Dear Bernie Supporters

Dear Bernie Supporters,

Bernie Sanders is gearing up to announce his intent to run for president in 2020. I’m not surprised, and I understand your enthusiasm. I’ve had it myself for certain candidates over the course of the forty-four years I’ve voted. He is qualified for the position and he certainly has made a positive impression on many voters, which is true of most of the Democratic candidates stepping forward. But I would like to offer a word of caution for your unbridled enthusiasm.

This is not a zero-sum game. We find ourselves in an unprecedented national crisis and our democracy and standing in the world are at risk and have already been damaged, maybe irreparably. Our most important goal is to be united against the evil represented by Donald Trump and the GOP that has put party and power before country for the last fifty years. Only a united Democratic front can fight that kind of ultimate corruption.

This is not 2016. It is not 2008. It’s not 2000 or 2004. It is not even 1972. Our country is caving to authoritarian rule, our democratic processes have been corrupted and dismantled by greed, criminal activity, stupidity, foreign influence, and systemic white supremacy, which  has regained currency and credibility in the mainstream. 

This is not the time to believe that there is only one candidate who represents the singularly correct view of what America can be. It is not the time to support only issues that directly benefit the individual like legalized marijuana or free higher education.

It is time to understand that progress is what the Democratic Party is known for. It is time to take the concept of the greater good out of the closet and dust it off. It is time to understand how the system of government works, and that even if a candidate believes he or she can change an issue or usher in progress, it takes three branches of government and the support of the American people to make it happen. And even then, not everyone is happy. It is time to renew our belief in compromise and negotiation – we can all take a page from Nancy Pelosi’s playbook. The GOP stopped the government from working since 2008 because they believe the country is only for white Americans, particularly those who are male and those who are wealthy. We have to speak out, through our votes, and let them know that is unacceptable.

We did it in 2018. We elected the most diverse Congress in the history of our country. But we cannot stop there, because even the most diverse Congress still is not representative of the demographics of all Americans. The 2020 election may well be the most important election in our lifetimes.

That means our unity is very, very important. Trump won partially because our party was divided. And you have to know that many Bernie supporters were victims of Russian-generated messages pushed into their social media newsfeeds just as Trump supporters were victims. The messages were misogynist and bashed Hillary as a candidate. Why? Because Putin did not want her to be president. She was the most qualified presidential candidate in the history of our country – more qualified than Bill and Barrack! More qualified than the candidates stepping forward for 2020 – including Joe Biden, should he decide to run. She understood the threat Russia poses in world stability and she was respected across the world by our allies and by many of our adversaries.

We still probably would have been okay in 2016, and Hillary would have been elected, since she had 2.8 million more popular votes than Trump, but the work of the GOP in creating voter suppression sealed the fate of the 2016 election. Gerrymandering and voter suppression laws made sure that the election was not fair.

Many Bernie supporters know this. They understand the process. It didn’t stop them from feeling passionate and working hard to get their candidate elected as the Democratic candidate in 2016. When he didn’t win the primary, they voted for the candidate most Democrats believed would best represent the platform, ideas and beliefs of the party of progress. They voted for Hillary.

Others, as mired in the lies spread by the Russian government and the extreme right as Trump supporters, either refused to vote or voted for third party candidates. Their choice to not vote or vote for candidates who had no chance of winning helped get us in this situation. If we had their votes, even voter suppression efforts would have failed.

There are going to be a lot of Democratic candidates coming forward. So far, many of them are very qualified to step into the White House and stop this crazy train on which America finds itself trapped. We have to be open to their messages. We have to make sure we don’t fall back on old paradigms of white and male supremacy. We have to make a pact that all campaigns will be about platforms and issues, and not devolve into negative and attack campaigns. We have to understand that most Democrats, even the more moderate ones, are seeking progress and equality for our country. The issue that often divides us is that white privilege is as alive and well in our party as it is in America in general and in the GOP specifically. We have to check our privilege and bias. Our diversity is our strength!

Bernie Sanders promised not to conduct a negative campaign in 2016, and I believed him. I’ve been a Bernie advocate since the early 1990s. I’ve watched his rise as an independent Senator who caucuses with the Democrats. He and I agree on many of the issues and we both sit pretty far left. We old, lifelong progressives are idealistic and believe in equality, and we fight hard for it. But something happened to Bernie in 2015 and 2016. He could taste the power, just as Trump could taste the power. Neither one originally expected to win. Bernie threw in his hat because he felt Democrats should have a choice. As the primary got closer to the finish, he did engage in negative campaigning, and I found it hurtful personally and to the unity of the Democratic party. Of course, Hillary did the same in 2008. And I felt both Bernie and Hillary were late in conceding defeat. Both threw their support to the winning candidate, as they should have. Most Hillary supporters moved their support to Barrack, but some Bernie supporters didn’t care that he supported Hillary. They were never-Hillary voters. We can’t do that again. It hurt us. It aided in dragging us fifty years backwards into our history, not helped to push us forward.

