Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Bernie Sanders: the Candidate Who Came in From the Cold

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Bernie Sanders: the Candidate Who Came in From the Cold

Click here to access article by Jeffrey St. Clair from CounterPunch.

This piece is not terribly enlightening, but it conforms precisely to my recent observations about Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders lost the moment he became entranced by the prospect that he might win. What did he lose? His grip on political reality.

For most of his life Sanders has cultivated the role of political cynic, a professional outsider, a grand-standing critic of The System. Once he came in from the cold and converted from independent socialist to a Democrat (for life, according to his campaign manager Jeff Weaver) that hard-boiled cynicism—one’s tempted to call it realism—eroded away in the face of large crowds of adoring supporters, from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. Is it possible that Sanders became intoxicated by the floridness of his own rhetoric?