Nurse the Hate: Hate The Bern

The Bernie Sanders Revolution has ended in the exact way I expected.  Tears of disbelief rolling down the cheeks of Millennials makes for excellent television.  The dream dies hard to those that haven’t had their dreams crushed in such a manner before.  The idealists and opportunists that had jumped on board had convinced themselves that showing up at some rallies and circulating clever social media posts would tumble the existing power base and leave behind a worker’s paradise.  Why, we’d all hopscotch around with free healthcare and education!  And who would pay for this?  The Rich!  They have all the money!  It’s unfair!  They stack the deck against us!  

As I gazed upon these tears flowing at the convention hall, when it had at last become apparent that no last minute miracle would happen, I was transfixed.  I wanted to see if I could see the exact second when the realization hit these people.  “This was never going to happen.  Ever.  The Establishment will always win The Game because they are the ones the write The Rules of The Game.”  Wake the fuck up hipster.  Revolution doesn’t come from sharing a Facebook post.  It takes money, cold blooded violence, and understanding that everything that you know is wrong.  Powerful people do not become that way by accident.  They tossed some bodies in the quarry along the way.  To think that some utopian crazy talk was going to move them out of the way is childishly naïve.  You have to get in the mud and fight your way out.

While it could lead to some long term good in America, this will probably crush the will of the millennials.  Having been told all their young lives that they are special and everyone gets a trophy, this punch in the teeth is something altogether new.  “We’ll show them!  We will march out of the Convention Hall!”  Grow the fuck up.  Bernie knew he wasn’t winning this thing from the start.  He knew the score.  He got what he wanted out of it and then compromised like his job requires.  Taking your ball and going home is not going to accomplish anything.  Sitting out the election like a petulant six year old will get you Grand Emperor Trump, and you will learn what “unfair” really means.  Go ahead and spend a year hopping out of a helicopter getting shot at by dudes in rubber sandals in the desert.  You’ll yearn for the Good Old Days of “Occupy Wall Street” humping like a feral dog in a tent listening to Frank Turner records.

It was important to get the issues Sanders championed into the public discourse.  Free universal health care isn’t going to happen.  However, at least we can discuss changing the obviously broken situation we have now.  Should we limit corporate finance of political campaigns?  Of course we should.  Should we charge companies for carbon emissions?  Probably, but don’t go crazy when you get laid off because the company had to reduce production or sink money into capital improvements.  Free education?  OK, but who pays for it?  We have broken bridges, roads, tunnels, airports, etc.  Who’s paying for all of this?  The Rich?  No way.  They will just fire a bunch of you and cut your wages to keep their lifestyles.  This shit is complicated.  Waving a cardboard sign about “Feeling The Bern” doesn’t get it done.  Time to face reality and get to work.  The party is over.