So when twenty-four or thirty candidates step forward to run in the primary, do your research, listen to them speak at rallies, listen to the debates, read their white papers on issues, make sure you only read articles from the real and unbiased media, pick your best candidate, and vote for him or her. That is your inalienable right as a citizen of this country. But if your candidate doesn’t win, do the right thing. You can still fight for progress. You can still look to reach your ideal. Vote for the candidate that will defeat the GOP. And that is true for Senate seats and Congressional seats and state legislature seats and governor seats and municipal seats. We can only progress when we agree that equality and unity are our mandates – every American has the inalienable right to experience America like white male Americans do now and every American should have access to a living wage job, fair and decent housing, safe neighborhoods, affordable healthcare, good and safe schools, and affordable higher education – and  the GOP has clearly shown they believe in neither equality nor unity; they believe in the power of the dollar and in the myth of supremacy. 

Everyone deserves a voice in America, even the individuals we don’t agree with. There is plenty of room and resources for all of us. Letting everyone have a voice sometimes means we don’t get what we think is best or we don’t like the way policy is implemented, but if we remember equality and unity at all times and use them to guide us, we might understand that the process and the path to progress may look different but we can still arrive at the same place in the end.

And here’s the other thing: we older progressives fought hard won battles for equality in school, in the home, in the workplace and out in society. We served as, in my case,  a union steward, a lobbyist for affordable childcare, and an advocate. Our hard work and ability to make change make it easy for a young woman today to say that feminism never did a thing for her. That young woman doesn’t know the history and doesn’t realize whose shoulders she stands on when she makes a statement like that. The statement doesn’t make me angry, it makes me believe we need to educate our young Americans so they know the full story of our history of equality in this country and across the world – the truth really does hurt, but we can learn from it and vow not to repeat it, as we are doing today when babies are snatched from their mothers’ arms and put in detention centers.   

I would have proudly cast my vote for Bernie Sanders in 2016 had he won the primary, and I will proudly cast my vote for him if he wins this time or for whoever else garners the most Democratic votes and support. I don’t have a favorite yet, and I am excited about the level of possible candidates stepping forward. I hope you feel the same way, because the candidates are qualified and the field is strong, and though we have our personal favorites, we have to remember what is at stake. Use your vote and your voice thoughtfully.

Sincerely,

A lifelong progressive and Democrat

PS These are just two of the letters I have written to newspaper editors in my adult life. I often use the written word as my instrument of advocacy. The second letter urging for a change in the city school district gifted program selection process prompted several anonymous phone calls that bordered on threatening. It wouldn't be the first or last time my message of equality was received negatively, but I won't give up, and I hope you won't, too. There are many ways to advocate for progress and there is no shortage of issues in our country that require hard work, enthusiasm, and passion to make them better.

Letter to the Editor, The Daily Orange, circa 1978

Letter to the Editor, Syracuse Post Standard, circa 1990

The Wall is Not a Thing

Most Americans don’t realize how many people actually work for the Federal Government.  The number is in the millions (2.7 million in 2014), and they represent a good portion of the middle class.  Right now, most of them are not being paid because of the government shutdown. They can’t pay their bills including mortgages, and are at risk of losing everything they’ve worked hard to buy.

Children whose parents rely on food stamps are also at risk.  So are farmers who rely on government loans to keep their farms viable. And what about the immigrant children who are being held in detention centers? The shutdown is catastrophic, not just for Democrats or liberals, but for millions of Americans, including a large number of Trump supporters. 

Two weeks ago, Trump held a meeting with Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer.  Trump announced he would be happy to carry the mantle of the shutdown. He would take full responsibility for it. Senator Schumer ducked his head and smirked. He knew well that Trump was caught on tape once again saying outrageous things.  Of course, Trump changed his tune early into the shutdown. He now calls it Pelosi’s shutdown or the Democratic shutdown. He has always used bait and switch as one of his strategies for getting what he wants (or what the powerbrokers like Putin, who are driving his policy stances, want). I think even his most loyal base is tiring of the game. It is hitting them squarely in their pocketbooks.  Many GOP Senators, who are up for election in 2020, are starting to back away from Trump and his rhetoric. It’s already been proven that they are at risk of being voted out, in spite of gerrymandered districts and voter suppression efforts. We all have to ask ourselves, do Trump and the GOP really have the best interests of America in mind when they cheat to win? I don’t think so. They have the interests of an elite group of Americans in mind, so they have to cheat to win.

I want to recommend a film and a short documentary series to my readers.

