Agents? ‘Cousins’?
Shared financial/corporate interests and obligations, for instance?
Does it really matter if Sanders is a dual citizen or not in order for him to be an Israel-firster? It’s what he does that’s important. It’s been reported that Rahm Emanuel, onetime Obama’s chief of staff and son of an Irgun terrorist once served in Israel’s so-called defence forces.
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/25504/reports-obama-asks-jewish-congressman-to-be-chief-of-staff.html
Anyway Sanders the kibbutznik doesn’t need to be one now.
Read the “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People”. Available from Wikisource or Israeli Knesset’s site:
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Full_text_of_Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People
…
5. Ingathering of the exiles
The state will be open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles
6. Connection to the Jewish people
A. The state will strive to ensure the safety of the members of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship.
B. The state shall act within the Diaspora to strengthen the affinity between the state and members of the Jewish people.
Et cetera.
It’s as good as having Israeli citizenship; a nice bolt hole, but only if you’re jewish — ask Leonid Nevzlin or the other Russian oligarchs scampering out of Russia after breaking Russian law .
Man, what a Coward!!!!!!!
a real pity.
Sanders showed his true face when he supported Bill Clinton’s illegal war against Yugoslavia. He also showed it again by supporting Obama’s illegal war against Libya and the terrorist proxy war against Syria. All three targeted countries had socialist or socialist-oriented economies. Sanders was always a fake and fraud, all along.
In the US, the center of the political spectrum has shifted so rightward that there is no left anymore. The Democratic Party would be considered as right-wing in many countries which have socialist and communist parties. Perhaps, it is more dangerous to the US working class than even the fascist Republicans since it is (to use Malcolm X’s terminology) a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Also, it is not too surprising that Bernie has flown the coop since some of his past political stands were a premonition for what was to come.
Instead of looking at Trump and his administration solely from a Russia-centric viewpoint, his actions and statements should be analyzed from a class standpoint, which is often lacking in this blog which focuses too much on the ideology and other quirks of the ruling class as if this ideology is independent of its material base and floats out of nowhere. The words from Marx’s famous preface in “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”, published in 1859, come to mind:
“In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.”
It is true that Trump is nasty, mean, sexist and a xenophobe. Notwithstanding his sometimes praise for Russia and President Putin, his foreign policy is vicious and cruel as can be seen by the sanctions which he has levied on Cuba, Iran and Venezeula in an effort to strangle them. But these qualities are not enough to explain his actions. Trump represents finance capital. A few days ago, an in-depth Marxist analysis of Trump appeared in the socialist magazine “Monthly Review”. [Albert Einstein’s famous essay entitled “Why Socialism?” was originally published in the first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949)]. This article has the title “Trump, neo-fascism, and the COVID-19 Pandemic” and can be found at:
https://mronline.org/2020/04/11/trump-neo-fascism-and-the-covid-19-pandemic/?utm_source=MR+Email+List&utm_campaign=0c3f589273-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_13_05_05&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4f879628ac-0c3f589273-295775165&mc_cid=0c3f589273&mc_eid=cab60192d8
The problem with the Democrats is they are now to the right of the Republicans and a National Socialist Party,. Their values are a mirror image of the German Nazis of the 30s and 40s. Homosexuals and Jews on top, than other races and straight white men being the despised other. The Democrats are as racist as the Nazis were. They used to be a slightly left party, so they delude their followers with the use of Orwellian rhetoric. The words are twisted from what they used to mean. Trump has retained “homosexuality is a human right” in the state department guides, his EEOC leader has twisted the language of the 1964 Civil Rights law to claim that sexual orientation is a form of sex. So Sanders calling Trump, the personal friend of Roy Cohn a homophobe, is just the Big Lie. Any Dem that supported Russiagate is an anti-Russian racist. The way the media treated Yang and Gabbard show they are anti -Asian bigots. Check out what team Sanders used to buy his Media ads. his wife was an employee in 2016. Sanders is a well paid Demogogue.
Tulsi always said that she would not run third party and would support the eventual nominee, so she just fulfilled her campaign promise.
Trump vs the man with Senile Dementia! The decline and fall of Western civilization. The Beast will not allow a civilized rational person anywhere near the White House
Bernie Sanders is a Drama-Queen to the nth degree
Amen Saker!! Excellent article, and I loved the concluding paragraph.
