Here:"The revolution is possible -- you are the revolution! -- and this time, the revolution will literally be televised," said the Vermont senator.
Bernie has uttered countless times the statement that he wants to try to bring about a social and political revolution in the U.S., and he is 100% clear with no possibility of misunderstanding that he means by this that he wants people to become more politically active in demanding proper representation from their Congressmen. He means nothing about initiating a new political system, and everything about people taking the old political system seriously again. It's about making people care; that's the revolution. Harping on the word "revolution" as if it means toppling industry or rewriting the constitution is a standard but flimsy smokescreen.
url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/02/bernie_sanders_grassroots_revolution_isn_t_interested_in_barack_obama_s.html]Here[/url]:But Bernie Sanders is not Barack Obama. Sanders’ theory for fixing the broken political system is post-Obama, taking into consideration Obama’s failure while posing a new answer. Sanders doesn’t talk about bringing the two sides together through the sheer force of his fetching personality. He doesn’t really speak of Democrats and Republicans as the two sides. He campaigns on a promise to turn the whole thing upside down, to create a grassroots “political revolution” that will give him the mandate to bring working- and middle-class people together to overwhelm the “billionaire class” into submission. He doesn’t want to heal, he wants to upend—and his voters, even after witnessing all of Obama’s failures to bring the country together in his own way, love Bernie for it.
The article has some cogent points but fails utterly to comprehend Bernie's campaign purpose. It strings together individual facts seemingly in sequence but fails to ever make sense of them. Here's a good example of this, where its logic cannot match its narrative:
Sanders’ theory implies that once the masses have banded together to overpower the political prowess of billionaires, corporate interests, and “establishment economics,” what they will demand is a series of leftist reforms like single-payer health care, free public higher education, a federally mandated living wage, breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks, and a shift away from a hydrocarbon-based energy system. But it does not entertain the idea that once the palace has been raided and billionaires are sent fleeing, a significant chunk of working and middle-class people might still disagree with his policy proposals.
Bernie's central point is that politics and campaign finance are corrupt, and that this prevents any realistic change no matter who's in power. He says that a 'revolution' (i.e. different way of doing things) is needed to begin to fix this. The article fixates on particular policy proposals (such as free tuition or higher minimum wage) and wistfully wonders what will happen if, after this glorious revolution, those things are not actually what the people want. This dodges
the entire issue, which is that at present it doesn't matter what the people want since they're not properly represented. Bernie personally believes in things like free tuition, universal health care, and so forth, but his belief in those things does not mean he can make them happen or even wants to force it down everyone's throats; indeed Bernie has stated repeatedly that he actually
cannot accomplish these things unless the political system begins to change for the better. Can you name another candidate (including Obama) who's made such an admission of reality? The point is that regardless of whether the people really do want free health care or not, they need to be able to affect the political process first before whatever they believe will be listened to. This means campaign finance, it means rules about lobbying, and it means making alterations to how Wall Street operates (the latter of which even Hillary claims to agree with). These issues being addressed will make possible subsequent movements led by the will of the people.
Most candidates are talking about what they intend the country to be like. Bernie's goal, however, is to put the country back in the hands of the people, not in his own hands. He doesn't want to autocratically decide which policies should be implemented. He wants the public will to inform what should happen, rather than the private will of a few select power players such as happens now. It is within this context that the article ends up being an intelligently written but highly uneducated piece of writing, where concepts aren't employed to pair with facts as presented. When the article makes the bizarre declaration that "he doesn't want to heal, he wants to upend" it runs riot with a failure to define what "heal" and "upend" are literally supposed to mean in this context, and just make Bernie sound like a rampaging bull. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I'm thankful to Al for providing the most pertinent quote possible in demonstrating that an article such as this can simultaneously be erudite and yet bereft of knowledge. The status quo is about Democrats and GOP both beholden to the same special interests and fighting amongst each other such that the people lose and these special interests always win. Bernie's solution is not to upend any sacred bond of trust but rather to re-establish trust between the voters and their government.
Pete, I hope this helped answer your question a little.
