Howdy Folks we have a rare special extra episode of the show this week why well because I actually bothered to read the entirety of Bernie Sanders capitalist money grab it's okay to be angry about capitalism by Bernie Sanders this is sponsored by expressvpn so um this book it's it's bad it's a bad book it's a bad book not only because it's quite boring but also because it's filled with terrible ideas and so today we're going to go through it and the reason we're going to go through it is because somehow this career useless person this elderly socialist who's never held a real job literally never his entire life held a real job a person who's so lazy who was once kicked off a commune after three days this guy has somehow become one of the most prominent voices in American politics he's the he's the inspiration for the squad he is the New Movement Across America he's the guy who nearly took the nomination from Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primaries and his new book is basically just a long yalp of Rage Against the status quo there are a bunch of themes in this book we're gonna go through a lot of this book today because I think it's important for you to understand the case for Democratic socialism as made by Bernie Sanders first of all he never really uses the word socialism he doesn't like using the word he uses it like a couple of times in in different contexts but he never uses the word because even Bernie who really goes out there on TV and says it a lot doesn't want you to think that the alternative to capitalism would be government nationalization of services which is mostly what Bernie has called for historically he also never wants you to think about the possible downsides of his preferred policies instead it's all about the possibilities we're gonna go through a few themes here in his book the the first and most prominent theme in his book is that things that are bad in life all the bad things in life capitalism is to blame now he never really defines capitalism which the way that we Define it typically means private property freely exchanged goods and services freely Exchange in a legal system that guarantees the Integrity of that private property that's typically how we think about free markets Bernie never bothers to Define capitalism because to do so might force him to reckon with the premises of capitalism namely you have a right to your own labor you have a right to your own property you have a right to freely exchange those things but he never has to deal with that because for Bernie don't have those rights those rights are absolutely irrelevant to Bernie Sanders people like Bernie are going to make the decisions about what happens to those those things so instead the first and most prominent theme of his book is everything that is bad in life can be chalked up to capitalism you know blister on your foot that's capitalism the guy next door to you is poorer than you that's capitalism a bird fell out of the sky and simultaneously crapped on your car and hit your car with its thudding body capitalism all of its capitalism so you see it like from the earliest points of of the book right literally the on page three of his crap book it's okay to be angry about capitalism Bernie Sanders writes this quote here is the simple straightforward reality the Uber capitalist economic system that has taken hold in the United States in recent years propelled by uncontrollable greed and contempt for human decency is not merely unjust it is grossly immoral now there are a lot of embedded assumptions and even a statement like that first of all do you think that an Uber capitalist economic system has taken hold in the United States in just the last few years has the United States grown markedly more capitalistic in the last several years we have tens of thousands of pages of regulations that are issued every single year we have one of the world's most progressive tax systems they have extraordinary social welfare benefits that are available Medicare Medicaid Social Security those are just the federal programs and you have tons of State programs as well the notion that America is some sort of unbridled capitalistic John galt-like Utopia for for Libertarians is nuts and certainly has not become more so in the past few years not under Joe Biden who's been transformatively a big spender and a big regulator or Barack Obama who's transformatively a big spender and a big regulator or by the way under Donald Trump you spent a crapload of money if you want to look at the spending habits of the United States which correlate pretty highly to government involvement in the economy look at the fact that since Bill Clinton we have literally doubled the federal debt under every succeeding president and we're getting ready to do that like again right now under Joe Biden so you have to start from the premise that everything bad in life is because of the Uber capitalist system that has merged in the past few years which of course is just historic nonsense it's nonsense we're significantly less capitalistic now than we were in say 1890. or 1920 or for that matter 1940. or for that matter 1950 or for that matter 1980. okay the supposed capitalist excesses of America okay then he talks about his moral values so where is moral values right he does know history but he talks about his moral values quote there are moral values that should be guiding Americans into the future and about which we should be very clear greed is not good massive income and wealth inequality is not good buying elections is not good profiting from Human illness is not good racism sexism homophobia and xenophobia are not good Wars and excessive military budgets are not good the simple truth is that an unfettered capitalism is not just creating economic misery for the majority of Americans it is destroying our health our well-being our democracy and our planet hey so this is like low IQ left-wing demagoguery so if you don't agree with him