![\"pure\"](\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/pure.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I’ve been hearing people (Bernie supporters) refer to Hillary as a “flawed” candidate.\u00a0Flawed, haaving imperfections, not perfect. You know, like For as long as I can remember, the Republican party has been waging an ideological battle with itself, testing candidates on their fidelity to principle, to\u00a0are you conservative<\/em> enough? Do you hate gays and abortions enough?\u00a0<\/em> by requiring that any Republican candidate for office there submit to passing a strict purity test in order to qualify for the ballot. making the sign a fucking pledge.\u00a0<\/em>The rules: You must certify that you have only ever had silent, awkward, straight missionary sex with the person you are married to, only while married. Never ever look at porn, not even in disgust.\u00a0Gays doing marriage, or even civil unions, to each other? Uh, no. Guns for everyone, without any restrictions whatsoever, including places of worship? You bet! Capital punishment because every life is sacred except for not every life because COME ON, some people just need killing? Obviously. Dress codes and teaching kids the Bible in public schools? Duh. Driver\u2019s license exams in English only? Naturally. Mandatory photo IDs for voting? Pffft, like you even have to ask. Democrats don\u2019t usually have contests like this.<\/p>\n The goal of this exciting the Whackadoodle Wingnut Conservative Purity Test was to stop the epidemic of SECRET DEMOCRATS who have long been infiltrating the GOP and running as Republicans in order to destroy the brand, with their filth.\u00a0You won\u2019t find those moderate Republicans campaigning for office. This is where we got \u201cRINOs\u201d \u2013 Republicans in Name Only. \u00a0For years, those on the left have laughed at Republicans as they fell victim to ideological purists (Tea Party politics being the most hilarious example). The advent of Bernie Sanders\u2019 revolution has exposed some of the same cracks, however, on the left.\u00a0Like all those Republican match-ups in modern politics, the Democratic primary race between Hillary and Bernie has For all of 2015, Hillary and Bernie shamed the GOP with their respectful, issue-oriented debate about things that matter to working Americans. The lead-up to Iowa intensified, with both sides drawing sharper contrasts. But for the most part, the Democratic candidates ran an amicable contest.\u00a0In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton\u2019s historic Iowa victory, Bernie Sanders has been giving\u00a0“real progressive” (PINO) purity test soliloquies, as if he’s the High Fucking Sparrow, “of the people”, standing in judgement, like a zealot whipping up an army just to bern it all done. Negative is not Bernie’s\u00a0brand and has never been his message.<\/p>\n In 2008, when the choice was between Obama and Clinton, Obama\u2019s appeal was the historic breakthrough he represented rather than doctrinal difference. In earlier battles, the central preoccupation was usually electability. You have to go back to Eugene McCarthy\u2019s anti-war challenge to Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to recall such an ideological civil war inside the Democratic party. But there\u2019s a culture that\u2019s developed among young folks where they are assigning moral values to political positions. If you haven\u2019t had a spotless record, if you\u2019ve ever changed your mind on anything, you are\u00a0flawed.<\/em><\/p>\n Voting on your morals alone allows you to get away with being impractical \u00a0But isn\u2019t it more<\/em> moral to actually win and get something close to a progressive agenda, rather than….. nothing? \u00a0And who made Bernie Sanders the commissioner of progressivism, anyway? Being more liberal than someone doesn’t mean they aren’t “progressive”.\u00a0When Sanders rails about the “establishment” he’s being a hypocrite. He has held public office since 1981, been in Congress since 1991. Nobody could be more part of the “establishment” than Bernie Sanders. \u00a0And how progressive are you really, if you can’t be a teeny bit excited that a non-penis American is going to be president of these United States?<\/p>\n I remember all the times over the course of my life as a democrat that I\u2019ve shrieked \u201cfucking democrats!!!\u201d Bernie is unapologetically liberal. For decades, democrats have been running from the term \u201cliberal\u201d because we let right wing nut jobs turn it into a dirty word; Bernie Sanders reminded us that it\u2019s something to be proud of. He\u2019s also reminded us that government can and should be a force for good in the lives of its citizens. He\u2019s forced the discussion of issues like income inequality, something democrats don\u2019t like to make too much noise about because the republicans will accuse us of fomenting class warfare and then Bubba in his single-wide painted like a confederate flag won\u2019t vote democratic.\u00a0In short, I came to believe that Bernie was good for the democratic party, forcing it to at least acknowledge the existence of its left wing. I agree<\/em> that the caucus system is inherently flawed; it’s a relic of a time before electronic communication, when it took days to travel from one’s locality to the capital to participate in the process. The rules it requires to function elude people who have not studied the process and the history behind it, more of the ongoing dearth of critical thinking that plagues this nation founded on the assumption of critical thinking.\u00a0Bernie Sanders is inherently correct in his analysis of what’s wrong with the country. But you can be right as you want, but if you can’t enroll people in your ideas, being “right” is the booby prize. It’s useless if you can’t get anything done. Apparently, a lot of people agree with that, mostly, apparently, us “Olds”.