Another not-so-silent Spring

Students have been idealists since ancient times, in every country, under every form of government.  Professors merely point out ethics, morals, and humanitarian values as well as ways to apply technologies, marketing, and labor to create wealth.  That balance results in sparse lessons in how to apply greed, deception,  collusion, and aggressive world dominance for “success” in the “real world.”

The student movement is much more genteel than when I graduated in 1970, the not-so-silent spring condemning the Vietnam war and Nixon.  Weathermen, SDS, fires, riots, broken windows…  Bernie’s fans seem to have discovered the way change is intended in this country. If they bring out all the young voters to the polls, it  will scare the bejeesus out of the powers-that-be as much as the women and non-whites did in prior years.

As we discover with superdelegates, even a 20% majority win can be rigged at the first primary. 

"We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances, and, in cases where the voters' mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice," Jim Hunt, who headed the commission that considered reforming the party's rules, said at the time, according to Kamarck's book. "We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party."

Note “where the voters' mandate is less than clear”. Like 60/40 is not a mandate…

Bernie and The Donald both have unbelievable baggage… One a socialist Jew and the other a crude reality TV star with a history of bankruptcies.  But note that both have two huge common threads: They renounce the influence of big banks and they both want nothing to do with  superPACs. The Koch brothers musty be going batsy. Maybe they’ll flutter Joni Ernst up to the killing floor…

Trump presents himself as a fascist. Will he work with Congress? Will he listen to the Supreme Court. Who would he appoint if there were a vacancy?  Will he even bother to have a cabinet?  The programs that Trump presents  are expensive and bizarre. Once you get Mexico to build an impenetrable wall, will we arm patrol boats and setup underwater nets, as well do the fence across Canada and getting Trudeau to pay for it?  Once we trash the ACA, will we force those signed up to revert to emergency rooms as write-offs for the hospitals?  Once we tattoo all American Muslims with a crescent on the forehead as well as filter incoming refugees to eat some pork chops and renounce Allah, then what?  Once we carpet bomb the MiddleEast with nukes, what is the follow up?  While the Trumpism “great” seems to map to world military dominance, we already have major military presence in 80 countries and have engendered resentment in virtually every one of those countries. 

The programs that Bernie presents address the health, education, and earning power of citizens, plus a lot a jobs in infrastructure improvements, all funded by a reduced military budget and higher taxes. Then what? OMG!!!

And in the end, I find it unbelievable that either will make it whole way to the White House.  But they sure have laid some planks, and made us all deeply  breath in the stench of SuperPACs,  Bush/Clinton dynasties, and Wall Street/PharmaBro arrogance.  

Regrettably, memories of odors are difficult to persist.