Given the choices I might not vote for President in November.
Why is it that I sensed this when he first came out of his hole, years ago? It worries me (about them) that so many of my friends and family though I had lost it. I suppose it’s because I do a lot of R&R – “Research” & Rationalization”.
Trump or Biden: the choice is between a wanker and a broken sock-puppet.
Check this one out, pure gold…
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/04/14/if-the-democrats-were-a-beach-volleyball-team/
She’s dead on right. I love it.
World famous anthropologist and gopher psychologist Dr.Weldone-Gridpipethin G.G. (Belmont & Santa Anna) regarding Gopher candidate Bernie Sauders from his paper ‘The Socialist’s Many Thoughts’ delivered to the AFSCME sanitary workers conference (SWC) Western Burrows 2023. 12.30am….toughen up, Princess.’
Sanders capitulation is truly depressing. He has advocated reasonable domestic policies but I agree that his foreign policy has always been too much in the American main stream. I presumed that his wokesterism was perceived as necessary to broaden his appeal. At the end of the day however, Saker is correct and Sanders is a fraud. What else can you say when he endorses a candidate with a 50 year history of advocating everything that he (Sanders) claims to oppose.
Great article. Sanders filled his role of keeping populists in the Democratic party who should have moved elsewhere long ago, like to the Green party. He did this four years ago, and fooled them again, even the great Jimmy Dore.
Bernie-supporters led by Bernie down the garden path once? Shame on Bernie.
Bernie-supporters led by Bernie down the garden path twice? How effing stupid can they be?
I’ve witnessed some amazing changes in our world since my birth in 1950, most of all in the last 30 years in the Wild, Wild, Downright Crazy West. I turn 70 in 2020 and would now prefer to exit our universe in a Reverse Big Bang in the comfort of our home rather than the horror of a covid-infested nursing home. Therefore, I actually hope that Mr. Potato-Head defeats the Tangerine Jackass in the upcoming 2020 election. I can then LOL watching MPH being wheeled, mumbling incoherently every inch of the way, into the big White House at the end of Pennsylvania Avenue, in the heart of Imperial City.
MPH will then grant the Deep State’s wish for another astronomically expensive war, paid for with just a few more trillion freshly-printed-out-of-thin-air USD. Hopefully the US’s war to finally end all of its wars will lead off with an unprovoked, “preemptive” attack against Russia and China. Cue humanity’s Reverse Big Bang and my and my wife’s hopefully instantaneous, painless exit. So send us a big one, Vlad!
The idea that people can trust or hope in anyone that goes out of their way to butcher children in abortion clinics and who proudly stands by any and every immoral degeneracy and imagine they have any actual grasp of economics or global conflict is what staggers me.
This includes Trump and his LGBT pandering, though the culture has come so far that his incense is light by comparison to the left that literally builds golden calves to these causes.
The icing on the cake is that many of them only do so out of political expediency, and would want nothing to do with such degeneracy if they had a choice. Much like St. Augustine called out the leaders of Rome who just went along with the mobs, despite knowing full well their insanity.
Even if Trump converted overnight, it’s not like he can turn things around in another 4 years. After him, then what? The deluge?
Obama: “I Believe In American Exceptionalism With Every Fiber Of My Being.”
so how can an average american be easily fooled a number of times? well, exceptional gullibility!
if bernie can do it once or twice, no one can stop him do a third time and pretty sure, a lot more would still fall in line for him.
Joe Biden has clear and obvious dementia. This is not metaphorical, it is a medical observation.
He has video documented propensity to fondle women and young girls who show embarrassment, shock etc and many complained.
He now has criminal charges for digital rape against him for an alleged incident 25 years ago by Tara Reade, a Congressional staffer at the time.
He is on video boasting of threatening to withdraw $1Billion in aid to the Ukraine unless they fired the state prosecutor for investigating Burisma corruption which would include the >$Million paid to Hunter Biden his son. Within hours the prosecutor is fired and Biden laughs about this on camera at the Council on Foreign Relations (or similar organisation I think).
A demented, sexual predator, corrupt nepotist is the best the DNC Establishment can come up with. At least Trump isn’t demented.
