I’ve been on a 12 month writing hiatus. Mainly because 2015 was the worst year of my entire life and it sucked the creativity out of every cell in my body like a vacuum pump. It’s high time for me to get back to doing something that’s been a labor of love for me for many years…spewing my thoughts into cyberspace. So, with this post I officially break my hiatus. And I do so to demonstrate my support of Bernie Sanders in his effort to become the 45th President of the U.S.A.

Yes, the Revolutionary Misfit is back in business!

Over the last 12 months a phenomenon has occurred in American politics…no, not The Donald. He is a phenom in his own right, but not one I’m going to waste my wasting brain cells writing about…

When I first found out that avowed “democratic socialist”, Bernie Sanders, was running for president of the U.S., I thought he wouldn’t have a chance. I surmised that he was just in it for the influence…that is, to influence the direction of the conversation and that he well knew that he couldn’t actually win.

Well, I was wrong. He can win and he’s definitely in it to win. And so I enthusiastically demonstrate my support of Bernie Sanders in the one way I know how…writing about it.

What would a Sanders’ America look like?

It’s not as if America has never seen the likes of a Sanders-style “socialist” before. There was that guy who was elected for three terms…yes THREE…remember him? His name was Franklin. No, not Benjamin Franklin, dummy…Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Here’s a picture to jog your memory.

He must have been a pretty popular prez to have been elected three times…no other president has ever achieved that feat. Granted, after Roosevelt did it, they changed the constitution not to allow it anymore.

Sanders gave what I consider an historic speech at Georgetown University recently in which he invoked the legacy of Roosevelt to describe what a Sanders administration might look like…

Despite the McCarthyite scare tactics of the right-wingers, a Sanders administration would not be that controversial.

Sanders’ main thing is that the government of the U.S. should be one of, by and for “the people”…meaning all the people and not just a tiny minority of extremely wealthy people.

Now is that such a controversial, or radical, notion?

But, unfortunately, America has become an oligarchy.

If you look up the word oligarchy in the dictionary you’ll find this:

A small group of people having control of a country…

That’s a pretty simple definition that describes a very complex problem.

The reason that problem has grown so complex and deeply rooted is because American law has encouraged the capitalistic idea that money should be at the root of politics…

and politics is at the root of how our country is ultimately governed.

Some say, well, that’s just how our system works. And that is certainly true. But it’s not how it should work.

So, along comes Sanders, with his online driven clean campaign vowing to be completely financed with small donations of $30, or less. And low and behold it’s working. He’s smashed every record when it comes to individual donations. He’s running neck and neck with Clinton’s vast fund raising network, and he actually has a chance at winning the damn nomination.

Incredible!

Sanders has vowed to get the money out of politics. Can he do it?

Well, it won’t be easy. One thing that must be done is to repeal that horrible Supreme Court decision called Citizen’s United. The one that gave rise to the all-powerful Super PAC (political action committee) via the notion that corporations are people with the right to political free speech. So, they should be allowed to circumvent current campaign finance laws with strict limits on how much a real person, one with a heart and lungs, brain and other fleshy stuff, can donate and allow fat cat donors to poor millions into these Super PACs whose mission is to support the candidate of the donors’ choice.

Hillary Clinton has been the darling of the billionaire and big corporation-backed Super PACs.

Nevertheless, good ole Bernie, with his legions of real live working-class people, sending in their paltry $10, $20 and $30 dollar donations, is giving her the race of her life!

#feeltheBern!

The bigger problem with all that money fueling the campaign engines of our elected reps is that it ends up influencing how those leaders govern our country. They tend to pass laws that suck the life out of the middle class. And that has grown into the terrible situation of gross income and wealth inequality in America.

Take a look at the Sanders campaign web site and you’ll see that income inequality is his number one issue. On the site it says this:

America now has more wealth and income inequality than any major developed country on earth, and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the 1920s.

and this:

There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Yes, there certainly is something profoundly wrong. And that something is destroying the great engine of American growth and prosperity called the middle class…as well as the ability of those under it to move up to it.

That’s just not happening anymore. People are stuck and they’re stagnant. Wages have not risen in the last 40 years for middle income Americans, they’ve declined…while those at the top have risen dramatically.

That’s just not a sustainable situation. And Bernie’s really the only candidate who’s addressing the problem head on. It’s rooted in a corrupt system. Bernie knows it and I, for one, believe that he’s the one guy who will fight to fix it.

I have watched the several Republican debates and I never heard a word, not one single word, about the most daunting issue facing Americans today…income inequality.

Nor do the Republicans address global warming, which is tied in many ways to inequality, corruption and national security issues. I will address that in my next post. Their front-running candidate, Donald Trump, calls it a “hoax.”

Anyone who reads this blog on occasion should know that income inequality and global warming have long been the two top issues that I write about.

Global warming also happens to be one of Sanders’ most important issues.

It’s time we moved beyond McCarthyism. Bernie is right on the issues and that’s what matters, regardless of the label the right-wingers want to stick on him.

They had their eight years of “trickle-down” and war mongering. They spent trillions fighting a war in Iraq based on lies. Sanders was against it from the beginning. Clinton supported it.

Some say, how will Bernie pay for all these programs that help hard-working Americans? Well, we paid several trillion to fight a war that created a horrible mess in the Middle East…

If we could find all that money to waste on death and destruction, then perhaps we can find ways in the future to spend it towards helping the middle class to grow and prosper again.

Now, is that a “progressive” notion?

perhaps…

But I believe that it’s a good reason to express my support of Bernie Sanders…the one guy who’s talking straight to us about how to make Americans great again.