It amuses me that the oligarchs can be so blind. It is sad that the beneficiaries of their support seem so clueless. It thrills me that we may yet preserve our "sacred" democracy and that millions of people here and around the world are following our politics more closely than ever. The messages that Bernie Sanders has been conveying have remained virtually the same for decades and that seemed utterly ridiculous when he first started saying them, because everyone knew that rich white males had the entire political system tied up neatly in their bags of tricks. The backroom deals, the lies foisted upon the American people and the rest of the world were so gaudy and brash that our politics was closer to what you might see at Disneyland or a carnival, rather than having anything to do with truth, justice or any of the things that made our country great.
We have a long history of crushing the individual in favor of the masses and the uberwealthy have known that for decades. Many allowed themselves to be mass marketed and sold a bill of goods. That is not new. Many more allowed themselves to be just ignorant enough about the political realm to not understand what was really going on, but Bernie Sanders has been standing for what is right, true and good for so long that there is no question that he is on the side of our nation and our way of life in ways that most other candidates either do not or won't understand. Bernie has seen the dark side of the current system and is not afraid to work to fix many of the most terrible problems that we face.
I live in Wisconsin. Our largest city has the dubious title of Most Segregated City in America. There are parts of Milwaukee that have been allowed to run down for over fifty years, places the police just don't go and places where no nutritious food is available for miles. Redlining, the process whereby white realtors and bankers colluded to refuse to show blacks any homes in white neighborhoods. If black families wanted to buy property in a neighborhood beyond "their limits", the house would mysteriously have an offer on it and the potential buyers could be told that the buyer was very interested and might easily get in a bidding war if they decided to put an offer on the house. Steering blacks away from the white neighborhoods was sold to other whites as a way to "protect property values", but we have seen what they have done instead.
This is what allowed a friend of mine to buy a house in one of the black neighborhoods in Milwaukee for six thousand dollars. (less than my very old used car cost.) That same home, sitting anywhere in the "white" part of the city would have been "worth" twenty times more. We frequently forget that our desires and decisions have impacts. One of those has been the "loss" of over 50% of black males into the "justice system" The last time I checked the numbers, it was 53% of the adult black male community in Milwaukee was either on paper, doing time or awaiting trial. This is not because of any particular lawlessness, but because of unequal treatment by the justice system. Bernie wants to fix that. Rich white men do not want to fix the justice system because it lets corporate thieves walk and generates millions of dollars of income for other rich white men. One of the fastest growing industries has become the private prison system. Without wasting a dime on education, healthcare or counseling, private prisons are more akin to libraries full of people, except they don't even care for their people as much as librarians care for books.
The issue of justice system reform has been around for a long, long time and Bernie has been talking about how we need to change it for decades. He has been working as a Senator to get congress to make better decisions, but frankly he has been outnumbered by the wealthy whites who either don't care, or don't think it is a problem. The majority of both Democrats and Republicans are beginning to see the light. Many of my Republican friends are saying that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate that is making any sense.
We have a long history of crushing the individual in favor of the masses and the uberwealthy have known that for decades. Many allowed themselves to be mass marketed and sold a bill of goods. That is not new. Many more allowed themselves to be just ignorant enough about the political realm to not understand what was really going on, but Bernie Sanders has been standing for what is right, true and good for so long that there is no question that he is on the side of our nation and our way of life in ways that most other candidates either do not or won't understand. Bernie has seen the dark side of the current system and is not afraid to work to fix many of the most terrible problems that we face.
I live in Wisconsin. Our largest city has the dubious title of Most Segregated City in America. There are parts of Milwaukee that have been allowed to run down for over fifty years, places the police just don't go and places where no nutritious food is available for miles. Redlining, the process whereby white realtors and bankers colluded to refuse to show blacks any homes in white neighborhoods. If black families wanted to buy property in a neighborhood beyond "their limits", the house would mysteriously have an offer on it and the potential buyers could be told that the buyer was very interested and might easily get in a bidding war if they decided to put an offer on the house. Steering blacks away from the white neighborhoods was sold to other whites as a way to "protect property values", but we have seen what they have done instead.
This is what allowed a friend of mine to buy a house in one of the black neighborhoods in Milwaukee for six thousand dollars. (less than my very old used car cost.) That same home, sitting anywhere in the "white" part of the city would have been "worth" twenty times more. We frequently forget that our desires and decisions have impacts. One of those has been the "loss" of over 50% of black males into the "justice system" The last time I checked the numbers, it was 53% of the adult black male community in Milwaukee was either on paper, doing time or awaiting trial. This is not because of any particular lawlessness, but because of unequal treatment by the justice system. Bernie wants to fix that. Rich white men do not want to fix the justice system because it lets corporate thieves walk and generates millions of dollars of income for other rich white men. One of the fastest growing industries has become the private prison system. Without wasting a dime on education, healthcare or counseling, private prisons are more akin to libraries full of people, except they don't even care for their people as much as librarians care for books.
The issue of justice system reform has been around for a long, long time and Bernie has been talking about how we need to change it for decades. He has been working as a Senator to get congress to make better decisions, but frankly he has been outnumbered by the wealthy whites who either don't care, or don't think it is a problem. The majority of both Democrats and Republicans are beginning to see the light. Many of my Republican friends are saying that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate that is making any sense.
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