If you want to know how America’s vaunted (snicker) democracy really works, picture this:
1. Take 2 slices of bread.
2. Take a knife and smear some dog sh!t on these two slices of bread, and then put them together to make a sandwich.
3. Cut this sandwich in half.
4. Call one of these half sandwiches “Republican” (or “Donald Trump”). And call the other half sandwich “Democrats” (or “Joe Biden”).
5. Offer people a free choice between either of these 2 sandwiches.
That in a nutshell is American Democracy: You get to choose between 2 sides of a sh!t sandwich.
All of America’s partisan political cat-fighting is pure Kabuki theater and professional wrassling to disguise the reality of this fake America democracy.
I completely agree with this metaphor.
I also like how Chomsky calls them the “Two factions of the Big Money Party”
And I think Parenti coined the terms “Republicrats” and “Demolicans” (or something similar)
I often use the Coca-Cola vs Pepsi-Cola image.
It all says the same. We all know that.
Cheers
With no end of black pudding on the side.
(Coagulated blood for the uninitiated)
A government is as good as the people who run it. And my honest opinion is that many in this present political spectrum are no good. Democrats, Republicans, Socialist, Communist, Libertarian, Conservative, you name it. It’s all a racket. A career. At the end of the day, they all keep their jobs and top notch benefits. And the ones who gets rolled over the coals is the regular working stiff, like you and me.
The hungry of 2024 will probably be served OAC Chicken.
US elections – the ultimate WWE of politics.
A systemic collapse was and still is the only way any real change will happen. This virus is just a very mild harbinger of a major collapse that will happen within 20 or even 10 years. People who still have some brains left should try to prepare themselves for it, coz sure as hell they won’t get any help from the authorities. Leaving the US for a much less screwed up place definitely seems like a good plan.
Yes, Bernie is a total fake and is completely confused about socialism. Typical political H.A.C.K!
I read yesterday what is meant to be funny. It would be if it wasn’t so pathetic.
>If the price for oil drops much more Exxon Mobile will have to lay off some members of Congress!
That about says enough. As one public person calls this time of year ‘the presidential reality show’, because that is all it is. A show put on to entertain the masses while the country will continue on its current trajectory regardless of who is selected.
Regime change is needed, but not just a change of political system. Regime change needs to occur inside every human soul.
It looks to me it is already too late for any changes to be made to our external world. What we are seeing occur right in front of our eyes is the complete takeover and setting up of new world order. The joining of state and corporate power, as they buy up the winners, the giant corporations who will survive. For everyone else? No soup for you! Mr. Trump of speaks with words of grandeur. This has become more concerning over the past few days as he voices the opinion that nobody has the authority the president has. His authority it total and absolute!
Trump had this story he used to recite at his rallies called ‘The Snake’. You remember. A woman rescues a poor snake, takes it home and nurses it back to heath until one day he gives the woman a deadly bite. She asks why only to be told ‘silly woman, you knew I was a snake’. Maybe Trump was really making a confession and maybe, just maybe, they are all snakes, controlled by higher authorities and money powers.
The only way to find regime change is if we ask God to do it, whether that is within us or in this world.
I fully endorse your words that are the mine, my thoughts when I red it. Nice to see to be not alone
Roberto
I think the big issue with the Democratic party is the integrity of the voting process. I have zero confidence in the voting results, which were tabulated using hackable electronic voting machines by people I trust not at all. This issue could be resolved very simply by using paper ballots, hand counted in public. And yet this simple remedy is never adopted. We also need neutral election monitors.
Yes, it is absurd that Sanders is named a socialist. The entire U.S. political discourse is out of Orwell’s “1984”. The absurdities are endless. One favorite of mine is when the Republicans label any Democratic presidential nominee, such as Obama, a radical leftist.
I don’t think Sanders endorsement of Biden matters much. People will make up there own minds. It is a formality Sanders was obliged to undertake. Except there was so much dodgy cheating going on against Sanders, that I wonder if he gave in too easily. I am also having a hard time seeing Biden as a viable nominee, especially with his cognitive decline. Will Biden eventually drop out? What happens to Sanders then?
What matters is the big picture of the struggle to “regime change” the rulers of the DNC and Washington, which I don’t think was undermined by Sanders’ endorsement.
I was surprised by Gabbard’s endorsement of Biden when she could have supported Sanders. It struck me as a corrupt decision by someone who had led a principled campaign.
