I mean, preaching to the choir and all that shit, but I hope (hope) that all the burgers who were excited for Bernie in 2016 and 2020 also knew that Bernie was never some perfect or magical or revolutionary figure. He was our most left-leaning senator, for sure, and had a consistent voting record and general stances on things back to his youth.
In my mind I always thought basically “Bernie should be as far right as you can go politically and be accepted.”
The most upsetting or depressing or whatever thing about Bernie though has definitely been his stance towards Israel. In US politics it’s basically from the start accepted that foreign policy-wise every legislator and president is Hitler. No exaggeration either. Fully in favor of invasions and genocides. Maybe slightly more optics-friendly to those queasy libs, but in the end, a dead baby is a dead baby.
So I expected his Israel stance to be utter dogshit. However, at this specific time when Israel is actively doing a genocide, clearly, and has announced their intention to do so since… forever, and considering Bernie is probably not able to run for or serve another term (although maybe), like fuck it dude.
And I know he isn’t afraid of AIPAC. He’s the most popular politician in America. He will be reelected until he retires or dies. He’s taking this horrible stance purely on ideology. That’s the only reason. He actually thinks the existence of Israel is good or important or whatever and he ultimately doesn’t give a shit about Palestinians.
You can hear when he speaks about it though that he knows what he’s done so far is wrong. You can hear in his voice and how he speaks that he just wishes “Israel could please please be the good guys. Get Bibi out and be good!”
Bernie can’t fully grasp the reality that whatever he was told in his youth and young adulthood and his entire life about Israel was a lie. It was a lie to cover up for genocide and for a fascistic state that’s become totally engulfed in a bloodlust.
That he can’t reckon with this reality, when he is absolutely the most free politician to do so if he wished to, no one holds reelection over an 80 year old man who is also the most popular senator and would’ve easily been president. He could go out and give speeches to rival the president’s speeches if he wanted. He could go to rallies for Palestine and speak and shit on Joe Biden from the podium. Tell people to reject Zionism as a lie.
But he won’t do any of that. And I have to say, as someone who once respected Bernie quite a lot for his lifetime of consistently listening and ending up basically on the right side of things, my respect for him has dropped considerably.
He’s still the best senator… and that’s incredibly fucking depressing.
Yup feeling pretty smug that I was describing sanders ad “a step in the right direction” and nothing more
Although starting to see more and more that that’s basically just endorsing rhe status quo but at least I didn’t think he was the next socialist messiah.
While I’ve never listened to the podcast (outside of the hot couch guy episode), the Matt guy (is that his name?) seems to make the most sense, from the stuff people say from him on here.
This was less in my mind in 2016, but by 2020, I viewed Bernie as the last chance for anything good to happen politically in my lifetime. He was never perfect as you said, but god damn it would have been nice, wouldn’t it - imagine Bernie not sabotaging the 2018 talks between North and South Korea, not tearing up the Iran deal, assuring Russia that there were no plans to let Ukraine into NATO, not moving the US embassy in Israel and not spearheading the abraham accords and increasing the tensions in the levant in a way that may or may not have directly lead to operation al aqsa flood. Hell, he might have even followed through on Obama’s old promises of closing Gitmo and normalizing relations with Cuba.
I dunno. Maybe I’m delusional and he would have ended up doing exactly all the same shit Trump and Biden did.
I think it’s a relatively open question still how much one president can do. I think at this point few people doubt the CIA’s role in JFK getting offed. I’m not so convinced that the CIA/FBI fucked Nixon over, but there’s certainly a lot of fuckery around Watergate which can’t be ignored. And neither of those presidents were any actual threat to US intelligence agenices ie “deep state.” Maybe JFK was going to be an annoyance to them. Maybe they didn’t like Nixon feeling too big for his britches and having too much agency. But Nixon and Kennedy were both ardent anti- communists, no question. Kennedy didn’t give a shit about overthrowing Castro, of course he was ok with that it it came to be, he just didn’t want his pretty face all over it…
So anyway, point is, just two times, and I’m sure there are plenty more (Putin actually referred to being told yes and then the answer changing to no later after apparent discussion with CIA, etc. just the other day in the Tucker thing), that we can kinda analyze with some fog removed from the events, it seems like presidents have agency to do what they want until internal actors decide they don’t. Those CIA dudes with 30 year careers aren’t going to exactly like Bernie getting rid of Gitmo and moving towards normalizing Cuban relations. For all of their little petty fucked up reasons that is absolutely unacceptable.
I tend to avoid conspiracy theories, but sometimes in history there are just conspiracies, not theories, and I do honestly think the president holds limited power ultimately. You either go along to get along or hey who knows when some rogue ex-Soviet defector might pop your head.