The first is the film Vice. It is a fictional account about the rise of Dick Cheney, from a drunken loser, to the most powerful vice president in the history of our country. I admit this film has a liberal slant, but, seriously, facts really are facts, despite what Kellyann Conway says, and if you look at what this man orchestrated in his career in Washington, along with other powerbrokers such as Don Rumsfeld, it will give you pause. During the GW Bush administration, 22 million emails were lost – it boggles the mind when one remembers how enraged GOP elected officials were over 32,000 emails belonging to Hillary Clinton that had already been vetted for security risks and mostly were personal emails about Chelsea’s pregnancy and other mundane topics. The Bush administration also conducted email exchanges on networks that did not record them for prosperity, because they didn’t want them recorded. Meetings were held in rooms where auto-record devices were not installed, and they were held without the president and without his knowledge.  Cheney abused his position again and again, and he started his power abuse back in the Nixon administration. Although there were dozens of investigations into the Bush administration, one can only wonder why there weren’t more investigations launched into the inner workings of this administration that lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and also made the stockholders of Halliburton wealthy beyond their dreams. Corruption in our government is not new, but we may discover it is at levels in the Trump administration that even the most power-hungry official could not envision.

But the path to this level of corruption was laid out a long time ago, across the world. It seems mankind can’t help but feel drawn to power and the abuse of it.

I say this as an introduction to my next recommendation, a documentary series on the Smithsonian TV channel titled Apocalypse: The Second World War. Ronald and I binge-watched this six part series last night. It is a must-see for anyone sixteen and older. The documentary used over 600 hours of declassified government film and film from private citizens taken during the war, and it was devastating to watch. This war was responsible for more deaths of soldiers and civilians than any other war in the history of mankind, and the number is in the tens of millions, maybe as high as 80 million. Historians estimate it wiped out 3% of the world population. 

Jews were left to starve in concentration camps or they were gassed en masse in gas chambers. Before the “final solution” was implemented, Jews were forced to dig their own graves and were shot while standing in them (and this horrific genocide was captured on film) – this method of genocide, later considered inefficient, was known as the Bullet Holocaust. There were millions of others who did not fit into the “master race” Nazis defined, and they were put to death, too. They included gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents, and resistors.

Photo: Lt. Arnold E. Samuelson/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

But the Germans weren’t the only ones who acted with depravity and without regard for human life. The Russians let 600,000 prisoners of war starve to death, rather than use food needed for troops. The Japanese were guilty of crimes against humanity for their treatment of prisoners of war and for civilians, particularly in China and the Philippines. Italy conscripted its army and forced young men to fight for a mad dictator. America interned Japanese Americans, many of whom had been US citizens for generations.

This war clearly demonstrated unchecked power is capable of the most depraved, horrific, and inhuman actions by mankind. After the war, trials were held, but many war criminals were given immunity and were allowed to start over. Many resettled in America. The United Nations and NATO were put in place to try to prevent another such war from ever happening.

But we are living in a time now where certain personalities are rising to power and they are at risk of abusing that power. Trump is one of them. He has often used the rhetoric used by Hitler and other demagogues and he has used hatred and fear to get his way.

He is saying he may invoke his power to call a national emergency and build the wall between the US and Mexico. It is a clear abuse of power. He has dehumanized people seeking asylum in the US by describing them as criminals, animals, vermin, and as individuals who would change America as we know it – not very different from the rhetoric Hitler used against the Jews. Horrific acts were committed based on that rhetoric and we should be alert to this fact and try not to repeat the past.

At least five attempts were made to assassinate Hitler as Germans in high positions realized the absolute decimation of humanity the implementation of such rhetoric caused. Such failed attempts only caused Hitler to believe more strongly that God had placed him in power and was protecting him.

When people are experiencing hard times and they feel helpless to change their circumstances, someone like Trump or Hitler can come along and take advantage of that fear.  They needle away at racial and ethnic biases and give desperate people someone to take out their frustration and hatred upon. 

We’ve seen this at Trump rallies and in videos shared on social media. People feel more emboldened to act out against “the enemy” because Trump told them they could. Slowly, more and more inhumane acts become acceptable, including children being snatched away from their parents and imprisoned in camps or people of color being policed by white citizens because the white citizens believe people of color have no right to be in public spaces.

We have to stop this. We can’t continue on this path of hatred and genocide. Two children dying at the hands of authority are two children too many. Their deaths are imprinted on our souls.  If Trump has his way, we will be the ones burdened by our own hand in this atrocity. 

The wall is not a thing. Roger Stone made it up as a sound bite to rile the base, and it worked. No one ever expected Mexico to pay for the wall, or even to use taxpayers’ money to build it. In fact, it appears Trump is the only one left thinking the wall must be built. The number of illegal immigrants crossing the borders has decreased steadily since 2010. The only people coming now are seeking asylum from danger and violence in their own countries. We ought to open our arms to them, not build a wall.

Not only this, but Trump has also tried to denigrate the United Nations and NATO. He may very well destroy the pacts between countries that have so far kept us from another war like World War II.

We need to understand that power is corrupting to certain personalities.  Trump is one such person.  If we don’t understand and acknowledge the past and stand against such corruption now, early in the process, we may not be able to stop it in the future. 

The wall is not a thing.