R.I.P. Bernie

This blog post was originally going to be an endorsement for Bernie Sanders for President, but his nomination is even less likely now that he dropped out than it was when he was simply lagging behind in electoral votes. Even though it was pretty clear all along that America was going to fuck this up yet again and nominate Joe Biden, this is such a fucking bitter pill to swallow.

I—we, probably, but I won't pretend to speak for anyone else—I am fucking distraught right now, because I believed in everything that Bernie Sanders preached. I believe that there are essential human rights, and that everyone deserves them. I believe in the power of the worker over the billionaire. I believe that the system is fucked, and has been for a long time, and that there needs to be a complete overhaul of how things work, or else our country will continue to flush itself down the toilet. Because I believed in these things, I believed in Bernie Sanders.

Bernie strongly and consistently fought for ideals such as the right for everyone to have health care, the right for young adults to not bankrupt themselves for getting an education, the right for everyone to afford food and clothing and shelter, the right for everyone to be able to achieve earning a living wage without killing themselves to do it.

I believed in all this, and it's baffling to me that people seem to simply just want to turn the clock back four years, as if that's good enough. Four years ago, our country was modestly better because we didn't have a terrorist in the White House, but four years ago, the system was still broken. It's not enough to go back to how it was then. Bernie knew that. Bernie knew that we need a revolution, that we need to fix what has happened for the past four years, and more importantly what has happened for the past four generations.

The biggest problem is that you know that, and I know that, and Bernie Sanders knows that, but the majority of America refuses to know it. Make no mistake about it—they are the MAJORITY, the people who did not believe Bernie Sanders. This was clear even before Sanders dropped out of the race. He dropped out because this was true. It's unfortunate, and it keeps me up at night, that Americans could be so self-sabotaging, but it's fucking true.

Like, my pops was telling me a few weeks ago (ya know, when I could legally hang out with my pops) that he saw a lady on the news who said that she could "never vote for a socialist," and that she'd rather vote for trump, whom she hated, than vote for Bernie Sanders. This is America.

Let's tell it like it is. This lady is a fucking moron. She is an ignorant dunce who clearly took no effort to understand what democratic socialism actually means, and how it could (and would) benefit her. She instead had a knee-jerk reaction to "the S word" and decided that voting for a terrorist would be better than guaranteed living wages for all.

How do you convince someone like that that they are wrong? That there is a better way, and that way is Bernie Sanders' movement? And that if you took two fucking seconds to try to understand what Bernie Sanders was preaching, that you'd immediately understand that he was the only recent candidate that had your best interests in mind? The answer is that you can't. You can't convince this lady, because she is a fucking moron. And you can't convince the millions and millions and millions of other citizens in this country who are exactly like her.

But that's the irony of it, isn't it? Bernie Sanders was completely uncompromising in his ideals. That's why he would've earned my vote in April June, but that he is uncompromising in his ideals is exactly why he was doomed to fail, too.

The path to success in politics is to have a message that earns the most votes. It's why politics are so frustrating, and are ultimately detrimental to a society of mostly stupid people, but that's literally how it works. If your message resonates with the most people, you win. If you hate that this is how politics work, then you probably loved Bernie Sanders, because he refused to play that game. But the game exists, and if you're not going to play it, you lose. Bernie Sanders lost. This isn't my opinion, this is a fact. Bernie Sanders will not be the President of the United States for the exact same reasons that you and I love him so much.

His message did not reach everyone. It was the right message, but he was unable to convince the masses. That's frustrating as fuck.

It's so easy to lash out right now, to be angry at the people who refuse to understand what they lost by not voting for Bernie Sanders. I get that. Eating shit is not a pleasurable experience. I'm angry too. This sucks. It sucks to live in a country where the majority of its citizens are so self-sabotaging that they'd rather be ignorant and vote against their self-interests. That they'd rather just vote for a rapist simply because he was the rapist who was second-in-command four years ago, when things were just a little bit better than they are now. Awful stuff, America. Real bad.

But here is my I'm-eating-shit-too plea, to everyone who is reading this right now, everyone who is angry right now too. Please, please, please don't use this as an excuse to burn this country to the ground. Now, right this second, the true enemy is our current President. Please use your vote to get him out of office. Please eat shit. It's going to taste awful, but I would eat twenty tons of shit if it meant that trump will no longer be our President, and I hope you'll be there, helping me eat it. I'm asking you, please help me. Please.

This may sound like an empty platitude and a cliché at this point, but I truly believe that Bernie Sanders changed politics for the better, even a little bit, even in defeat. I can speak from personal experience that I did not know what "democratic socialism" was, or even cared, before I came to understand Bernie Sanders in 2016. The fact that something like Medicare for All is even considered, let alone supported by a sizable portion of America, can be chalked up to Bernie Sanders. The movement is still here. We still have room to fight for what Bernie—and you, and I—believe in.

That fight gets a lot harder with another four years of a Republican (trump, Pence, whoever) in the White House. Maybe not even just harder, maybe fucking impossible. We cannot allow that to happen.

All I can do is beg you to please consider voting against trump. I know it's so easy to lash out against Joe Biden right now, and trust me, I agree with you—he deserves every ounce of vitriol, every ounce of distrust, every ounce of hate you can throw at him. But at a certain point, that has to go away for a few months. Save it for when Joe Biden lives in the White House. Give me him all this shit you can when he gets there. But for now, it has to temporarily stop, the lashing out. It has to, because if it doesn't, then trump wins. And that's really the only scenario in which Bernie Sanders truly loses.