Don’t worry lah. I don’t think President Biden will launch a war against Russia. By the time he takes over, the USA would likely had collapsed into the late great US of A!
Besides, if Bernie don’t endorse Biden, it will ensure another 4 years of buffoonery from Trump!
Fully agree that Bernie is a sheep dog. It is not a ‘revolution’ when you pull out during our nations biggest crisis and then you endorse the worst candidate in the race. Bernie is indeed a head fake.
I got a fundraising request from Tulsi on April 15. She must have alot of campaign debt. I unsubscribed.
Only a total fool without any knowledge of life would trust Western politicians. The most corrupt being Americans! So why would anyone support Bernice, Cortez or Tulsi?
Whores are whores.. Is that news?
If we agree that Sanders is fake then Tulsi had zero choices when it comes to endorsement, but I doubt she would be trashed for endorsing him as opposed to Biden. Btw didn’t she sue Hillary? I wonder if there is any progress.
thank you saker
Saker, i love your blog, you’re my #1 go-to guy for Ukraine and Donbass news since 2014, but I don’t believe you understand Bernie, how he thinks, what his strategy is.
Please humor me, just as a thought experiment, that Bernie Sanders is a real, consistent and principled socialist. Just supposing. And assume then that he consistently proceeds from a class analysis and a commitment to the interests of the working class. Let’s further assume he closely watched the pivotal events in late 20th Century socialism, the collapse of the Soviet Union and what followed, the Cuban Revolution and what it took to survive, and perhaps most importantly Allende’s Chile.
He is in a country where for all intents and purposes the working class has not had a voice or the means to communicate with each other in living memory, but despite that its views are demonstrably close to Sanders’ on bread and butter issues. Against all odds, with the help of the Internet and social media and a dedicated movement of over a million volunteers, he has gained national recognition, becoming America’s most trusted and best loved political figure.
Now comes COVID, the Super Tuesday coup, and a series of outrageous rigged vote counts. And on top of that we have Trump making increasingly clear his intention to take dictatorial power and instigating his armed white nationalist base to action. Not only all the other Democratic candidates are calling on him to drop out so they can unite, but many of the leaders of the labor movement, civil rights and immigrant rights movements and more are asking him to do this.
How would our hypothetical socialist Bernie evaluate this situation? Should he stay in, take off his gloves, tear Biden a new orifice and try to beat some sense into the Corporate Democrats’ heads, in a context where he can no longer hold mass rallies or knock on doors – or call the millions to the streets? Should he step aside and remove himself?
Once it became clear that he would not be allowed to win, what does the landscape look like? Hapless Joe doesn’t really have a chance, with or without Bernie’s support unless something dramatically changes, but both he and Obama are signaling he will run as a fake Bernie- disingenuous as that may be!
Bernie keeps reminding people that it is great mass movements that have transformed countries with or without taking full power. It must be clear to him that, apart from himself, there is no effective leader of the opposition, hardly even an opposition at all. And it’s clear that without a mobilized, united and aroused working class based opposition we may not even get to the November election at all.
OK , have you followed so far? It may take a few tries, i’d expect you got diverted with some point or other where you objected to my premises. It’s a hard thing i’m asking of you, to step inside someone else’s conceptual framework and try to see the world from there, but you are the thinker who spent his whole youth organizing against the Soviet Union and was able then to reconsider whether their analysis and actions with regard to the Empire were right from a Russian nationalist point of view. Not many thinkers could have done that, so i believe this is within your reach.
So please go back to the beginning, reread until you can get through to the end without being taken off track by your objections or reactions, until you can really be present with being Bernie, and then ask yourself:
What would I do if I were this hypothetical genuinely socialist Bernie in this position at this moment in time?
Well, for starters, socialism is an intermediate phase of transition from a capitalist system to a truly communist one and the communist one is revolutionary not only because it allows for an uprising the the exploited against the exploiting, but because it advocate a full, complete (thus “revolutionary”) change of regime. I do not recall Marx, Engels, Lenin or anybody else advocating a “pragmatic” support for the ultimate symbol of capitalist class consciousness (like Biden) or forging alliances with enemies of the working class (like the DNC). Can you?
