Bernie Sanders Gambling With America's Future

Yet again Bernie Sanders has said he will fight all the way to the nomination. Yesterday I saw a supporter claiming that he will be the Democratic nominee. It's kind of strange, given that he believes the Dem Party to be rigged and thoroughly corrupt. I guess the idea is to change it from within. And, in the name of democracy, over-ride millions of voters who don't believe it's rigged. 

On June 9 Politico ran an article saying "After meeting with Obama, Sanders gives strongest sign yet that he will soon bow out. But he's going to compete in D.C. primary first." That was understandable  in the light of how optimistic Sanders was that he could win D.C. by a large margin. However, he said after the meeting with President Obama that "Donald Trump would clearly, to my mind and I think the majority of Americans, be a disaster as president of the United States.

"It is unbelievable to me, and I say this in all sincerity, that the Republican Party would have a candidate for president who in the year 2016 makes bigotry and discrimination the cornerstone of his campaign.

"In my view, the American people will not vote for or tolerate a candidate who insults Mexicans and Latinos, who insults Muslims, who insults African-Americans and women.  Needless to say, I am going to do everything in my power, and I will work as hard as I can, to make sure that Donald Trump does not become president of the United States."

Sincerity is as sincerity does. He will work as hard as he can? He could if he wanted to but he didn't then and he still isn't. 

President Barack Obama. Joe Biden. Elizabeth Warren. Hillary Clinton. All of them passionate, courageous, supremely smart, knowledgeable, experienced, articulate, focused and able to maintain dignity and purpose in the face of huge challenge.

All of them aligned against a thin-skinned, misogynistic, racist, narcissistic bully addicted to power and adulation and getting his way by any means, unable to control his temper, his mouth or his fear of criticism, unable to take his head out of the sand or handle a simple press report. Backed by a party that despises him but has painted itself into a corner by supporting him and foolishly believing it could control him.

The absentee is, of course, Bernie Sanders who is in reality doing everything he can to promote his revolution no matter what the cost, with the occasional outburst against Donald Trump to keep up the myth that he's doing everything he can to make sure Trump doesn't win. The truth is that he's doing everything he can, short of articulating it openly, to make sure that Hillary Clinton doesn't win.

In June Sanders was convinced he would win D.C. and that was his rationalization for carrying on. He lost by one of the biggest margins in the Democratic primaries. And he carried on.

Now he's back to saying—again—that he will carry the fight all the way to the Democratic convention. The longer he refuses to endorse Hillary Clinton the more myths are perpetrated about her. Ultimately that will be what gives Donald Trump the edge. In a recent Bloomberg poll 22% of Sanders supporters said they'll vote for him. Their hero will have a Congress even more dominated by the GOP. He will be powerless to effect the slightest change. And the Supreme Court will be conservative by majority. So a minority of voters will make the decision for the majority and affect the lives of everybody's children for possibly decades.

It's impossible to entertain the idea that Sanders is unaware of that 22% or of how irrational they are. They keep repeating the same categorical statements generated originally by the far right GOP and now backed by memes that can be disproved in seconds. It's mindless! There are few things more dangerous to a healthy democracy than mindless rage. People consumed with it will avoid any truth that doesn't give them a justification for vitriol and punishing somebody.

The frightening thing is that Sanders isn't saying to this group "we'll fight to force Hillary Clinton into the most progressive agenda possible, but guys, we are going to vote for her because she is the only way to defeat Donald Trump."

He can't say it, can he? Because then he can't blackmail the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton. So he's taking a gamble. For it to succeed he needs to carry on whipping up the mindless rage, tacitly endorsing the stories that Clinton is a child-and-women hating, war-mongering monster who has been bought by Wall Street, large corporations and a thoroughly corrupt Democratic Party. Presumably his plan is that when he's got what he wants, he'll exert benevolent control over that mindless rage so ultimately all his supporters vote for Clinton.

Good luck with that, Bernie Sanders. We've just seen the centenary commemoration of the Battle of the Somme when a million men were wounded or killed. Two years later World War I was over. Never again, everybody swore. Twenty years later World War II broke out. After that war ended, everybody swore, never again would the world countenance another Hitler.

Now throughout the West the far right is rising in power. We don't learn from history. I wonder if we can even learn from history that happened a week ago when UK voters chose an option that had been driven by bigotry and that has plunged the country into disarray on every front.

And opened the door even wider for the far right. America faces the same dilemma. And Bernie Sanders is gambling?

Photograph: The Cardsharps by Carvaggio, c. 1594

Bernie Sanders Supporters Associate Hillary Clinton with Hitler

When I was in my early teens I learned about Hitler and the Nazis and the horror of it has stayed with me my whole life. Some years ago I discovered that I have Jewish ancestry. I've wondered if anybody I’m related to had to endure a concentration camp. I think about it a lot. 

Recently I visited the Holocaust museum in Cape Town. I’ve seen many photographs and international exhibitions of art exposing the brutality. I’ve been frightened and touched and moved and angered over and over again each time. But nothing prepared me for that day. The museum is constructed so that you move through sections representing different aspects of the Nazi atrocities. There are a lot of photographs of victims who are named and many more who are not. 

Except for a young girl I was alone. It was quiet and respectful and felt like a church. I moved from photograph to photograph of anguished men, women and children. I wept and wept and wept. I wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to say to the nameless I saw you, I will remember you. I cried that humans could be so brutal.

At some point the girl came up to me quietly and put her arm around me. No words. Just love and kindness. It made cry even more. I didn't want consolation. I wanted them to have that love.

