Talkin’ ‘bout My Generation

 by Mike Kendall

  

  Many Americans of my Baby Boomer generation complained our political system offered no chance for choice or change.  We later opted for the illusion sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll was “The Revolution,” and material goods were the icing on the marijuana brownie. 

  Eligible voters today are even less persuaded they can effect change.  Election studies show those who don’t vote do not believe the election will effect local, state, or national governance change.  A canyon of futility, frustration, and indifference separates the weltanschauung s of voters and nonvoters.

  The eligible citizens who do not vote are such a large percentage of the electorate that we are ruled by tiny minority governments constituting about 12-14% of eligible voters.  Contrary to public pronouncements, the two dominant political parties in America have a vested interest in the turnout status quo.  Neither party knows what will happen if there is a significant, let alone a dramatic, shift in voter turnout.  

  

  The nonvoting majorities’ futility arises out of the structure of our single general election, two-party primary system.  Various viewpoints are cut out in the primaries leaving the chosen candidate closer to either party’s center.  In the general election slightly left of center and slightly right of center nominees’ move toward dead center.  The resulting choice is between conservative free market capitalism and liberal free market capitalism protecting those already powerful and protected. 

  The oligarchs are shielded by a global imperial foreign policy which requires a military larger than the rest of the world combined because of the shear geographical scope of our foreign policy commitments.  Its consumption and domination, combined with a tax structure that favors making money out of money rather than progress out of ideas, starves the scientific research, education, social programs, environmental correction, and infrastructure that is the long-term source of national wealth, health, power, and security. 

  Enter Bernie Sanders.  Sun Tzu said a successful, winning “leader must learn to sail against the wind” to win.  Bernie Sanders’ candidacy is the biggest threat to the establishment that runs this country since Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign.  The powers-that-be know it so they hide it by saying ‘Bernie ‘can’t win.’ 

  An Independent United States Senator from Vermont, he was elected on a platform of “democratic socialism.”  He is running for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination.  Bernie is tied with Hillary Clinton in the influential primary state of New Hampshire, hopes to also win Iowa, and is running second to her in many national and state opinion polls. 

  Thursday, November 19^th, he made an important speech comparable to and John F. Kennedy’s speech on Roman Catholicism in 1960 by tackling the electability of a self-proclaimed, “democratic socialist” head on.  The speech demonstrates what Mr. Sanders offers is unlike anything anyone else is offering:  Electability because he has the faith, courage, and skill “to sail against the wind.”

 

  Senator Sanders began and ended by declaring himself the heir to the successful, winning traditions and policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (elected President  four times) and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. (who changed the face of equality in America), through their respective priorities of democratic socialism and social and democratic equality.  He made three major policy points that no one else running will declare:

·         The government bailouts of big business and banks, and the lack of any prosecutions of their executives was a form of state socialism propping up the wealthy.  Quoting Rev. King, Mr. Sanders echoed, “This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor.”

·         Democratic socialism is not a soviet-style command economy and government ownership of the means of production but is a system where government provides the individual entitlements such as free public colleges, and $1 Trillion Dollars in infrastructure and public works.

·         He is not a pacifist and democratic socialism does not preclude war to protect our country, but only in self-defense, national interest, and as a last resort.

   Sanders hopes to win more voters by showing he, and his political philosophy of “democratic socialism,” are both sincere and electable.  He’s a leader who “means what he says and says what he means,” to paraphrase Dr. Seuss, “who will be faithful 100%” guarding our nest.

  How many times have we in our generation been offered no real choice, or settled and voted for the winnable candidate, thus failing to bring about change to prevent Viet Nam, Race Riots, Inequality, Poverty, Climate Change, the Iraq Wars, Afghanistan, and Assassinations 1, 2, and 3?  We should know better.  If we haven’t figured that out yet, we might actually “need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

  As one of the oldest of the Baby Boomers, I have made the same mistake and now I have learned from it.  “Don’t get fooled again.”  Feel the Bern.  If not now, when? 

If not now, “A Hard Rain’s Gonna’ Fall.”