Furthermore, and using a non-Marxist source, you can “tell a tree by its fruits”. What are the “fruits” of Sanders: the unconditional support for both Hillary and Biden. Not only that, but his support for the Zionist entity clearly places his petty bourgeois nationalist identity over this solidarity with the exploited people of Palestine.
If Bernie was truly socialist, he would seek to expand his power base amongst the millions of exploited and destitute US workers, not the plutocracy which runs this country. How about demanding that real unions finally be allowed to exist in this poor country?! Can you imagine what Biden would have to say to such an idea?
Last but not least, if imperialism is the final stage of capitalism, he should oppose that. Yet he does NOT oppose the Empire in principle, because if he did, he would have to go against the kind of messianic ethos which the AngloZionists have so lovingly nurtured in the US society.
No, he is a fraud. A total fake. In fact, he is one of the main causes why the US society is stuck in its plutocratic class rule and why US Americans think that Obama is a socialist. He is what the French call the “caviar Left”.
His place is on the trash heaps of history :-)
Cheers,
The Saker
Dear Saker, I understand how it can seem this way, and history certainly supports your concern. If you want however to understand Bernie’s strategy you could go now (7 pm) to live.berniesanders.com and watch Bernie’s live conversations with the heads of the three postal workers unions. If you can’t watch now it will be available as a recording at the same site.
This is an example of the kind of conversations Bernie has been having, many of them live, over the past 4 weeks, conversations that I believe could not be happening publicly if he were still a candidate.
The evidence is clear that under present conditions a candidate that poses a threat to the interests of the billionaire class will not be allowed to win at the ballot box. There is no way American working people are going to be fooled into voting for Biden, no one loves Joe, but they may hold their noses and vote for him strategically. The moment of truth is upon us now, and if Bernie is who he claims to be, his ability to play a unifying role in the people’s movements, such as they are, would seem to be critically urgent for defense against the rise of fascism.
Look at that video and let me know what you see there.
Thank you for your response.
Saker, did you watch the event? If not, you can go to live.berniesanders.com and click on the box in the upper right corner. The conversation begins at about 18:20.
You might be struck as I was by how concrete and down-to-earth this conversation was.
And did you notice how Bernie was not the star ot the show? These union leaders were the stars and they effectively laid out a program for Bernie .
I was struck too how far the labor leadership has fallen from the days I remember when we would talk about the “Labor Aristocracy”. There is no arrogance left in them. Their union is on the ropes, facing extinction, and their members’ future, if they have a job at all, is as peons in Jeff Bezos’ empire or the like.
And I was struck by how devastatingly ineffectual the support they get from the Democratic Party has become.
Did you catch the moment at 43:30 the acknowledgment from Paul Hogrovian of the Mail Handlers Union: “You’ve given us a voice where we didn’t have it before?” That I think was not a gallantry, it was a simple but shocking statement of their truth. These leaders of one of the nation’s largest workforces have no access to the corporate media or pretty much any other media other than the much smaller alt-left.
If you are struggling to see how the words of these labor leaders might be staged or inauthentic, consider: what power does Bernie have now, to either coerce or rescue them? If he ever really had that power, it was the power of the threat he posed, and it evaporated the day he endorsed Joe Biden. So who would have the power to set this up and orchestrate it, and why would they?
You might want to mull these things over, and notice if it begins to shift how you hear Bernie.
One other thing you might have noticed: a parallel between what was done to the public sector in post-Soviet Russia and what is being done to the American public sector. At the hands of the same Empire.
Stay safe, and keep up the good fight!
I guess I’m not done, because I don’t feel fully expressed. So let me add one more post to this one-sided thread, and please indulge me by reading it.
I am assuming that you are not just using socialist ideas and words as debating points to confound your enemies, but are in genuine inquiry as to the nature of this historical moment, what form the inevitable rebellion of the peoples of the world against our overlords will take and how it can be successful. And – rightly or wrongly – I am taking you at face value as a voice of the resistance, a genuine defector from the Empire’s disinformation machine and an important thinker making unique contributions to our understanding of struggles against the Empire.
Please allow me to address your claim that Bernie Sanders is a misleader, a betrayer of the working class or even “… one of the main causes why the US society is stuck in its plutocratic class rule …” To evaluate this claim we need to look at what is the current state of the working class in America, what are the main challenges in front of us, and then what role is the Sanders Campaign playing in confronting these challenges. A tall order, but allow me to highlight what I think are some key pieces of it.
