My eye is better now. I don’t feel the scratching since I woke up. Surprising.
After that utter crushing of Bernie Sanders in #NYPrimary (not even restoring the voter rolls would have gotten him a victory, AFAICT), his birthplace, I’m rethinking the movement behind him.
The “money-in-politics/anti-corruption” focus is incredibly myopic and monomaniacal. To be honest, “money-in-politics” is not my biggest focus. My focus is on civil and human rights, and clearing all possible impediments to those rights.
Right now, those impediments are coming from the 50 states which exercise more control over cities than the federal government exercises over them. State politicians are falling over themselves to stigmatize the autonomies and powers of women, LGBT people, people of color, non-religious/minority-religious people, and organized labor.
But Sanders’ focus is on moneyed interests in the federal government, not the state politicians who are spearheading these terrible experiments in the “labs of democracy” which act as little fiefdoms for the White Male Christian Supremacist orders which have controlled them since colonial times and violently fought the federal government when compelled to change their ways of governance.
Universal health care is also being heavily resisted at the state level, as are the restoration of the VRA, the closing of wasteful local military installations and the drawing-down of our military expenditures, the banning of fracking, card check for union elections, non-discrimination laws, the abolition of the death penalty, the abolition of felon disenfranchisement etc.
All of the vested interests which seek to protect the social status quo and rage against what could bring us together seem to emanate directly from the state governments and their landed gentry, while D.C. merely tries to hold them together with sweetheart deals and gentleman agreements. Oh, and the majority of the federal spending that is ballyhooed by the reactionaries representing these states goes to funding the expenditures which keep these states afloat. Hypocrisy.
While Clinton is already signaling how she will deal with recalcitrant states (in which she will likely follow Obama’s model), Sanders is not addressing what the progressive agenda should be on and in the states. Clinton will most assuredly keep much of this status quo with many allowable incremental changes around the edges, but she, by her platform, is more likely to apply those changes to matters of a civil or human rights concern through executive action than Sanders, by his platform, seems to be.
Sanders’ singular focus on “big banks” has carved out a core constituency of true believers and populists across many states, the majority of whom have not had to live under the oppression of their home state. Similarly, their focus is either on “big banks” or how “Hillary is bad because she takes money from such and such”. I don’t share that concern.
Right now, big banks and Fortune 500s who donated to bigoted state politicians and ALEC are having “buyer’s remorse” and successfully rallying the proletariat against these same politicians’ bigoted legislations. They’re becoming unlikely, problematic but necessary allies of the civil rights constituency in Southern states, where the civil rights movement never ended.
Right now, Fortune 500s are facing off against nasty rural politicians who seek to other and stigmatize non-normative human beings who happen to be employees of these companies. That’s what I and everyone who lives in Columbus, GA live with. I’m not concerned with big banks right now. I’m not concerned with Super PACs right now. I’m not concerned with who donated how much to what foundation, unless they’re doing something to screw with civil and human rights here or abroad.
I VOTED FOR BERNIE SANDERS, liking his progressive bonafides but hoping that he would broaden his platform and address how fundamentally, institutionally unjust we are as a country beyond mere money economics.
I was hoping that Sanders’ social media supporters, even the ones who wear their “independent” label on their sleeve, would retreat from conspiracy theories, utter crankery, poor knowledge of both the Democratic Party’s operations and our massively-unjust 1787 Constitution, massive condescension to Democrats of color, and other *ahem* BS. He hasn’t. They haven’t. And now I’m having “buyer’s remorse.” #AbolishTheStates #AbolishTheSenate #MadamPresident