The Big Picture

Fellow Bernie folks: We’re being tricked. We’re being bamboozled. We’re being fed bread and circuses. This election is not a god damn football game. We act as if it were, to the point of vilifying our opponents solely for the purpose of enhancing our rivalry. This strikes me as highly counter to the democratic socialist ethos that we are attempting to build. You are what you eat.

We need to step back, get serious, and focus on the bigger picture. I’m sure we all have different visions of the revolution. Our visions together will combine into some kind of heck of a thing. It’s not time to write them off, the political class, it’s time to stare them face to face, eyeball to eyeball, the way Bernie does, yes, even connect with them on a human level. There are more important things than politics. Human connection is more important than politics, or more accurately human connection is the essence of politics. Generosity of spirit might be something to cultivate. It may be time for a human consciousness. One that values the connection between humans as the only thing that’s real. By cultivating the human connection between us, all of us, we discard the garbage that comes between us. There is nothing rational separating two human beings. If Dr. King can negotiate with Bull Conner, Mandela with de Klerk, Bernie’s movement can negotiate with Hillary.

Regardless of how the distracting horserace turns out, we need to consolidate and leverage our power in order to secure the best situation we can achieve for the sake of the people. How many people of color are Bernie or Bust? Black and Brown people have a lot more to lose with a Trump presidency, like their lives or their claim to this country. Call it a united front against fascism if you must. Hillary is a part of it. It’s Mao Zedong and Chang Kai-shek uniting against the Japanese. (Regardless of what you think of Mao, do you think China would be anywhere near where it is today without him?).

The task before us, win or lose, is to unite the Bernie movement and come to a collective decision as to what should be the next step. If he does lose the nomination, maybe we should consider endorsing Jill Stein. What would Hillary offer for our vote? What would be wrong with principled negotiations between the Clinton camp and the Bernie movement? Even if she wins, we could win some demands that would concretely improve people’s lives, which is kind of the point, isn’t it? Like, how about she implement a policy immediately that the Justice department will investigate every police killing of an unarmed victim. An immediate investigation of lead levels in water all over the country. Here’s one: how about pardoning all of the people that were unjustly railroaded into jail for most of their lives because of her husband’s crime bill?

Our movement, the Bernie movement, needs to do everything in its power to unite with the Black Lives Matter movement. What would we have to do to do that? The whites among us might want to leave our privilege at the door. Black Lives Matter is leading the movement for a new society that values people over profits. Let’s act like we understand that.