Column
Notes From the Progressive Abyss
I believed that Bernie’s movement was the real deal. I should have known better.
I’m too old to be this naive. Donald Trump has been president for over three years now. There’s a virus rampaging across the globe and my countrymen are stupid enough to think it’s all a prank. Trump’s solution to the crisis is to hold hands with billionaire shale tyrants. And my phone still thinks that an emoji sticker counts as a new text message. Everything is decidedly fucked, so I dunno why I had any hope of it becoming unfucked.
But I did. The primary season began and I thought that Democrats had a certified panoply of choices to run against Trump and finally END this goddamn nightmare. I switched loyalties from Elizabeth Warren to Bernie Sanders in part because Warren fumbled her Medicare For All plan rollout (Oh no! A woman made the absolute slightest error!), but mostly because I felt that real and true change in America could not come from shrewd policy jiujitsu, but from a candidate who can arouse a popular uprising — an equal and opposite uprising to Trump’s national goon squad — and keep that uproar loud and vital. I, like Boots Riley, believed Bernie Sanders was that kinda candidate.