I think Bernie would’ve been a real test of that though because he did genuinely have positions he developed over the years. If he did absolutely nothing about Gitmo and all the other things that would probably be some sort of evidence. If he got Dallasd after doing something… I guess we’d definitely know going forward 👀
Much as I’m loathe to admit it, Obama was right when he pulled back the curtain and talked about The Blob as being the immense American government apparatus that will always prevent actual change. I doubt Obama would have made big changes, but he did talk about how anything that went against the Blob, in this particular case I think he was talking about universal healthcare, would be shut down by all sides
I think you’re right in that Bernie would absolutely have been limited by the apparatus around him, no matter how much he tried to change it
I hope (hope) that all the burgers who were excited for Bernie in 2016 and 2020 also knew that Bernie was never some perfect or magical or revolutionary figure.
People on the CTH subreddit back then would get sooooo mad if you tried to tell them Bernie was just a socdem. So many people convinced he was the real deal and “hiding his power level” or whatever.
What’s so funny is if you accept this logic, then he’s always “hid” it but never actually taken the mask off, even for a moment, to use the weight of that grassroots movement behind him for anything meaningful. Under that assumption, if he’s a secret Marxist revolutionary, what fuckin good is it if he never uses that momentum, that knowledge and conviction for anything? He got ratfucked by the DNC establishment, TWICE, and both times immediately tucked his tail between his legs and talked up his “good friend” Genocide Joe. Well shit if he’s hiding his power level he’s sure playing the long long game with it! A long game he can’t afford and makes no sense at his age!
I pray this election cycle is so fucking silly that it knocks a lot of people out of faith in the Western electoral system
Bernie was a SocDem, my only hope for him was that he’d fight for healthcare for the poor and decrease the military budget a tiny bit. Of course, every other person in Washington would have fought him on that so who knows, but that was the most I thought might happen with him in office.
Yeah he was never going to succeed at most of what people were calling for, but the point was to have someone actually calling for it instead of the opposite…
I did donate to Sanders in 2020 when it looked like he had a fair shot at winning, but I always saw him as a comrpomise. The best I had to hope for is that his presidency would reveal to the average person exactly where the gears are stuck. We would have seen a coordinated media and money campaign to prevent him from doing anything. It would have been like shining a flashlight on cockroaches. And hopefully that could have led to a more involved mass politics that had a clearer sense of what to do. Maybe I was too optimistic.
I never expected anything out of Sanders the person.
Ireland continues to be based.
I mean, preaching to the choir and all that shit, but I hope (hope) that all the burgers who were excited for Bernie in 2016 and 2020 also knew that Bernie was never some perfect or magical or revolutionary figure. He was our most left-leaning senator, for sure, and had a consistent voting record and general stances on things back to his youth.
In my mind I always thought basically “Bernie should be as far right as you can go politically and be accepted.”
The most upsetting or depressing or whatever thing about Bernie though has definitely been his stance towards Israel. In US politics it’s basically from the start accepted that foreign policy-wise every legislator and president is Hitler. No exaggeration either. Fully in favor of invasions and genocides. Maybe slightly more optics-friendly to those queasy libs, but in the end, a dead baby is a dead baby.
So I expected his Israel stance to be utter dogshit. However, at this specific time when Israel is actively doing a genocide, clearly, and has announced their intention to do so since… forever, and considering Bernie is probably not able to run for or serve another term (although maybe), like fuck it dude.
And I know he isn’t afraid of AIPAC. He’s the most popular politician in America. He will be reelected until he retires or dies. He’s taking this horrible stance purely on ideology. That’s the only reason. He actually thinks the existence of Israel is good or important or whatever and he ultimately doesn’t give a shit about Palestinians.
You can hear when he speaks about it though that he knows what he’s done so far is wrong. You can hear in his voice and how he speaks that he just wishes “Israel could please please be the good guys. Get Bibi out and be good!”
Bernie can’t fully grasp the reality that whatever he was told in his youth and young adulthood and his entire life about Israel was a lie. It was a lie to cover up for genocide and for a fascistic state that’s become totally engulfed in a bloodlust.
That he can’t reckon with this reality, when he is absolutely the most free politician to do so if he wished to, no one holds reelection over an 80 year old man who is also the most popular senator and would’ve easily been president. He could go out and give speeches to rival the president’s speeches if he wanted. He could go to rallies for Palestine and speak and shit on Joe Biden from the podium. Tell people to reject Zionism as a lie.
But he won’t do any of that. And I have to say, as someone who once respected Bernie quite a lot for his lifetime of consistently listening and ending up basically on the right side of things, my respect for him has dropped considerably.
He’s still the best senator… and that’s incredibly fucking depressing.
In the words of our largest adult son:
“Bernie was the compromise”
A big wet boy
I choose to believe that Matt never had any medical issues and simply retired from podcasting because he couldn’t deal with the shit anymore
Yup feeling pretty smug that I was describing sanders ad “a step in the right direction” and nothing more
Although starting to see more and more that that’s basically just endorsing rhe status quo but at least I didn’t think he was the next socialist messiah.
