As IF Times

link:  Sanders gets a second look

Bernie Sanders is the extension of the bad boy obsession phenomenon that consumes many young girls during a crazed time in their lives.  He’s the geriatric version of Fonzie.  Usually during their teen years but not exclusively, women are vulnerable to the charms of roguish boys, who appear to live outside of the mainstream and flout popular social norms.  Heck, they’re even a bit dangerous.  To their friends and families, the girls’ obsession seems weird because the object of their  affections are generally louts, ne’er do wells and are social outcasts. No good could ever come of the relationship.  Eventually of course, the boy moves on to the next victim and the gal is crushed.

It’s a stretch to imagine a leather jacketed, greasy haired, brooding hoodlum turning into Bernie Sanders ( and frankly that should scare all girls off of such guys) but the parallels are astonishing.  Among all of the objectionable people vying to attain the nomination to be the Democratic nominee, Sanders is by far the most objectionable.  For, while all of the candidates conveniently say the same things and pander to whomever they can  to get votes, Sanders genuinely believes his crazed utterances and has unabashedly been doing so his entire career.

Similar to his senate cohort, Joe Biden, Sanders has lived his entire life suckling on the public teat, rising from guitar playing communes to mayor of a small town to being elected to the US senate, to being a contender for the US presidency. It’s Horatio Alger-The Nightmare Version.  Throughout the time of his rise in political favor, he has consistently advocated for support of a socialist society with the usual bleats about wealth disparity, racism, sexism etc etc.  Fortuitously for Sanders, this on going preaching against capitalism has not prevented him from acquiring great wealth, including several homes, a large stock portfolio, big payouts and even a most un-socialist bauble, an Audi R-8 sports car worth a cool 100g.

Sanders is not alone in his hypocritical life.  Al Gore and Joel Osteen are the most obvious examples of charlatans who preach their respective brands of piousness while having a siphon attached to the public purse. The genius of all of these people is their ability to find that part of the population that are susceptible to their entreaties…and then make truckloads of money from them!  Al Gore is not living in a wood cabin eating kelp and travelling by oxcart.  Joel Osteen is not wearing sackcloth and handing out bread.   And Bernie Sanders is not sharing his ill gotten filthy lucre with his adoring acolytes.

During this interminable period of Democratic debates, few things are more odious than to see this avowed socialist wag his finger at the public, telling them how things should be.  Imagine;  a man who has done nothing, telling people how to do everything.  According to the ‘polls’ however, his popularity is strong across a wide swath of America. I think this is the equivalent of polling goo goo eyed teen aged girls who think that Bernie is Fonzie.  Nobody would trust the judgement of teen aged girls on anything much less major decisions on the direction of society.  His push for socialism continues even as there is not a single instance of such a system working anywhere, now, or ever in the history of the world. Wake up girls; the man’s a goof.  He does live outside of the mainstream, he is anti social, but more importantly, he is more than a bit dangerous.

Nancy Has A Hissy Fit

By now, the infamous images of Speaker Pelosi brazenly tearing up the contents of Trump’s state of the union address have been seen by everyone watching the farcical melodrama which is American politics.  In fact during the majority of the time that Trump was speaking, Speaker Pelosi was in his background drawing attention to herself by shuffling papers and pretending to read them as if she were grading school papers.  She was fidgeting and making faces the entire time as if she was sitting on a pie and needed to pee. She may as well have been juggling cats. Unfortunately, cameras missed the Rubik’s cube and the sudoku puzzle she was working on under the papers.

The mutual disdain that Trump and Pelosi hold for each other was obvious right from the beginning. But politics is politics. It’s standard protocol that despite the deep contempt that politicos often hold for each other, there is supposed to be a veneer of civility which is required during national addresses.  In following the path of events which have transpired over the past 3 years, that veneer of civility has been cast aside completely to reveal the naked incivility and animosity into which political discourse has devolved.

Even as the President outlined the record of accomplishments achieved over the course of his term, all of which should be regarded as praiseworthy by any objective observer, Nancy chose to draw attention to herself while she made goo goo faces behind the President.  It’s quite possible that at 80 years of age, she may be losing control over many of her bodily functions and her mind may be one of them.  She could not help but put her petulance on full display.

She’s hardly alone in her party of course.  She may be just taking a cue from some of the younger upstarts in her party who have captured the limelight with their uneducated and baleful utterances. Over the years, we’ve seen numerous Dems who have displayed their very tenuous link to logic and reality without regard to personal shame. The interminable impeachment charade, which followed the interminable  Mueller saga, which followed the interminable Kavanaugh melodrama all served to reveal the single minded goal of destroying anything Trump without regard for the destruction of their own credibility and dignity.  The real consequence is the abrogation of the duty they were elected for, which is to serve the people.

Nancy’s hissy fit serves to make clear that the political divide is quite stark. On one side of the political divide, people are implementing policies and moving the nation forward.  On the other side are those that are mainly annoyance factors on any given issue regardless of benefit to the nation.  There’s no need to pretend that meaningful discourse can be had on any issue.  On the one side is an administration that in only 3 years has turned around the fortunes of a nation, whereas the other side, many of whom have been ensconced in office for over 40 years, have failed at every major policy decision, whether domestic policy, foreign policy or fiscal policy.

It’s hopeful that we will see the re-emergence  and dominance of people working to get things done rather than those working only to get attention.  The country needs to ignore the plaintive bleats of the permanently aggrieved and bring on people with genuine intentions.  As any parent knows, sometimes you just have to let the babies cry themselves out.