Tuesday, January 26, 2016

When you come to the fork in the road, take it


After watching the Democratic  "Town Hall Meeting" last night, I now see why Bernie Sanders is surging and Hillary Clinton is lagging.  Oh, and there was that other guy there, too, Merlin O'Grady.

Bernie gets it.  He's genuine, down-to-earth, and transparent.  He oozes integrity.  He has tapped in to those issues that are bugging the other 99%, or 90%, or wherever the dividing line is between the have's and have not's.  This is that dangerous divide I predicted would eventually come to be when inequality between the two became a solidly entrenched "us vs them".  This is a wake up call.  Right now it's just a "political revolution".  Unchecked, it could someday become a violent revolution.

To be polite, Bernie has "socialist leanings".  He admits he likes the European model of social welfare:  universal medical care, child care, pensions, etc.  To those who say Bernie's agenda is "pie in the sky", he says no it isn't.  He points out that such a social platform already exists in much of the advanced world, and he's right.  But IMO he's ahead of his time....he misses one important historical difference.

Over the 30 years between the end of WWI and WWII, Europe convulsed and imploded.  Europe was missing two generations of workers and breadwinners.  Their cities and economies were in ruins.  The survivors were beaten down.  They were simply too exhausted and impoverished to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, as we Americans like to say.  They were ready to let government take care of them, hence their socialist inclinations.

America emerged from both World Wars relatively unscathed.  We certainly, sadly, suffered hundreds of thousands of causalities, but they paled to the number of causalities suffered by the European warring nations.  And those wars were actually a tremendous boon for our infrastructure and economy.  We emerged richer and more powerful than we could have ever imagined.  We had a can-do spirit, the feeling that there were no limits on our imagination and where we could go.  We didn't need government to look after us....indeed we wanted government to get out of our way!

That worked fairly well for most, but not well at all for a few others.  The majority ruled, and we steamrolled ahead.  But over time the schism widened, and more and more began to fall behind.  Regardless of why, fewer and fewer climbed higher and higher, while more and more found themselves stuck in place or sliding backward.  It's at this point when too many lose hope of a better future for themselves and their children that they begin to listen to non-traditional American ideas, like those coming from Bernie Sanders.

I believe it was that great American philosopher, Jerry Lewis, who once said "United we stand, divided we fall".  Judging by the large, enthusiastic crowds who attend Bernie's campaign rallies, it seems many Americans are today where many Europeans were in the late 1940's:  ready for government to step in and provide.  That is clearly (to me) where we're headed....but we're not quite there yet.


It's a numbers game.  Unchecked, the masses will prevail.  There is a lot of historical precedence to support this.  The American political / economic aristocracy should take note.  They would be wise to put their greed aside, reach out, and try to get the majority of Americans back on the gravy train with them instead of picking their pockets.

In a few words:  "A little piece of a big pie is better than a big piece of NO pie."

S

EDIT: Plain English....Populist politicians are no doubt watching what Bernie is saying, and how it is being received.  Bernie will fall short IMO in 2016, but 10 (?) years from now, if the conservatives don't wise up and squash their ultra-radical conservative faction and become a more inclusive party where everyone can thrive and prosper, Bernie's revolution will become reality.  Fair warning.



10 comments:

  1. Feel the Bern, baby! What we need is the poor dum dums in the South to stop voting Republican in stark contrast to their best interests.

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  2. I've always liked Bernie and agree that he's a man of integrity, but I don't think he can accomplish what he claims. Politics is the art of the "possible" and we need someone who can work the system to get things done. I also have issues with what I perceive as Bernie's naivete when it comes to foreign policy.

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    1. I agree. As I said, I think he's ahead of his time, but his ideas are gaining traction. Right now there is no way a Republican controlled Congress is going to go along. And his interest does seem to be domestically centered. I don't see foreign policy to be his strong suit.

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    2. Bernie does understand and articulate foreign policy: stay the hell out of other countries civil and religious wars. It's time to spend that money on domestic needs.

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  3. Bernie is a screamer with high ideas, so high that they can never be accomplished. After Iowa and New Hampshire, his crusade will be over. Hillary will sweep the primaries and be the nominee. Bernie will go back to making angry speeches in a do-nothing Senate. Just another footnote in history.

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    1. I agree Bernie would have zero chance of getting his agenda passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, but I think his crusade, or shall I say the crusade he started, will only gain momentum in the years ahead. Populists a decade or so from now will credit Bernie for showing how much dissatisfaction there is, and how it can pave the way toward a populist electoral victory. I'll also agree that 2016 belongs to Hillary, at least her dominance in the Democratic Party. Whether she will prevail in the general election is to be seen.

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  4. The question of Sanders elect-ability is an interesting one, and one made even more intriguing with the possibility he might run against Trump.
    However, the issue of socialism in Europe needs some correction. Socialism has it's roots in European culture long, long before the inter-war period post WW1. Historians think it's roots are even before the industrial revolution, going back to the 15th century, when trade unions started being established in the crafts workers. Andalusian workers held meetings in the 1600's where they established rules regarding work hours, fees, etc. Marx in 1848 brought out many of the tenets of modern socialism, and the Russian Revolution of 1917 seemed to be at first a blossoming of the ideas.
    What the post WW1 period did was possibly fertilized the social ground for the nazi movement, with the unfair terms of the Treaty of Versailles.
    Hope I'm not being too much a pedant here.

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    1. Very interesting Mike. I was not aware of the 15th Century socialists or the Andalusian workers movement. My knowledge of socialism begins with Marx and Engels in the mid-late 19th Century. Up until WWI it was a largely "underground" movement without much popular support. It was with the Russian Revolution that socialism first became the formal guiding principle of a government. It became more widespread in post-WWI Europe, which gave the Nazi's someone to hate in addition to Jews. But after WWII, in the late 1940's, socialism became an official philosophy followed off-and-on by many elected Western governments. That seems to be where modern European socialism can trace its roots back to.

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  5. I'd like to just throw in something to think about. Why They were ready to let government take care of them and not They were ready to take care of each other? Maybe the notion that government is "us" and not an "us vs. them" sentiment is stronger in Europe?

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    1. Hmmmm....interesting. Speaking for myself only, I just always think of government as an entity in itself, and government employees are who we interface with. But you do propose an interesting distinction.

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