While I’ve never listened to the podcast (outside of the hot couch guy episode), the Matt guy (is that his name?) seems to make the most sense, from the stuff people say from him on here.
He was the best part of the show for sure. The sort of ranter that only got more coherent as he got angrier
This was less in my mind in 2016, but by 2020, I viewed Bernie as the last chance for anything good to happen politically in my lifetime. He was never perfect as you said, but god damn it would have been nice, wouldn’t it - imagine Bernie not sabotaging the 2018 talks between North and South Korea, not tearing up the Iran deal, assuring Russia that there were no plans to let Ukraine into NATO, not moving the US embassy in Israel and not spearheading the abraham accords and increasing the tensions in the levant in a way that may or may not have directly lead to operation al aqsa flood. Hell, he might have even followed through on Obama’s old promises of closing Gitmo and normalizing relations with Cuba.
I dunno. Maybe I’m delusional and he would have ended up doing exactly all the same shit Trump and Biden did.
I think it’s a relatively open question still how much one president can do. I think at this point few people doubt the CIA’s role in JFK getting offed. I’m not so convinced that the CIA/FBI fucked Nixon over, but there’s certainly a lot of fuckery around Watergate which can’t be ignored. And neither of those presidents were any actual threat to US intelligence agenices ie “deep state.” Maybe JFK was going to be an annoyance to them. Maybe they didn’t like Nixon feeling too big for his britches and having too much agency. But Nixon and Kennedy were both ardent anti- communists, no question. Kennedy didn’t give a shit about overthrowing Castro, of course he was ok with that it it came to be, he just didn’t want his pretty face all over it…
So anyway, point is, just two times, and I’m sure there are plenty more (Putin actually referred to being told yes and then the answer changing to no later after apparent discussion with CIA, etc. just the other day in the Tucker thing), that we can kinda analyze with some fog removed from the events, it seems like presidents have agency to do what they want until internal actors decide they don’t. Those CIA dudes with 30 year careers aren’t going to exactly like Bernie getting rid of Gitmo and moving towards normalizing Cuban relations. For all of their little petty fucked up reasons that is absolutely unacceptable.
I tend to avoid conspiracy theories, but sometimes in history there are just conspiracies, not theories, and I do honestly think the president holds limited power ultimately. You either go along to get along or hey who knows when some rogue ex-Soviet defector might pop your head.
I think Bernie would’ve been a real test of that though because he did genuinely have positions he developed over the years. If he did absolutely nothing about Gitmo and all the other things that would probably be some sort of evidence. If he got Dallasd after doing something… I guess we’d definitely know going forward 👀
Much as I’m loathe to admit it, Obama was right when he pulled back the curtain and talked about The Blob as being the immense American government apparatus that will always prevent actual change. I doubt Obama would have made big changes, but he did talk about how anything that went against the Blob, in this particular case I think he was talking about universal healthcare, would be shut down by all sides
I think you’re right in that Bernie would absolutely have been limited by the apparatus around him, no matter how much he tried to change it
I volunteered for his campaign, I want my time and money back.
People on the CTH subreddit back then would get sooooo mad if you tried to tell them Bernie was just a socdem. So many people convinced he was the real deal and “hiding his power level” or whatever.
What’s so funny is if you accept this logic, then he’s always “hid” it but never actually taken the mask off, even for a moment, to use the weight of that grassroots movement behind him for anything meaningful. Under that assumption, if he’s a secret Marxist revolutionary, what fuckin good is it if he never uses that momentum, that knowledge and conviction for anything? He got ratfucked by the DNC establishment, TWICE, and both times immediately tucked his tail between his legs and talked up his “good friend” Genocide Joe. Well shit if he’s hiding his power level he’s sure playing the long long game with it! A long game he can’t afford and makes no sense at his age!
I pray this election cycle is so fucking silly that it knocks a lot of people out of faith in the Western electoral system
I mean, that’s just what he is. I hope those people have become more educated since then on socialism/marxism/etc.
I’d like to think we have, eh?
Bernie was a SocDem, my only hope for him was that he’d fight for healthcare for the poor and decrease the military budget a tiny bit. Of course, every other person in Washington would have fought him on that so who knows, but that was the most I thought might happen with him in office.
Yeah he was never going to succeed at most of what people were calling for, but the point was to have someone actually calling for it instead of the opposite…
I did donate to Sanders in 2020 when it looked like he had a fair shot at winning, but I always saw him as a comrpomise. The best I had to hope for is that his presidency would reveal to the average person exactly where the gears are stuck. We would have seen a coordinated media and money campaign to prevent him from doing anything. It would have been like shining a flashlight on cockroaches. And hopefully that could have led to a more involved mass politics that had a clearer sense of what to do. Maybe I was too optimistic.
I never expected anything out of Sanders the person.