Bernie Sanders and the socialist Christmas spirit

Dec 24, 2019

Excerpt:

Individualist ways of thinking do have a long American history. But the collectivist tradition is just as strong. Abolitionists built a ferocious movement against slavery in the mid-19th century. Populists, socialists, and union organizers banded together to demand government action to rein in ruthless monopolists in the Gilded Age and the New Deal. Civil rights groups did the same against Jim Crow in the 1950s and 60s. There is no reason Sanders couldn't rekindle the embers of that old ideology.

Indeed, if you just stop to think for a moment, it is preposterous to believe one can fully determine one's economic fortunes. When a factory is shipped to Mexico, or a financial crisis throws millions out of work, or somebody gets a $11,000 bill because they fell sick, no amount of learning to code would have helped the people trampled under the tank treads of capitalism.

It is only when someone has been conditioned to believe solutions are impossible that they will just sit and take such punishment. And Wall Street likes it that way. They want depressed and anxious sheep who can be sheared without a peep.

So perhaps this Christmas, think about Bernie Sanders and his peculiar program of socialist political therapy. The problems facing America are severe indeed, but they are also eminently solvable. As George Bailey says in that classic piece of American Christmas culture, "We can get through this thing alright. We've got to stick together though, we've got to have faith in each other."

https://theweek.com/articles/885903/bernie-sanders-socialist-christmas-spirit