And then I’d like to look with you at some key forks in history when working-class leaders have had to choose between the safe path of betrayal and the hard dangerous path of struggle – and whether supporting Joe Biden, revolting as it may feel, rises to the level of such a historic betrayal.
I have been a part of the working class movements in the US on and off for about 60 years. During that time I’ve watched working people losing their conception of themselves as a class, under pressure from the sociologists and the media who made the phrase “unspeakable” and gradually the concept “unthinkable”, replacing it with “middle class” (in its new meaning of middle income) and “the poor”.
From many conversations over the years and from very good evidence, I can confirm that the basically socialist views of working people on the issues – and their conviction that we need a revolution – were never extinguished, and are still alive below the surface. But without the concept and identity of “working class”, without that tool to think with, and without access to the mass media, working people became increasingly incapable of thinking and acting together in our common interest.
The central contributions of the Sanders Campaigns over the past five years, in my view, have been to reintroduce into the national conversation, for the first time in living memory, the concepts of the ruling class (the “billionaire class”), the working class, the class struggle for “control of the social surplus” – a whole suite of mental “tools to think with” – as well as opening a national inquiry into the meaning of socialism and revolution. From your perch this may not seem earth-shaking but from here on the ground amongst the working people of the United States, where this has been an underground or largely missing conversation, it is a huge breakthrough.
It used to take a half hour conversation with a working person who I already knew, in a private and secure setting, to reach that magic (and very characteristic) moment when they would drop their mask, find the quiet place of truth inside themselves and suddenly start speaking simply from the heart. Now it may only take five minutes – and if they are already committed to Bernie it takes even less. The magic of the Sanders Campaign is that it has broken through the once-ironclad corporate media monopoly on communication with the working masses and put these concepts forward, embedded in a very concrete conversation about urgently needed reforms and the struggle against the mechanisms of control that have been blocking them.
As to the question of whether Sanders has betrayed us by calling on us to vote for Joe Biden for president, we should consider whether he was giving up power that we already had, whether he was misleading us about the nature of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party Establishment, and whether he was weakening the working class movements in our struggle for our vital survival needs and against the rise of Trumpian fascism. I think I’ve already addressed these in my previous comments, but let’s look at some great historical examples of betrayal by socialist leaders for some context.
The first is support for imperialist wars – World War I in particular – which the leaders of the Second International swore to oppose. The majority of them in every country, under intense pressure, then turned around within days and called on their members to enlist and support their country’s war efforts. I think we can count on Bernie to oppose war with China, before it starts. Once it began, under intense pressure, would Bernie fold or would he still oppose it – at the price of prison the way Eugene Debs did? Would he oppose a new Vietnam War at the price of his life, as King, Malcolm X and probably Walter Reuther did?
The second is support for revolution, when history puts the issue squarely in front of us. For example between 1917 and 1919 when neighborhood, workers’ and soldiers’ councils effectively took over the running of failed states and economies all across Europe, the left split between those, like the Bolsheviks, who supported the working people’s councils taking power and those who fought to return political power to the bourgeois-dominated parliaments and tame the revolutionary councils. Would Bernie in such a moment have sided with the revolutionary councils?
The truth is we don’t know the answer to these questions. We don’t know if Bernie is the one to lead us across the River Jordan. These are not the issues that history has placed in front of us. Not yet. But he has certainly already led us out of the wilderness to the hills from where we can see the Promised Land, and now he is trying to steer us through some setbacks and defeats as we learn how to assemble and position our hosts for the battles ahead, which are coming surely enough whether we can win the Presidency or not.
Bernie’s endorsement of Biden, as I have argued, didn’t involve giving away any real power that we have actually won. He made this move boldly, in full sight, with full warning, and only after he had stripped away the curtain again and revealed for the entire country to see the true naked face of the “little man” behind it. This may prove to have been brilliant political judo, a strategic blunder, or perhaps just the best he could have done. Time will tell. But in my opinion it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of those historical examples of high betrayal.
“Finally that SOB showed his true face, the face of an ultimate fake.”
Finally? Didn’t he do the same thing 4 years ago when endorsing Hillary Clinton?