The moment I realized Bernie Sanders was running for president, my decision was made.
My first election was 1980 and Ronald Reagan was elected, ruining much of our lives, whether you realize it or not, or accept this or not. If you don’t think Reagan fucked this life up, you’re probably rich, or at least have never been laid off from a job.
12 years of Reagan and George Bush I laid siege to what America had been up to the 1970’s — a great nation with potential.
Back then, you could go to college and get a decent job and keep it and maybe even climb the “Ladder”.
Now, it became evident by the 1990’s that when a republican is in the White House, I and millions of others are out of work. When Democrats are in office, I have work. I got a good job in 1994 and it ended in 2002, right after the selection and arbitrary installation of Monkeyboy Bush.
The lesson here is that I would have likely been retired from that job at this point had I not been laid off due to government chicanery. I can keep a job. The problem is jobs can’t stay put.
Bush and the Cheney Administration, in conjunction with asshole republicans here in Georgia ended the county mental health system and allowed all manner of fly-by-night, unqualified and virtually criminal elements to run Medicaid-based mental health businesses.
Since Bush was installed, I have had no fewer than 9 jobs — I lose count, actually. 4 of them were so criminal and unethical I quit. I cannot jeopardize my license.
Currently I have a very part-time gig with a psychiatrist 85 miles away from my driveway — one way. To earn this money I have to drive 170 miles round trip.
I now have a landscaping gig as well. $15 hour, what SHOULD BE the national minimum wage. If this start up can pay me this, other businesses can and they can shut the fuck up about it. We joke at this job about how I went to college and graduate school to avoid this sort of work.
Again, MILLIONS of people are in this same boat. I had a kossack tell me in the last year or so about his or her dauchter getting some killer Video degree from a big universtity in Chicago, having a dream job for awhile and then getting laid off and after some time of not finding real work, ended up working at Hooters. How demeaning.
THIS is the economy of the 99%.
This is why we have Democracy Spring protests. People are SICK of this shit.
“This is what a movement looks like,” said Robert Weissman, Public Citizen president and an organizer of the Democracy Awakening rallies and culminating mass arrest, before the march began. “This is different than a traditional left-right movement… We are creating something new here.”
“It is beautiful to see all these groups getting together and realizing that getting money out of politics is issue number one,” said Ben Cohen, of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream fame, who brought a Vermont delegation. “We are finally uniting the money-out- of-politics movement with the voters-in movement. It is a realization that if we all work together, we will win. There’s a hell of lot more of us than there are of them.”
It was a spectacle not seen often in Washington, where thousands of people in tee-shirts touting a gamut of local and national civil rights groups, labor unions, environmental groups, immigrant rights groups and clergy assembled and carried banners and signs demanding equality, fairness and justice.
The ‘system’ essentially tells them to fuck off: it knows what is best for you and them. Go home. Shut up.
Bernie is essentially the Anti-Reagan in my book.
Bernie is THE OPPORTUNITY to strike deep into the heart of this unacceptable mess and FORCE changes.
And this is what status quo, wealthy people just do not and most likely cannot get: they are just too insulated from the vagaries of this heinous and artificially-created situation
Bernie is THE OPPORTUNITY to turn it around, to wipe out policies that have created the VAST DISPARITY in income and wealth, which IS the ‘status quo’.
NOTHING that has come out of this butt-ugly primary process means a goddamned thing, really. Politicans are slick liars and deceivers. They point fingers at each other and make all sorts of useless hot-air-infused claims: so and so did thus and so once upon a time.
And many small-minded people can be seen taking one minute thing as an “AHA!” moment to change from one candidate or another. How fucking lame is that?
Did Bernie take money from Hillary? OMG!!1! I don’t fucking care.
Bernie drinks milk out of the carton” OMG!!!1! I don’t fucking care.
The Primary is Bullshit. None of it means a thing to me.
The Big Picture has not been altered — at all — by the meaningless excrement of the primary process: we have a candidate for the status quo and we have Bernie, a candidate for the actual masses.
I, personally, need Bernie to be president. I need this country to be fundamentally changed for the better. No other candidate running offer a remote shred of this sort of hope.
I and millions of others want to work and earn our money and live decent lives. The opposition tells us we want shit for free and don’t want to work: the opposition is an inch from calling us moochers.
Again, if you’re already well-heeled, rich, comfortable, you may not like this message, you probably won’t even understand it.
Don’t tell me or us what to do, who to vote for, or which end is up: Because you are fundamentally out of touch with this reality. I live it, you probably don’t.
Here’s hoping Bernie takes New York and we can level that stupid, rigged delegate crap and get a once-in-a-lifetime president who will actually help the 99%.