<\/p>\n Now I’m kind of like fuck that guy. He had been too good to be a democrat and now wants to use the machinery of the party to run for president. Much like Trump, Bernie’s\u00a0unexpected success seems to have given him the sense\u00a0entitlement routinely attributed to Hillary and now, if he isn\u2019t given the nomination despite the fact that he hasn\u2019t earned it, he\u2019ll turn the remainder of the campaign and the convention into a dumpster fire like a common Trump. I half expect him to start using trump\u2019s \u201ccrooked Hillary\u201d epithet.<\/p>\n Doubtless there are Bernie supporters who, when their candidate loses the nomination, will refuse to cast a vote for Clinton in November. I hear this all the time. \u00a0Of course, that just helps Trump roll into office but in their rage, they really do not care<\/em> that\u00a0millions of people who will lose their health insurance. They say Hillary is a \u201ccorporate shill\u201d or has only Wall Street\u2019s best interest at heart, but Hillary Clinton will not kill Obamacare.\u00a0Let\u2019s look at the big picture, a picture where tyrants and oligarchs like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz loom over democracy like shadows of a past we thought our Constitution had banished. As I recall, Ideological Purity Corps voted for Nader in 2000, and that worked out pretty well for the parts of the environment that didn’t get blown up.\u00a0Take a long hard look at Republicans and see where that road leads. You know it takes all sorts to create a political coalition and if we frame everything around some flawed\/purity test bullshit, we’ll become a permanent minority. People come from all walks of life and cultural mores, there are plenty of libtards who own guns and support gun rights, some of them don’t even know they’re libtards and instead call themselves ‘libertarian’. They can’t stand the GOP but they don’t like that all our solutions seem to be to take away gun rights, and they want to be able to smoke pot. \u00a0The same thing is true with abortion- there are plenty of religious libtards who are personally pro-life but don’t support criminalization. Come onboard, there are libtards (like myself) who idolize FDR and are not complete doves about foreign policy, come onboard! If we start picking people off by saying “you’re not progressive” and deciding we’re the fucking arbiters of being progressive, we’re just shooting ourselves in the fucking face.<\/p>\n I’ve learned many lessons in my LONG LIFE IN POLITICS that perhaps some of you YOUNGS have not yet learned. I learned the abject disappointment of having your dreams crushed. I learned that party elections are not a process of a few months around primary election day. I learned that sometimes choosing the lesser of two evils is a necessary choice for getting to a better future. I learned that the party process requires a long term commitment, lots of long hours spent in the year to year drudge of party governance. I learned you must be involved in the countless unpaid and thankless tasks that make the party wheels turn smoothly. I learned that working your way up the ladder of leadership requires a consistent show of commitment to the success of the party. The Sanders campaign understands none of these things. They think their short lived Bernie-come-lately Santa Claus list entitles them, anoints them really, to take over a party to which they have not been committed in the past and to which they are not committed today. When did Bernie become a Democrat? Like yesterday? When this is over he will go back to his stubborn “Independent” status in the Senate. I say, between election day this year and election day in four years, SHOW THE FUCK UP as a Democratic party stalwart. Show up for the mid-term elections. Show up for local elections. Campaign for Democrats up and down the ballot. Do that and then you and I will have many long discussions at local party meetings about how to change the party.<\/p>\n “But, but, compromise sullies the pristine perfection of our ideals! It’s almost as if politics weren’t some sort of spiritual quasi-religious experience”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I am truly, truly, sorry that humanity doesn’t support the ideologically pure as much as some would like them to do. Having to cobble together a coalition out of disparate constituencies with competing interests, which is necessary in order to mount a credible campaign for elective office in a democracy, means that candidates have to dismount from their lofty equines and get their hands dirty in the very brutal and messy scrum called politics. Sure, one can choose to remain above all of that and trust that the purity of your message will sell itself. And then if the hoi polloi don’t flock to you and give you their support, it just means that they have been too brainwashed to know what is good for them, and therefore deserve what they get. No need to lay out your arguments, make your case, and try to actually, you know, to convince people by (ugh) campaigning. (Let alone listen to their concerns.) Or trying to wrangle deals in order to gain support, which is the veritable definition of “politics”. The “pure vision” should be all that is needed. Since utopia hasn’t arrived yet then I guess we’re all still being sheeple, aren’t we?\u00a0We need to feel less, and think more. Take Trump\u2019s lesson to heart: Feeling only leads to Hitler salutes.<\/p>\nJesus<\/del> Bernie Sanders. Unflawed = “pure”. How pure are<\/em> you?<\/p>\n![\"0307-got\"](\"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/0307-got.jpg\")
degenerated into a demoralizing catfight over who has the greater claim to ideological purity.<\/p>\n