Today I was looking at what my Facebook friends have posted and I came across this. I’ve removed my friend’s name out of respect. It’s a video but I’m not going to provide the link. 

Anger me? No kidding. First off, the term Hillarynista is an insult, but much worse is the Hitler association. I didn't want to see any more, didn't watch the video. I don't care what Hillary said. It isn't funny. There's nothing good or entertaining or funny or profound or productive or remotely truthful about associating her with Hitler, no matter what she's done or said. It's not just the insult to her and her supporters that bothers me; in fact that's the least of it. It's the insult to Holocaust victims and their families of making a casual joke out of the cause of their terrible suffering.

I said as much in the comment section. I want to say more, not just to my friend, but to anybody who thinks comparing somebody to Hitler is a joke.

Do you think this is funny?

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Or this?

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How about this?

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I found another photo of piles of dead bodies with a doctor in the middle trampling over them. I couldn't embed it without paying $150 so take my word for it. By piles I mean hundreds and hundreds of people who surely lived through agony before their lives were snuffed out. And the doc casually strolling on them was the guy who had injected them with petrol. That one isn't funny either.

It's enough now. If you support Bernie Sanders then write about him. Don't kid yourself that you're promoting peace or solution or love when you casually share a joke that compares Hillary Clinton to Hitler. You're spreading hate.

Lest We Forget, Racism Isn't Over in the US

Bill Hudson's photo (courtesy Wiki), shot in Birmingham on May 3 1963, shows Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being restrained by a white police officer so the dog could lunge at his stomach.

There’s been a lot of talk since Barack Obama was elected that racism is over in the US. The Civil Rights Movement was successful; everybody’s equal now and responsible for making their own lives work; poverty is a choice. Right.

Lest We Forget. Originally it was from Recessional, a poem by Rudyard Kipling entreating God to save Brits from their propensity to over-celebrate their power and lapse into indulgence and profanity. It refers to Christ’s alleged sacrifice on the cross. As a child I associated it with Hitler’s slaughter of 6 million Jews. But name any atrocity, really, at a personal or societal level.

Powerful phrase, that, Lest We Forget. The thing is, we do forget, all the time. It’s inconvenient to remember. Then every now and then the consequences of what we don’t want to acknowledge explode in our faces.

The following passages are from the Justice Department Report on their investigation into the Ferguson Police Department. Italics are mine.

…We have discovered evidence of racial bias in emails sent by Ferguson officials, all of whom are current employees, almost without exception through their official City of Ferguson email accounts, and apparently sent during work hours [between] several police and court supervisors, including FPD supervisors and commanders. The following emails are illustrative:

1. A November 2008 email stated that President Barack Obama would not be President for very long because “what black man holds a steady job for four years.”
2. A March 2010 email mocked African Americans through speech and familial stereotypes, using a story involving child support. One line from the email read: “I be so glad that dis be my last child support payment! Month after month, year after year, all dose payments!”
3. An April 2011 email depicted President Barack Obama as a chimpanzee.
4. A May 2011 email stated: “An African-American woman in New Orleans was admitted into the hospital for a pregnancy termination. Two weeks later she received a check for $5,000. She phoned the hospital to ask who it was from. The hospital said, ‘Crimestoppers.’”
5. A June 2011 email described a man seeking to obtain “welfare” for his dogs because they are “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddies are.”
6. An October 2011 email included a photo of a bare-chested group of dancing women, apparently in Africa, with the caption, “Michelle Obama’s High School Reunion.”
7. A December 2011 email included jokes that are based on offensive stereotypes about Muslims.

[There were many others. The senders were not reported or disciplined and the emails were usually forwarded along to others.]

…African Americans experience disparate impact in nearly every aspect of Ferguson’s law enforcement system. Despite making up 67% of the population, [they] accounted for 85% of FPD’s traffic stops, 90% of FPD’s citations, and 93% of FPD’s arrests from 2012 to 2014.

While the record demonstrates a pattern of stops that are improper from the beginning, it also exposes encounters that start as constitutionally defensible but quickly cross the line. For example, in the summer of 2012, an officer detained a 32-year-old African-American man who was sitting in his car cooling off after playing basketball. The officer arguably had grounds to stop and question the man, since his windows appeared more deeply tinted than permitted under Ferguson’s code.

Without cause, the officer went on to accuse the man of being a pedophile, prohibit the man from using his cell phone, order the man out of his car for a pat-down despite having no reason to believe he was armed, and ask to search his car.

When the man refused, citing his constitutional rights, the officer reportedly pointed a gun at his head, and arrested him. The officer charged the man with eight different counts, including making a false declaration for initially providing the short form of his first name (e.g., “Mike” instead of “Michael”) and an address that, although legitimate, differed from the one on his license. The officer also charged the man both with having an expired operator’s license, and with having no operator’s license in possession.

The man told us he lost his job as a contractor with the federal government as a result of the charges…

…Officers command dogs to apprehend by biting even when multiple officers are present. They make no attempt to slow situations down, creating time to resolve the situation with lesser force. They appear to use canines not to counter a physical threat but to inflict punishment.

They act as if every offender has a gun, justifying their decisions based on what might be possible rather than what the facts indicate is likely. Overall, FPD officers’ use of canines reflects a culture in which officers choose not to use the skills and tactics that could resolve a situation without injuries, and instead deploy tools and methods that are almost guaranteed to produce an injury of some type …

Then there’s the University of Oklahoma’s SAE frat house chant recently captured on video: “There will never be a n****r SAE, you can hang them from a tree but they will never sign with me. There will never be a n****r SAE.”

Sure, racism is a thing of the past in America.