The “senior digital organizer” of Bernie Sanders for President volunteers Aidan King, has this to say:
“I was so excited about Obama. And I still think he’s done amazing things. But I wanted more follow-through,” says King, listing “drone strikes, kill lists, NSA spying on Americans, the expansion of Bush-administration policies, a failed drug war, failed foreign policy,” and the increasing influence of money in politics as his main concerns. “I put a lot of stake in authenticity,” he says. “And I’ve been exposed to Bernie’s politics and his honesty since I was in diapers.”
Was this last week? Was Senator Vitter there?
Because here’s Senator Sanders announcing yet again this week, as he’s done before, that as president he would murder people with drones. (Yes, he only favors the good drone murders, not the bad ones, exactly what Obama says too.)
There’s actually no knock on Sanders’ honesty here. There’s no indication of inconsistency, no reason to imagine he’s lying. He may be 100% USDOD-grade authentic. But what about his staff and volunteers? And what about journalists? Is it responsible journalism to publish an article on people working for Bernie in order to end drone murders and not include any mention of the fact that Sanders is in favor of them? Is it responsible, for that matter, to be reporting on candidates’ volunteers prior to and instead of ever reporting on what those candidates would do if elected? The Nation does lots of great reporting, but its interview of Sanders pretended 96% of humanity and 54% of the federal budget didn’t exist, and the magazine has never made up for that by reporting on Sanders’ foreign policy. So all a Nation reader gets is the golly gee report on the dude just out of diapers who is putting in long hours to end drone strikes by electing Bernie.
“I was so excited about Obama.” There’s an opening remark that reveals a similar level of misguided ignorance in the past. “And I still think he’s done amazing things.” One has a heck of a time imagining what those are and how they outweigh what comes next. “But I wanted more follow-through.” More follow through? On what? He then lists drone strikes, kill lists, NSA spying on Americans, the expansion of Bush-administration policies, a failed drug war, failed foreign policy, and the increasing influence of money in politics.” He surely doesn’t want more follow through on any of these crimes and abuses and outrages. He wants them halted.
And so do I. So why should I give the poor guy a hard time? Millions and millions of people aren’t doing a damn thing for the world. They’re sitting on their butts watching TV while Rome burns. Several political candidates openly want to radically enlarge the military (yet again) and launch any number of wars. Why pick on Bernie?
I’m not picking on anyone. I’m well aware of such obvious facts and numerous others. I think such facts are good things to know, no matter what you decide to do about them. I’d just add a few more. You want to spend the next many months calling people on the phone and telling them Bernie is against drone murders, knock yourself out. I just think you should do it with open eyes. You shouldn’t actually believe what you’re saying.
I’m also of course, as we all are, painfully familiar with the argument that Bernie simply must secretly agree with the progressive views of his volunteers, but that in order to get elected he has to put on a pretense of sucking a good bit, whether it’s to please the public or the media or the military industrial complex depending on the variation. We were told the exact same thing about Obama. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. You can’t pretend someone secretly agrees with you and then expect him to keep the promises you fantasized.
If you look at the facts and adopt for just the moment the crazy hypothesis that you’re more or less right about Bernie’s authenticity but wrong about his closet anti-militarism, you’ll find that he’s nowhere near as bad as Obama was, is, and shall continue to be for well over a year more. No mere human is going to out warmonger Hillary Clinton, though Jim Webb and a whole crowd of Republicans will try. You can make more or less the same argument you make to yourself to justify volunteering for Bernie, after facing the facts, as you made before.
So why do I care?
Because there are activists working night and day, strategically, courageously, with pure principles and endless dedication to actually end drone murders, and they need your help, and they need it now. They have built the awareness of these horrors that has led to volunteers wanting to end them. But volunteers volunteer in the wrong places. Instead of joining the peace movement and educating, organizing, lobbying, protesting, reporting, suing, artistically moving, and nonviolently resisting drone murders and the militarism that is risking war with Russia prior to the next corporate-bought election in the U.S. — instead of following the path that has tended to effect change over recent centuries and needs to do so in Paris next month if the climate is to have any hope, they instead dedicate themselves to one candidate or another, start making apologies for them, start living out fantasies about them, and start arguing with other peace activists who are working their fingers to the bone for some other candidate, or with activists who haven’t gone all election yet in a year that has no election in it.
If we ever have real elections we’ll need people to work on them, and there’s always a chance working on them now will help bring that about, and if you’d asked me months ago I’d have said the media would never let Sanders get this far. So, if you want to do the election thing, go ahead. Do it with Sanders who disagrees with you. Do it with Jill Stein who agrees with you. Do it with one of the others. But do it with a bit of honesty and with awareness that it’s not the only thing you could be doing.