History teaches time and time again that an overly-idealistic crusader for Cause ends up being the trigger for its demise. In Bernie’s case: Cause was a more progressive America. Overturning Roe is just the second domino. There will be more. The first was Trump winning the presidency in 2016 – that’s the prime mover that Bernie pushed to start the progressive collapse of liberal democracy in America.
Stop with the protests. It’s too late.
It was too late 6 years ago.
It started with Jesus camps and the GOP’s embrace of evangelicalism to solidify its southern voter base. It extended to over a decade of the GOP placing radically conservative – and very young – judges on federal benches. And it ended with Bernie Sanders. Tracing the story… finding that point where all the dominoes were aligned and they just needed to be pushed… Bernie Sanders and his Tea Party-like progressive posse pushed the first domino.
Blame can go all around – in large part to the mountains of lazy Americans who don’t vote and then protest in the streets about the results. But standing back and taking a good long look at the arc of the entire story… really looking for the tipping point… Bernie Sanders had the power to prevent losing Roe. One could argue he was the only person who had that power, but he was too self-absorbed after not winning the nomination in 2016 to see the damage he and his supporters would end up doing to America.
Angry about Roe v Wade being overturned by SCOTUS? Blame Bernie Sanders: he’s the person who made it all possible.
History teaches time and time again that an overly-idealistic crusader for Cause ends up being the trigger for its demise. In Bernie’s case: Cause was a more progressive America. Overturning Roe is just the second domino. There will be more. The first was Trump winning the presidency in 2016 – that’s the prime mover that Bernie pushed to start the progressive collapse of liberal democracy in America.
Bernie’s stubbornness in 2016 handed Americans an ultra-conservative court. The inflexibility of Bernie and his supports overruled their ability to reason and understand basic long-term consequences contrary to their cause: if Trump won, given the status and ages of the justices at that time, Trump would seat at least two new justices and Roe would be overturned. Trump got three. Well done, Mr Sanders and your navel-gazing supporters, you killed your cause. I’m a stubborn guy, more than most, but at least my pig-headedness didn’t kick off the destruction of American democracy.
Short-sightedness is a defining characteristic of extreme political views. And apparently, it only takes one loud old man with a NY accent to turn them into self-destructive political movements.
2016. What an odd time. There he was, Bernie Sanders: “the inspirational”, not-even-a-democrat candidate who made millennials feel warm and fuzzy. Stuck with candidate Bernie, the Democratic Party discovered its own version of the Tea Party… reminding the good readers that it was the TP that began throwing the Republican Party off the rails. Extremism, absolutism, fringe… those things are ALWAYS bad in government, even if it’s for a good cause. Especially in large, diverse societies. The only result of extreme candidates winning elections – and the 2022 republican primaries are proving this – is an ever-more extreme set of candidates in the next cycle. By 2024 who knows?! Maybe the republican primaries will be gaveling in live witch trials on the rally stage so they can to prove they’re even more non-establishment than the previous guy. Extreme begets more extreme…. well… and then eventually rather dreadful wars that, once “won”, hit the social norms reset button so we get to make the same mistakes all over again!
Remembering back to 2016, I did, in fact, break a television while watching an interview with a Bernie-or-Bust supporter (and yes: white, college, and wearing a brand-name t-shirt). He went on and on (and on) about how he had to “feel inspired” – as it if the deserved such attention and importance while the rest of us just try to pay our bills.
“Hillary just didn’t inspire me… so I didn’t vote.”
That was the point when the bowl was hurled at aforementioned television.
Oh, and then there’s the 12% of Bernie supporters who voted for Trump. I don’t own enough electronic items at which to throw heavy objects to even begin to process that information.
Yes. Bernie Sanders is why Roe is being overturned. It was his responsibility to educate and direct his supporters, and he failed. Blame Bernie Sanders for red states now passing laws that will put women and doctors in prison for murder. If you’re scared of what they’ll do next, you have every right to be – because there’s not a darn thing you can do about it. Do you really think Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, or Coney Barrett give a hoot about your protests? The latter three were basically born for and trained their entire lives for this moment. It is their Purpose. Protesting won’t stop their turning back the clocks. And you cannot touch them. You were asleep at the voting booth when it mattered most.
We’ve known for decades that the republican plan was to pack courts with conservative judges, and for decades red states have been passing trigger laws in parallel; waiting for this moment when they had a “Christian” religious majority on The Court. None of this should be a surprise. So to all those protesting now: WTF people? Where were you back then? Where were you in 2016 when it was every non-MAGA person’s moral responsibility to get your Bernie-loving friends to get over themselves, put “country first” and vote for Hillary Clinton because – OF COURSE THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN IF TRUMP WON!
It is, in fact, too late. Judges die on the bench; especially those with an agenda. The GOP understands this and worked toward it for decades while democrats were too busy catering to novel ideas, celebrity, and being wholly ignorant of the fact that by deliberately creating hyper-partisanship in elected offices – which BOTH sides do – it deems those two branches totally dysfunctional and impotent… and so the third branch of government becomes the most powerful, and therefore determines the direction of the country.
Senator Sanders is a smart man, but he was also a very bitter one. On paper and on camera, yes, Bernie tried: he endorsed Hillary and told his supporters to vote for her. But he did so as a defeated man, not an advocate. He did so in a way similar to how Dr. Oz is trying to pretend he’s MAGA: it wasn’t genuine and voters saw through it. Moreover, Bernie Sanders most certainly failed to relay to his “I need to feel special” supporters the importance of the long game. It was always about control of the courts. Always. The White House. Congress. Those are a child’s game of checkers. SCOTUS is the end game, and republicans have won. One shudders at which domino our evangelical Supreme Court will topple next.
And so, Bernie Sanders, I hope that you’re receiving many gift baskets from the “pro-life” supporters who are keenly aware that had Trump not won… the United States would not only still have Roe… but we’d have 3 more center or center left judges. We’d have a liberal majority on the Court had it not been for Bernie Sanders. Fancy that. Once again the crusader destroys his own cause.
Oh well…. at least Senator Sanders got a couple new houses from the book deals and speaking gigs. I’m sure he sleeps quite comfortably at night, while his Trump-voting (and non-voting) supporters live in continued denial of the destruction their selfish idiocy has caused… holding true to republican Trump voters, actually: blame everyone but themselves.
