Subsidizing the Purchase of Short Sleeve Shirts

And perhaps a bit of sunscreen.

Bernie Sanders says If there is not bold, immediate action to address the climate crisis, the quality of life that we are leaving our kids is very much in question. Well, he’s right on that but asking Congress for bold, immediate action doesn’t seem to work unless they’re supporting the banning of books.

Bernie is the second man we would not allow to be president

And I say that merely for context. When we disallow the public will, there are costs.

In the case of the Supreme Court seating George W. Bush instead of Al Gore, who was winning the presidency in a final Florida recount in 2000, we got two unwinnable Middle East wars, Guantanamo and a well deserved reputation for the most extreme forms of torture. Millions died, nations were destroyed, trillions spent and we got our military ass handed to us on the way out.

So Bernie is the second of those anti public-opinion debacles, when the Democratic National Committee decided, in spite of Sanders’ popularity and standings in the primaries, that it was Hillary’s ‘turn’ to run. Well, roll up the carpets, folks, we’re back to back-room nominations. What, pray tell, was all that campaigning about if the DNC was going to nullify the very idea of primaries.

What’s past is past, but there are consequences and now we are facing the existential threat of human extinction. That’s right, folks, we’re about to leave the planet

I know you’re not happy about that.

But there were a half-century of warnings and the price of gas at the pumps was more important that whether gasoline is a good idea. Had Bernie been allowed to become president, maybe something would have been done. Maybe not. As a group, we Americans are a pretty dumb bunch.

So, if Congress does act quickly, as Bernie demands, I predict a long fought over, bi-partisan piece of legislation that subsidizes the purchase of short-sleeve shirts and finally breaks the fanatical grip that certain cosmetic firms hold over the price of sun-screens. It has to happen. Believe me, the time is long past due for bold and decisive thinking. It’s possible that bill may be held up by a filibuster in the Senate, but I cherish the thought of its passage.

Bernie gives us a longish but very thoughtful treatise on how we’re all fucked

And I thank him for it and wink in his direction because we both know Congress will dither and candidates will throw rocks at each other through endless primaries until whoever survives as a candidate from either side is too tarnished to possibly be acceptable. That’s the American way. It’s probably why we will end up with two old, white, best-of-what-we-could-drag-out-of-the-woodwork candidates instead of a young, vibrant contest between two parties offering solutions.

Because there are Republican solutions, once they end the prison in which Trump and Ted Cruz have held them. And there are Democrat solutions, once they stop abandoning their historic supporters in a doomed search for a wider base.

Bases are fine for baseball, not so effective for political parties

What both political parties deem to be their base, is the bottom-feeders, their mindless never-vote-for-the-other-guy grumpies who never voted a split-ticket in their entire lives. A ‘reliable voter’ is someone who has little room in his mind for change, but acres of free parking for prejudice. And by prejudice I don’t mean they hate non-whites, it goes far deeper than that.

They hate the unions that lifted them out of poverty because their leaders convinced them the free choice to remain poor was really only free speech in a shabbier jacket. They hate schools because the educated kids leave town and there’s no one left to run the farm. They hate the taxes that once ran the country without debt, because a graduated tax that evens out the burden is beyond their understanding. They hate anything environmental, because by god no one’s going to tell them they can’t drain their engine oil under a tree. And finally, they hate progress because it comes at them just too damn fast.

I confess to sharing that feeling from time to time.

So the intellectual and financial bottom-feeders have inherited America and gridlocked our chances to rise from the bottom

And we dare not share with them a little truth because they may abandon us for the other guy.

Fact: Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the Civil Right Act lost the South’s Democrat majority. Nixon leveraged that majority into the Republican Party and it has become its victim ever since. Fact: In desperation at the loss, the Democrats tried to be everyman and abandoned their promise to be the voice of the poor and the working class, becoming instead no man’s party. The bottom-feeders of both parties hold them hostage.

Meanwhile, 40% of the American voting public claims to be independent

Very interesting, that. If we have a form of aristocracy—and some claim we do—it resides politically within that forty percent. Fact: No one party gives a damn about these voters because they are not reliable and yet they hold the key to breaking the legislative logjam, as well as providing either party with a legislative majority

What’s wrong with that? It swings open the prison doors of partisan blockade as well as frees each party to rid itself of bottom-feeders and represent their true followers.

Meanwhile, Bernie, short-sleeve shirts and suntan lotion is about as much as you can hope. For the rest of us looking for political solutions, abandon hope, all who enter here.