Bernie Sanders — and ironically even Donald Trump — has awakened a new populism in America. U.S. citizens are demanding fundamental change in how government goes about its business.
This uprising, this surge of awareness, is not complex or theoretical. It is simple and pragmatic. From both of these superficially opposite ideological phenomena, the enlightening Sanders campaign and the frightening Trump victory, we see evidence of frustration and outrage. The battle cry is the same.
People are saying . . .
“We’re getting screwed and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
This could be an incredibly powerful vehicle for serious reform, regardless of how the presidential election turned out. In spite of the election of the orange autocrat and his unseemly team of kleptocratic neoliberal crusaders!
But there’s only one way that can happen. And it doesn’t depend in the least on who ends up in the White House.
Remember . . .
A president is a lightning rod.
But a president is not the lightning.
We the people are the lightning.
And that “lightning” does not find its effective expression in one person.
We the people are the energy, the force, the real movers-and-shakers behind fundamental change. We the people and only we the people can shape the future we want.
The Bernie Sanders revolution, which many are hailing as a truly historic populist revolt, can only be real if we the people individually and collectively — starting from the very bottom and working our way up — make it real.
It starts with each individual.
Each individual makes his or her unshakable commitment to what it important.
To what is non-negotiable. To what is absolute.
That commitment spreads outward from there. Family members, friends, neighbors.
It all starts at a personal level with each person and then diffuses through the network of individuals each individual regularly and not so regularly comes in contact with. One by one each person engages those who are to varying degrees part of his or her life.
One by one, they individually and collectively come to terms with what is important.
To what is non-negotiable. To what is absolute.
This is how to build a revolution.
It’s not about cheering for one man and expecting that one politician, regardless of how eloquent and charismatic, to do the work for us. Especially since that man may not even get elected. Especially since that man might end up being a truly horrifying demagogue, whose own otherwise despicable party even rejects him — Donald Trump. Or might not be a man at all but a war mongering corporate toady and unapologetic lapdog for Wall Street who happens to have a vagina — Hillary Clinton.
There is still time to harness the energy of the Bernie Sanders revolution.
There is still just enough time to make it happen if we want it.
Specific advice starts with Part II of this series.
While you’re waiting, you might take your Birkenstocks to your local cobbler and make sure they have plenty of tread.
