Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
So I'm shooting the shit with this lawyer last Thursday. Guy's super-progressive. Huge BLM guy. And we get to talking about justice reform and then Bernie comes up. Dude goes on a rant about how Bernie is basically as bad as Trump. The guy detests Bernie.
I've heard this before. I know enough not ask follow ups, so I just politely listen and say, "Well, Bernie is unrealistic." Milquetoast reply, intended to defuse.
This Bernie hatred, which is very common, is confusing to me. Look, I get that he's a curmudgeon, and he's naive and unrealistic about his policies. But how does a progressive find such hatred for a guy who's done so much to push forward progressive causes. If not for Bernie, the Democratic Party would be dominated by triangulating Clintonite centrists (effectively, in terms of impact, Moderate Republicans of old).
It's hard for me not say the following:
"Look, if you hate Bernie it's because he's raising some really tough questions. Economic questions. The moderates have no answer for inequality. Sure, they say they do, but it's just redistribution at the margins, some crap about retaining that'll never work, or MOAR EDUCATION! It's bullshit. The Republicans and Centrist Democrats don't have any plan to really help the downtrodden to become economically independent. They're just arguing over how much money to throw at them.
If you want proof of this, look at 'woke capitalism' all around you. Consider that it's your affluent progressive friends who are all fixated on wokeness. That corporations are in an orgy of virtue signalling. All this while the poor of all backgrounds are just trying to survive.
Why? Part of it is well intentioned. People with time on their hands and a few bucks can engage in protests and they love anything that smells of 'raising awareness.' But a bigger part of it is because it's easy and it lets them off the hook. To say one is woke, to support protests, attend them perhaps, costs an affluent white person nothing. Nada. Zip. And to say our problems are entirely race based allows affluent white folks, and corporations, to avoid the economics of inequality. It allows those doing alright in a neoliberal economy to dodge a conversation about how 20% of us are running away with all of the spoils while the other 80% - of all colors and backgrounds - are languishing.
That's the conversation Bernie wanted to have. He was interested in European reforms, like putting workers' representatives on corporate boards, raising the minimum wage significantly, single payer. He would've taxed financial transactions and rentier activities.
You can't really hate Bernie and call yourself a progressive. What you can and should call yourself is a selfish centrist who's protecting his book."
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The reasons are at least four fold:
(1) He and his people love to demonize other people; it's a cult, and if you don't worship St. Bernie you're not a progressive. We've all been called names by Bros along the way, and we've all had them question our integrity.
(2) He undermines good candidates, whether it is past races in Vermont, local races he decides to get into, or Hillary Clinton. He is particularly nasty to minority and women candidates; watching the Bernie Bros feed on Elizabeth Warren when she didn't do as she was told by them was one of the recent stomach turning escapades. One side effect of this is he has no long term alliances - try to think of another elected official who has worked closely with bernie for years - there are none, if you work with him too long, there will be a knife in your back.
(3) He's really shallow - everything is a bumper sticker, there is always an easy solution. I'm sure you like this about him. This makes having an argument with the Bernie Bros as frustrating as having an argument with Trumpsters (example: I have asked innumerable Bros how M4A would impact the development of innovative drugs - there are good answers to this question by the way - and have never gotten anything but a man, you must be a neoliberal shill to question M4A, what is wrong with you)
(4) He's gotten shit done. Other than staging big rallies and basking in adulation, he's accomplished next to nothing.
Compare the above to, say, the squad. They operate in a completely different way. Really, one thing you don't want is Bernie to be too firmly in your camp.
As to this "you can't hate Bernie and call yourself a progressive" crap - fuck you, that's Bro-speak. As I've noted before, I was in Burlington with Bernie the night he was first elected Mayor, I was campaign manager for a progressive Member of Congress in an adjacent district, I was a member of DSA back when he first joined. I know whereof I speak.
