An open letter to the Bernie Bros, Part Two.

I watched, along with all of you, as the tens of thousands of our people stood patiently in long queues for many hours. Some sleeping on the open ground overnight waiting to cast this momentous vote. ~Nelson Mandela, announcing the African National Congress election victory, May 2, 1994

A few weeks ago, I wrote an open letter to the Bernie Bros.

Since then I've mostly taken a flamethrower to the stupidity of Donald Trump and the mismanagement of the Coronavirus crisis.

Apparently, I need to refocus my ire on the Leftist version of 'These Fucking People' yet again.
Now, mind you, my wrath is not against those who simply voted for Bernie in the primaries. I didn't, but everybody is entitled to their own opinion and to vote as they choose. This is America and that's the point.

No, my problem here is with those people who would rather vote for Trump than the Democratic nominee if that person is not Bernie Sanders.

I mean, seriously, the fuck kind of leftists, or liberals, or revolutionaries are you?!

It's not that I don't get it. It's that I see it as people literally committing treason against the values they claim...ironically, much the same as many Republicans did after Trump got elected...because of course their only true value was power. In so doing, they have largely destroyed any soft power that they may have had, only to find out that much of the hard power of this country is in fact sworn to the Constitution, and none of it to the Republican Party in particular. In so doing, these people have given up much of the power and social status that they did have...and by their own behavior, reduced the credibility and thus the power of the Federal Government, and thus the United States of America itself, even over it's own people. It remains to be seen, especially in the middle of a pandemic, if America itself will survive even that. Effectively, Republicans lit themselves on fire to "Own the Libs" and to please Donald Trump, and they largely failed and Trump didn't appreciate it and all they managed to do was run around screaming and set a bunch of other stuff on fire like one of those back yard disaster videos on YouTube.

They made the Republican Party all about Donald Trump, and by extension the wealthy, only to find out that neither was actually particularly well-liked by anybody but the basest of their base.

And the average Redcap in the trenches? They're usually not actually a doctrinaire conservative in any traditional sense. Hell, a majority of them can't really explain why they like or support Trump, and to be honest, they hate most Republicans, too.

This seems like a bad set of variables. Republicans painted themselves into this corner by choice.

Don't do something similar to the Democrats.

Especially considering you're not even the majority of us.

Maybe ya'll don't understand this, but "Progressives" and "Social Democrats" have no such position of power to screw up and lose in the first place, not because there's some kind of conspiracy against you, but because Bernie supporters, and the kind of liberal in general who become Bernie supporters... Don't. Show. Up. To. Vote.

Thus, moderates like me, people of color, senior citizens and women are determining the course of things.

It's not a conspiracy, we showed up in the numbers needed. You. Didn't.

If you don't participate in the core functions of Democracy vs. your own people to get your guy over the top...WHY IN THE HELL would you throw in with the enemy of everything you claim to stand for just to deny the people who did show up the shot at victory that they damned well earned? If the Republicans are comparable to the Vichy French...what are ya'll, Soviet collaborators? People who had in many cases espoused and fought for the ideas of Communism and socialism, only to sell out to the fascists for their own survival?

Now, I'm no fan of Communism, but a hell of a lot of those people got exactly what they had coming after the war was over and the allies handed them back to get shipped off to firing squads and gulags. It sucked for them, but if you stand with Nazis, you're a Nazi. I have no sympathy. I don't see selling out everything you say you stand for as a particularly forgivable offense, and I've written thousands of words railing against Trumpist conservatives for exactly that.

Bernie Bros who want to vote for Trump, where exactly do you think you're going to stand when all this is over? Maybe we don't do firing squads and gulags...and I hope it doesn't come to that...but you sure as hell will make things a lot harder for your own movement or people who share your beliefs in the future.

More to the point, if you believe in the guy who champions Medicare For All and who has effectively forced that idea into the national consciousness and the Democratic Party's platform alike almost single-handed...how exactly is any of that served, by voting for a self-glorifying wannabe fascist who supports Medicare For Nobody and who seems to hope to use the COVID-19 crisis to take out his political enemies and punish people who didn't vote for him?! (By which he means both you and me.)

Let me tell you what I've been doing over the course of the last couple days while Donald Trump has been glorifying himself and talking stupid.

One of my ferrets, Rokea, has Insulinoma, it flared up over the weekend, and I finally was able to get her to the vet this morning. A $45 vet bill, the first of many such to come, likely including next week.

Last Tuesday I found out that I was going to be laid off from my job due to the shutdown for the virus. That takes effect tomorrow. We were told to apply for Unemployment (which we will get automatically) today. In theory that sounds good, except that neither my roommate, nor myself, nor several other co-workers could file because the offices are closed, the phone lines are busy, and the website keeps crashing. I have to try again at night, when they say that it'll be easier to get through and accomplish this. But won't a bunch of other people be doing the same? Don't get me wrong, this makes a good case for a Universal Basic Income...but you have to win first, and winning means you have to show up, and I'm going to show up because at this point, politics might just be the determining factor in whether or not I live or die and my and my dog and ferrets all get to eat.

Fuck progressive policies, we need to get Republicans and Trump out of power to even have basic liberal democratic policies and a social safety net. As the saying goes, you have to walk before you can run. At this point I'd be happy with a decently staffed state-level department of Labor.

And do you know who ran Michigan and its economy and its political system into the ground, mostly in the service of the DeVos family? Republicans. We'll be picking up the wreckage from Rick Snyder for 20 years.

On a larger scale, America as a whole will be picking up the pieces from Donald Trump's misrule for 50 or 100 years...if we survive this virus mess as a whole country...and America or some or all of its successor states will probably have to regain our previous soft power somehow. Likely, by drowning Chinese or Russian military aspirations in a river of American blood. Is 50,000 or more dead Americans from defending the Baltic States, Poland or the Ukraine worth it?

Not really, but that's the way the world works and the idea is to try to avoid situations where you fritter away soft power and have to do things like that in the first place.

I'm not going to lie, one of the reasons that I like Biden is because I liked Obama, and I'm old enough to remember being taught that a person would be judged in part by who their friends are and by what those friends do and by whether or not they supported those actions. We are the company we keep. We are what we will tolerate.

If you're willing to tolerate Trump and all the bad behavior, mismanagement, racism and sexism that goes with him, do me a favor and don't insult my intelligence by telling me you're on my side.

If you'd vote for Trump because Democrats didn't nominate Bernie, you're not a liberal, you're an arsonist.

And the house you want to burn down belongs to all of us.