I live in Iowa. I was at the caucus. My local precinct contained all of 56 people and we argued over who would win our one delegate for almost an hour before it finally fell to Bernie by one person. Emotions ran high on both sides and the debate was fierce, but it was clear at some point that there would be no swaying the Hillary camp and there would be no swaying the Bernie camp. It would come down to the three O’Malley supporters and the one undecided to make or break it for one candidate.
I am as happy as the rest of Iowa that the caucus is over. The spotlight was burning just a little too hot this year, but for a very good reason. Democracy is in full swing. Full disclosure, I was a precinct captain for Bernie Sanders. I was asked early in the campaign to help corral the masses in his corner. This was a huge leap of faith for me because I am, by nature, a complete introvert bordering on recluse. It requires a huge amount of energy for me to walk up to people, introduce myself and engage them in conversation, especially political conversation. On top of that, some of the houses that I walked up too had clearly written notices, “This House Protected by Smith and Wesson” so not only was I outside my comfort zone, but there was a chance that I could have been shot as well, so strong is my support of Bernie. Hillary is more than capable. Of this I have no doubt. She is vetted, she has survived being First Lady married to Bill, she has been a U.S. Senator, she was Secretary of State. She has, time and again, proven her worth and would do a fantastic job of running the country in relatively the same way it has been run for the last eight years.
But there is the rub. I know that Hillary knows how to play by the current rules. She knows the ins and outs of campaign finance, the rules of engagement when it comes to dealing with Republicans. She knows how to walk the Wall street walk and talk the lobbyist talk in order to get the financial support that comes in handy to someone running a campaign, but it is at that point that the average Bernie supporter starts to build up a head of steam and launch overboard.
We, the average people, have watched for the last eight years as deals have been made - some good, some bad, but all of them mostly excluding us entirely. We have watched as the Affordable Care Act became mostly affordable to the large insurance companies that continue to demand high premiums while simultaneously demanding large deductibles. We have watched while the upper 1% has continued to amass huge sums of money, while we scrape the change off the floors of our cars to give to the local homeless guy - a veteran missing both his legs that panhandles on the corner every day of the week. Enough is enough.
So along comes an angry, Jewish, Democratic Socialist in the twilight of his career that says simply and straightforwardly, “The system is rigged and this is how”. There is not one point that he makes that doesn’t ring true in our average person heart. We are tired of working more than one job and still not being able to make ends meet, we are tired of funding wars that only lead to more terrorism, we are tired of not getting the healthcare we need, we are tired of watching corporations buy politicians and establish whatever loopholes are necessary to line their pockets nicely while simultaneously bleeding us dry. We are tired of watching the environment get raped while we wonder why it is that people in Flint are being quietly poisoned with water that flows through their pipes.
In short, we are tired.
When something isn’t working you have three options: You can do nothing and continue on being tired and frustrated, you can backtrack and become fearful and hate-filled (take heed, for beyond this point there be Republicans), or you can move forward and change the system. Bernie Sanders is option number three.
There is power in progress. There is power in seeking out solutions to problems and tackling them even when the odds are stacked against you. There is mastery in reaching for the stars. It is what starry-eyed people from the 1960s see when they think about what JFK said about going to the moon.
“ This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward…” JFK September 12th, 1962.
Even Rome in the 1300s understood forward. They built a cathedral in Florence for which they had no idea how to design or build the dome. For a hundred years it stood with the certainty that it would be built and finally in 1436, a man by the the name of Filippo Brunelleschi engineered and built the dome on what would become the most renowned cathedral in Florence, Italy. Now that is some serious faith.
There are any number of people that will say, “It isn’t possible!” “It will NEVER, EVER happen!”. Maybe that is true, but that very thought would have kept the U.S. on the ground in the 1960s, we would have never gone to the moon. That thought would have torn down the sides of the cathedral decades before the engineer that would eventually build it would even be born.
It is so easy to give up. It is, after all, what they want us to do….stay poor, stay dumb, stay sick, stay anesthetized by the latest reality T.V. spectacle while they quietly take away our liberties, our healthcare, our young men to wars to defend their oil interests in the Middle East.
I say rise up. Enough is enough.
So, Dear Hillary supporter, you have before you a populace that is very much awake and aware. Most of us are, for the first times in our lives, really politically involved and energized. We are not upset with you and your choice of candidate, but we sincerely hope that you can come to understand, if not respect, the anger that many of us are feeling at being duped for so long by the “system” of which Hillary is still very much a part. “Forward” sometimes requires a push….that is what Bernie (and his supporters) are doing. Sometimes we are loud and obnoxious, sometimes we post too many Bernie related things to our Facebook pages, sometimes we feel it necessary to point out the differences between the two democratic candidates in such a way that we appear to be attacking Hillary (and there are differences), but it comes down simply to what Martin Luther King Jr so eloquently expressed: “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” and we are those dedicated individuals.
