My practical political question always has been: Do we REALLY give a crap about each other, and are we willing to cede our own money, privilege, and power to create a just world? So far, the answer is no, and the less protected (the disenfranchised, the poor, and the planet) are suffering for it. I support Bernie Sanders because he is honest and authentic, and he not only believes in justice but acts according to it. He has attacked no one, even while he has been personally and politically attacked. One can say whatever one wants about his alleged “supporters,” Bernie Sanders is a fundamentally decent man who has fought cleanly and fairly for what he believes in. Not so with his adversaries. In the aftermath of a second “mini” Super Tuesday, last night, March 10, it looks like we are on our way to selecting Joe Biden (Ronald Reagan Number Two) as president, and as servant of corporations and the 1%, rather than the people. There is no credible way to argue otherwise.
Just as Sanders fought for the people his whole life, Biden has fought for corporations his whole life, and that’s not going to change. Joe Biden is the convenient and pliable front-man, not the puppet master. International corporations, with loyalty to nothing but raw profit and power, are the pullers of the strings. It took two days for the mainstream news onslaught generated from a Biden South Carolina primary victory to destroy Bernie Sanders (along with an assist from Barack Obama, encouraging Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttagieg to drop out). Biden earned barely a single vote. He had no real money or presence in the Super Tuesday states– one padlocked headquarters in California, four in Texas, and one each in Virginia, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. Biden had no significant visits, rallies or grassroots support of people on the ground. It did not matter. Grassroots organizing went up in flames to a mindless mania that had no will except the will of the 1% to defeat Sanders and the desire of the 99% not to have Trump. (Can you find a single person who is actually passionate about Biden? I have not met a single one, and I have actually been looking.)
What will move America and the world forward? One thing is for sure: More plutocratic policies WON’T. Is Joe Biden better than Donald Trump? Yes. Will his policies make minor (and insufficient) economic and environmental improvements? Yes. Will this cause greater overall global stress in the medium term? Yes. I will be curious to see what we do. The professional and managerial classes won’t be worrying. They have enough money and health care to make it through leaner times. Justice won’t be on their minds, except as a gilded ideal subservient to their own advantage and desire to be viewed as good. Blindly celebrating Trump’s ouster and seeing themselves as victors will predominate, while the conditions for the planet and the least fortunate deteriorate.
We will not be kept from our reckoning by rearranging plutocrats like deck chairs on the Titanic. We might have averted an iceberg, but our Titanic is docking in a port that will find its city flooded by global climate change. Big Oil remains in the easy chair, rather than the Green New Deal in the seat of law. I hope we break out of our own self-flattering ideologies and stories in time to leave the next generations a chance for a livable life and a livable planet. Let us just admit what we failed to do so in this historical moment, and let us be candid that our failure to deal with moral and practical realities beyond our own preoccupations will have growing consequences. The world that gives us our lives deserves our best virtue, something far truer than our conceits and fantasies. I hope we re-discover our highest civic virtues, and find the personal courage in ourselves, and compassion for others, to act upon them.
