I broke my vow to refrain
from engaging in Facebook political arguments with “moderate Dems” (what
moderate Republicans used to be) when one of them, for about the 10th
time, referred to Bernie Sanders as a “Bolshevik.” If people weren’t so
stunningly gullible it would be an hysterically funny one-off. My brief
response was: “So, was FDR a Bolshevik?”
That opened the floodgates.
The so-called moderate Dem, who apparently sits in front of his computer all
day long posting nasty comments on Facebook (and in letters to the editor in
various online newspapers) and calls people who disagree with him assholes,
dupes, or Bolsheviks, told me that FDR wasn’t a Bolshevik because his economy
was nothing like today’s booming economy where everyone is enjoying the
benefits that Bolsheviks like Bernie want to take away from us. The next day
the stock market tanked in its biggest loss since the Great Recession of 2007
because of the corona virus (the 99 percent are already in the toilet).
It wasn’t this guy’s knee-jerk
response that drew me further into the den of iniquity, however. In a previous
private message to the moderate Dem whose Facebook page hosts much of his
vitriol, I had respectfully asked why she didn’t call him out for spewing such
nonsense. She sees herself as the voice of reason, an engaged Democrat who is
avidly anti-Trump and a big proponent of engaged political discourse. Her
response, which acknowledged he is “annoying,” is a climate change denier, and
a beneficiary of the booming oil and gas industry, was “I don’t think shielding Bernie fans
from the portrait people have of him is helpful.” So much for engaged political discourse.
The rants continued for a
while until she accused me of hypocrisy in advocating for socialism while being
a community organizer who advocates for local control of resources and
government, citing my support for the integrity of acequias. She again missed
an opportunity to really explore what Bernie’s agenda, or Elizabeth Warren’s
for that matter, actually involves, much of which she and I, as community
organizers, endorse: a government that makes sure policies are in place to
protect and allow people to flourish in a more equitable society than the
unregulated, late stage capitalism one in which we live. The social democracy
that Bernie endorses means just what it says: that a society based on a leveled
playing field is what democracy looks like.
I responded: “Yeah, Bernie’s
coming for our acequias.” That was it for me, and I signed off for good. But if
I hadn’t (we all like to have the last word, don’t we, and while I can’t really
have the last word I do have Unf*#!ing Believable), I would also have pointed
out another disconnect in this kind of group think. While they all rail against
their elected Democratic legislators who have supported the settlement of a
decades old water rights adjudication, the Aamodt, to which they are objecting parties,
they fail to acknowledge those same legislators’ ties to the DNC, which
directed the Clinton and now the Biden takeover of the primary (Buttigieg,
Klobuchar, Bloomberg). They love Biden but they hate Ben Ray Lujan, who
directed the DNCC money flow for many years.
I
broke my vow again, the day before Super Tuesday, but this time I had an
excuse: I thought I was responding to an old friend from Antioch—ANTIOCH!—who
had momentarily lost her mind and was saying she’d vote for Biden. I responded:
“Are you crazy? Joe Biden!!??” Her response was: “I don’t see
evidence of Bernie playing well with others. He did nothing to support Hillary
after he lost the nomination in 2016. He’s too polarizing. We need someone who
can heal the body politic. I don’t see Bernie helping the down ballot. I’m
following the lead of African Americans who carry so much water for the
Democratic Party and get little back for their efforts.” It made me almost nostalgic
for the days when the SDSers and YSAers at Antioch were yelling at each other
over who knew best how to start the revolution.
But I didn’t have time to point out her lie (Bernie
did nothing to support Hilary) or get any further dragged in, as another
Antioch friend then replied: “Now isn’t the time for healing with Republicans
and oligarchs kicking our teeth in. That was Obama’s saddest miscalculation in
his first two years when he had both the House and the Senate (by a large
margin.) They strung him out until the billionaire funded Tea Party bullied its
way into Congress. Bernie is building a movement (not a campaign) of mission
driven activists that is growing daily. When was the last presidential
candidate who campaigned on organizing the working class— not in our lifetime.
That’s the movement that’s going to raise up candidates at the local level, not
Biden’s gaggle of establishment endorsements. African Americans are part of the
movement. Bernie’s agenda will lift all boats; well, at least 99% of them. Vote
your aspirations, not your fears.”
When
I do post articles on Facebook that I think are insightful, it’s to do exactly
what my Antioch friend said, to encourage voters to base their decisions on who
best exemplifies their values, not who is the most likely to defeat Trump, a
futile exercise, IMHO. But today, independent journalist Arun Gupta posted an
opinion piece by The Guardian’s
Nathan Robinson that was really disturbing but probably prescient: “Stop saying
Biden is the ‘most electable.’ Trump will run rings round him.” It’s basically
2016 redux: “Trump is savagely effective at destroying establishment
politicians.” And the baggage Biden brings to the table as that establishment
politician is daunting: “He has been in Washington since the age of 30,
representing Delaware, the ‘capital of corporate America’. He is infamous for
his connections to the credit card industry, and he has lied
about his degree of support for the Iraq war. Even Matthew Yglesias of Vox
calls Biden the “Hillary
Clinton of 2020” for his corporate ties and war support.” Another columnist, Shaun King, posted a heavily researched piece that exposed Biden's lies about his participation in the civil rights movement.
Then there’s Ukraine. They will go after him unmercifully for Hunter Biden’s
obscene $50,000 a month Burisma salary even if it’s only nepotism, not
criminality.
Joe Biden offers no progressive or radical values like Sanders or Warren
offer. He only proffers “virtuousness and decency. But if Biden doesn’t
actually look virtuous and decent—because he isn’t—the argument that he has
made for himself collapses completely.”
So we’ll keeping plugging away for Bernie. A friend of mine wrote me the
other day (another Antiochian), “I wish he would just settle for
being Moses, someone who almost single-handedly changed the terms of the
debate, but never saw the promised land.” I know he’s an old white man but
there will be young women or people of color or atheists (Bernie’s a Jewish
atheist!) who will come after Moses gets to the promised land.
