So yesterday I finished Marianne Williamson's book "A politics of love". Today I started Bernie Sanders' "It's okay to be angry about capitalism." I'm not super far into it yet, only around chapter 2 somewhere, but I just want to comment on one very significant difference between the two that I notice first off, which really sums up why I like Bernie so much better than Marianne.
Marianne's book was a mixed affair for me. It was overly emotional and focused heavily on love and empathy, while offering very few actual policy prescriptions for our problems. Bernie is the opposite. This dude comes out of the gate discussing problems and solutions. And not only does he make his case, but he does it with force and conviction. It's pretty clear, reading his work, compared to Marianne, why I was so much more passionate about Bernie than I am about Williamson. And it's pretty clear even why I ended up backing Bernie over Andrew Yang, who, by the way, I actually agree a lot more with.
Bernie is practically the perfect candidate. He provides an entire worldview outlining the problems with the current system, while calling for a specific set of solutions. He does it forcefully, and with conviction. He speaks with a charisma that almost makes me want to overlook the fact that he prefers a jobs guarantee over a UBI. Almost. He's the OG. He's the dude who's been in the trenches his entire life, and despite our differences, I have trouble not having the utmost respect for him.
I knew that he was going to be hard to replace, as he passes 80, and becomes too old to run for president again, but looking at where we are now, I feel bad that we've passed up on such a transformational candidate.
I may have issues with his movement. Quite frankly, I've come to realize a lot of aspects of his movement are toxic. And despite him being quite clear that his agenda is basically FDR's second bill of rights, a lot of his base is more radical and extreme than he is, with some of them calling for literal socialism. And honestly, these guys picked fights with me, and have alienated me. So I'm not entirely sure his movement is going to age well going forward. Often when the torch is passed on, each subsequent leader sucks worse than the last. FDR passed it to truman, who passed it to JFK, who passed it to Johnson, who passed it to Carter. And we're seeing a clear downward spiral as the GOP shifted from Reagan, to Bush, to the other Bush, and eventually to the tea party and Trump. The original guy seems to have a level of charisma and conviction that's refreshing and cant be matched, but then subsequent leaders suck. They might parrot the same ideals, but might lack the conviction, or the leadership style, or might be corrupt, or heck, they might not even represent the ideas at some point, but a pathetic copy cat of them. And as Bernie passes the torch on, I fear for his movement. Williamson isn't really it. Neither is Biden, although many would argue Biden was never going to be, despite including aspects of Bernie's agenda in his platform.Nina Turner didn't go anywhere. And a lot of the younger progressives just tend to lack the expertise that Bernie has on policy, even if they have the passion.
The same is happening to the UBI movement. I mean, Scott Santens is the OG. I'm arguably influenced by Scott Santens and others in a direct sense, and have a worldview that is a mix of the most leading UBI oriented thinkers. But then you got Yang, who had the same ideas roughly, but lacked the policy expertise, and at times the conviction to follow through. As the movement materialized in reality, the leaders we often had to rally behind tended to "not be it". And over time, this kills movements, because a string of bad leaders can turn people off of ideas, and then a new zeitgeist emerges. Or maybe things just change as years turn into decades, and we become removed from the original event. When Rush LImbaugh wrote of Ronald Reagan in 1992, he seemed very inspired by the guy, and reading his works in the 2000s, I kind also felt inspired by such ideas. But as I matured into an adult, saw the world for myself, and saw a massive disconnect between these ideas and the reality we live in, I ultimately soured on him. I understand why a lot of boomers and gen X are more conservative than me, but Millennials and Zoomers grew up in a totally different era. The divide between growing up post 1990 and pre 1990s is massive. One lived in a cold war world without widespread use of the internet, and the other lived post cold war with the internet. As such, the generations are just...different. We live in different worlds. ANd the ways of the previous generation do not resonate with this one.
Bernie did talk about this, but he seemed convinced that despite his failures, his ideas would live on, since the younger generation loves them. And it's true. Most of Bernie's support comes from the under 40 crowd, me being one of them. I admit, I do have some ideological differences with Bernie, being one of the OG human centered capitalists from before even Yang embraced the idea, but honestly, that's why I'm in a position to appreciate both Bernie Sanders and Andrew yang. And while policy wise I'm more Yang than Bernie, even I have trouble arguing against Bernie's agenda, warts and all, especially given how weak of a leader Yang seems to be.
Honestly, I fear for the future of both of our movements. The UBI movement, the Bernie movement. The bernie movement's successors come off as totally unhinged and extreme to me, and while marianne williamson isn't anywhere near as bad as the online purity testers I deal with, she still feels quite lacking to me. She just seems to lack the coherent worldview that Bernie has, and seems to lean into spirituality that feels refreshing on the one hand, but also feels empty and vapid on the other. And with UBI, well...we honestly need to do better than Andrew Yang. He's too inconsistent.
And yeah I just wanted to reflect on why I felt so passionate about Bernie, while I'm so tepid on Marianne. I mean, just reading one book after the other really seals it for me.
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