Bernie Sanders Reminds Me of Jesus On a Tear

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of those who sold animals, And said to them, ‘It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer’; but you’ve turned it into a den of thieves.

 

Jesus was no wimp. He could really Hulk out when it was warranted. Hypocrisy, greed and dishonesty chapped his hide.

 

Against the Money Changers, Jesus was no spineless petitioner: he went after them, upturning their tables  and stopping their flagrant disrespect for the values that rabbis like him taught in the temple.

 

And against the Pharisees, he was brutally honest, calling them hypocrites and whitewashed sepulchers.

 

It’s interesting to note that for the past few decades there has been another (former) Jewish carpenter with the same drive and ambition to upturn the tables and eliminate the elements of American policy that offer undue advantage to the rich and powerful at the expense of our professed values as a nation and at the expense of the rest of us, the people Jesus called “the least of these”: the young, the old, the widowed, the dispossessed, the disadvantaged, and the marginalized.

 

I’ve taken to viewing Bernie Sanders recently as a sort of prophet of old on the tear, calling out the elements of our society that are patently unfair and cruel. His policies are all about leveling the playing field:

• making health care a human right and medicine affordable
• making a college education available for all so no one gets left behind because of an inability to pay to better themselves
• stopping never-ending wars-for-profit (The U.S. arms both sides, so arms manufacturers grow rich)
• stopping the separation from mothers and the caging of refugee children
• ending the school-to-prison pipelines for people of color
• ending the war on drugs which was implemented to imprison people of color
• ending for-profit prisons and the systematic injustice that fills them
• ending the wholesale slaughter of unarmed citizens of color by racist police officers
• ending violence against women, LGBTQI individuals, and other at-risk groups

The list goes on. Visit BernieSanders.com for more of his policy positions.

 

There isn’t a single thing on Bernie’s list that wouldn’t also appear on Jesus’s list if he were here today in the flesh.

 

And yet the GOP leaders in D.C. and elsewhere and white evangelicals have sided not with Bernie Sanders but with a corrupt, pathological liar and womanizer who has violated every one of the Ten Commandments multiple times over. Which tells me they’re not truly religious at all; they’re simply capitalizing on the popularity of Christianity to carry their odious practices into the temple where they can ply their filthy trade because there’s no one there in authority anymore willing to turn over their tables and throw them the hell out.

 

I hear people grousing that Bernie Sanders never says anything different, that he’s like a  broken record. He’s only that way because none of what he knows needs changing has changed yet. So he’s not going to get side-tracked by “but what about….?”   He knows that these fundamental issues are the bedrock issues that most Americans stress over most and want fixed. He knows that other developed counties have a better standard of living than we do, and that they live longer and happier, healthier lives. He knows our best ideas have been adopted by other nations and that those nations are thriving and have half the issues we do here in America. (Watch WHERE TO INVADE NEXT for a primer on the policies and values that other nations gleaned from America and put into effect in their countries for their citizens. You’ll be amazed and alarmed to learn that we’ve been hoodwinked into believing that we’re the happiest place on earth…)

 

When I hear people bellyaching that Bernie is a communist or a socialist, I hear the fear in their voices and see it in their eyes. They’ve been fed a load of crap. (Yeah, Bernie started it by calling himself a socialist, which is simply a shorthand way of naming his political philosophy.)

 

Bernie is a Social Democrat, like FDR was. Social Democrats have been responsible for giving us Social Security, Medicare, Aid to Dependent Children, Family Leave, disability insurance, and a host of other safety net policies that keep citizens from falling so far down through the cracks that they can’t survive or ever get back up again. Before FDR and Social Security, old people lived in chicken coops when their money ran out. There was no safety net for them. My mother told me about those days, and it broke my heart.

 

Bernie believes government should serve “we the people” since we fund it with our taxes. The oligarchs, plutocrats and corporations rarely pay taxes but they get billions of dollars in subsidies which come out of the taxes we’re paying. So what we have now is socialism for the rich and crony capitalism for the rest of us poor schmucks. It should be the other way around. We’re the worker bees! We’re the taxpayers! The people in  ivory towers aren’t making anywhere near the money they’re getting; that’s all coming out of our pockets and out of our hides, sweat and toil. If everyone in America who isn’t super rich called in sick for a month, the wealthy would find out real fast how crucial we are to their fairy tale-like existences.)

 

Bernie is the least scary person in our government, except to the people with a vested interest in keeping everything the way it is right now. You know who they are. They’re the people in the White House, in the House and in the Senate, and in your state legislatures who are doing all they can to thwart Bernie and stop his political revolution in its tracks.

 

Follow the money.  You’ll find it’s coming from the creeps who found ways to get it from you without earning it. You know the ones. The so-called representatives who are funded by oligarchs, plutocrats and organizations that want things to stay just as they are now. Your tax dollars aren’t helping you primarily. They’re helping them screw you. Which isn’t why taxes were created. Taxes were created to provide for “the common defense and welfare” of every citizen… to pave the streets we all use, educate our children, keep us safe from law-breakers, and all the rest of the things we need as  communities of citizens.

 

Pay attention not just to what your so-called representatives say, but how they vote; they don’t always match. When they don’t–when they lie to you about their intentions– vote them out during their next election cycle, whenever that is. Send them packing.

 

Figure out who really has your back. I know Bernie has mine. He has yours, too, whether you  know it or not. Set aside your preconceived notions and indoctrination and just listen to him and his plans. See if they make perfect sense…and how they can improve your lot in life immeasurably!

 

A new day is dawning, and it can be beautiful or baleful.

 

I’m voting for beautiful. I hope you will, too!