Asides

Bernie Sanders in the Vermont Freeman Weekend edition back in November 1969:

The Revolution is coming and it is a very beautiful revolution. It is beautiful because, in its deepest sense, it is quiet, gentle, and all pervasive. It KNOWS. What is most important is this revolution will require no guns, no commandants, no screaming “leaders,” and no vicious publications accusing everyone else of being counter-revolutionary. The revolution comes when two strangers smile at each other, when a father refuses to send his child to school because schools destroy children, when a commune is started and people begin to trust each other, when a young man refuses to go to war, and when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has ‘taught’ her and accepts her boyfriend’s love.

The revolution comes when young people throughout the world take control of their own lives and when people everywhere begin to look each other in the eyes and say hello, without fear. This is the revolution, this is the strength, and with this behind us no politician or general will ever stop us. We shall win!

Bernie wrote a lot of stuff. Some of it is pretty out there, I hear. But regardless, it is a paper trail. And you can tell he’s been thinking and refining his ideas for much longer than his political career. This is who we need; a human. Not a symbol, a figurehead, a billionaire, nor a political weathervane.

Trump can have Twitter. Bernie’s campaign should get on Micro.blog, the man needs a blog.

Now, Democratic Socialists of America will start the endorsement debate process amongst chapters and the National Political Committee. It’s democratic.

Matt Breunig’s People’s Policy Project’s Family Fun pack sets the priorities straight for socialists on family life and childcare policy in America. We are totally behind every other industrialized country.

I read this poem in Leaves of Grass ten years ago and have never stopped thinking about this one part:

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed.

Steven Pressfield in his book The War of Art:

Fundamentalism and art are mutually exclusive. There is no such thing as fundamentalist art. This does not mean that the fundamentalist is not creative. Rather, his creativity is inverted. He creates destruction. Even the structures he builds, his schools and networks of organization, are dedicated to annihilation, of his enemies and of himself.