Key West The Newspaper

by Alex Symington…….

An informal tally of pro and con responses to my essay in last weeks Blue Paper on Bernie Sanders was about 50/50, but the content of the pro and con responses was telling in and of itself. The pro Bernie responses were well written expressions of varying concurrences with the essay and had their own nuanced thoughtful contributions to add. Not so much the cons. I liked the Koch’s Libertarian Party anti-government paste-and-copy from the head office. I would suggest replacing the word “government” with the word “corporate” and you’d be half way there.

Chris Hedges’ outline of our political landscape explains much of how we arrived in our current irrational bizarro world where people like Ted Cruz and Rick Perry are considered legitimate candidates for the POTUS. Back in the nineties, “Clinton, with diabolical brilliance, transformed the democratic party into the republican party and pushed the republican party so far to the right it became insane.” How else do we explain Hilary as Democrat when she is pro-TPP, pro-Keystone Pipeline, pro-fracking, pro-endless war and has an ex-Monsanto lobbyist for her campaign manager? How, indeed.

This is the world we live in. Once one realizes the extent to which the goal posts have been moved one can start to wake up and recalibrate one’s position in this world. The Pavlovian reaction of horror to Senator Sander’s political ideology is absurd and mercifully fading allowing for rational debate on alternatives to Corporate Hyper-Capitalist Rule. If we were to look back in history we would find he is as radical as Republican Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt.

Much like living for weeks on end in sub-zero conditions and waking up to twenty degree weather and thinking it’s a heat wave we have arrived at a place that appears normal, but it really isn’t. In a rational world we would never put up with the claptrap that corporations are people and cash is speech. No way…In a rational world we would do everything we could to help our children excel and improve their lives and would never even think about ways to profit off them, because they’re our children and sacred. In a rational world we would be happy to make sure our old and infirm had the medical care needed for a healthy and meaningful life and would be appalled that anyone would try and profit from their misery and pain. After all, hopefully, we all are going to get old and God forbid, perhaps even sick, as well. Rationality and common sense tell us these things, but for some strange reason we have abandoned those principals that in the past have set us apart from the reptiles.

Many of us, myself included, are apprehensive, to say the least, of what the future holds. I am of a mind that unless we the people stop buying into and squabbling over this or that simplistic political platform or ideology-by-rote we are doomed to continue living under an increasingly desperate and dangerous regime that will not stop it’s destructive consumption of all things on earth-as-commodity until there is nothing left. Like religions with built-in caveats that to be a member in good standing you must recruit more initiates, the Hyper-Capitalist Regime cannot stop its obsessive addiction to increased profits. It is the core essence of the religion of Capitalism. The rational mind understands the Earth is finite, as is everything in the real and natural world and the idea of never ending, ever expanding consumption without conservation and renewal is the definition of unsustainability and insanity itself. It is the proverbial snake eating its tail that will eventually arrive at its own head.

Intelligent debate for positive change is shot down before it ever leaves the ground. The emperor’s clothes fit perfectly and if you question his nudity you are considered subversive and dangerous. We have become much too comfortable with ignorance and apathy. So when a man comes along and attempts to point these truths out in our bizzaro world, he is automatically considered a threat and summarily dismissed with some trite sound bites and misdirection. Perhaps instead of Pavlovian knee-jerk rejection, we might stop and listen for a minute. What do we have to lose?
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More From Other Sources:

http://us-presidents.insidegov.com/q/38/9699/What-were-President-Dwight-D-Eisenhower-s-accomplishments
http://americanhistory.about.com/od/troosevelt/p/ptroosevelt.htm
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/05/06/why-bernie-sanders-may-just-shake-up-the-2016-presidential-race/
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/06/my-prediction-bernie-sanders-will-win-the-white-house.html
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/bernie-sanders-a-man-with-a-cause?&mbid=social_facebook
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/make_the_rich_panic_20150503