with his assessment the capitalism has impoverished our planet and destroyed our health and our well-being because fact check it hasn't capitalism has led to the greatest uptick in life expectancy in world history it has led to the greatest spread of prosperity in world history you can look at a at a chart of global GDP and it basically looks like this and then it hits the free market era and boom it just goes straight up but according to Bernie I guess it was communism that did that or something in any case he doesn't bother again with any sort of historic analysis here he doesn't even bother to acknowledge the goods that capitalism has done and say that there are downsides which should actually be a reasonable Point instead he says that if you support capitalism it's because you support greed or massive income and wealth inequality or buying elections or profiting from Human illness racism sexism homophobic is you know again this is all part of his first theme which is everything bad in life is capitalism and of course this means that what we have to do is reject it it's time to reject he says conventional wisdom and incrementalism no more conventional wisdom no more incrementalism nothing we're just gonna go For Broke gang it's time to fundamentally rethink our adherence to the system of unfettered capitalism and to address the Unspeakable harm that system is doing to us all well first of all I don't see the Unspeakable harm that that system has apparently done to Bernie Sanders who I say has been a career useless person his entire life and who yet owns three houses including a lake house so um seems like like that dude here's what unfettered capitalism meant to Bernie Sanders Bernie Sanders is currently 81 years old he has not held a job a real job his entire life and he is worth millions of dollars oh my gosh the the Unspeakable harm this brings us to theme two of the book and it's you know connected with theme one if theme one is everything bad in life is capitalism theme two is good good stuff just magically exists it just magically is it's just there it's just there we don't know why it just happens because here's the thing a real critic of capitalism and there are many people on the right like Sora bamari for example and there are people on love like right they're they're people who actually are serious thinkers Bernie is not one who say capitalism provides lots of goods and services it creates more technological innovation but there are downsides the downsides may be in terms of individual fragmentation or Community social fabric breaking up or whatever right those are critiques I may not agree with a lot of those critiques but they are legitimate critiques those are critics made by people like Joseph schumpeter who is an advocate of capitalism Bernie doesn't make any of those critiques because again this is dumb people Democratic socialism so the First theme is I hate the status quo and everything that's the status quo is capitalism the second is all the good stuff that's around you because you look around your life say yeah there's some bad stuff like I have the blister and the bird is falling from the sky and all that but then there's also some pretty good stuff like I have the cell phone right here I have a computer in front of me I have a house I have a car I live way better than my grandparents did like way way better than my great-grade grandparents did I live better than my parents and me let's be frank about this your living standard today in 2023 is significantly better than your parents living standard was in 1990 you have better stuff you do I know people have told you that's not true take a look at the devices your parents were using like a Walkman and think to yourself and no cell phone and think to yourself whether you would trade places with your parents economically speaking in 1990. the answer is most likely not okay but that would require Bernie to acknowledge that capitalism generates these goods and services after all he has already said we live in the most Uber capitalist era of all time which means that all the good stuff around you where did that come from According to Bernie statically appeared there was a wizard and The Wizard came and went and boom all the good stuff was there nothing with capitalism and so this connects with his belief that people who are rich didn't earn their wealth right everything just magically appeared it was like how God created the universe in the Bible Bernie spoke and there were billionaires and there was good stuff and they were totally disconnected or cap it rather capitalism spoke and there were billionaires and there was good stuff but the good stuff had nothing to do with the billionaires it was just magically there so he says quote as we saw more clearly than ever during the pandemic it is not the oligarchs who are essential so he has this whole thing about the billionaire classes billionaires should not exist direct quote billionaires should not exist and he says the United States cannot afford to support a billionaire class that takes far more from this country than it gives back wait hold up is the United States supporting the billionaire class or is the billionaire class supporting the United States who pays the taxes the United States doesn't pay the taxes the United States government United States seizes money from some people and then uses it to the benefit presumably of all in the best possible scenario or to the benefit of a specific few or a group of people that Bernie likes but the basic premise which that the United States supports billionaires and that billionaires take more than they give back by the way that is not remotely true that is assuming the billionaires gain their wealth by literally going into somebody's house and seizing the wealth the way that billionaires become billionaires typically is they provide goods and services on a voluntary basis that a crapload of people like to use and participate in as far as the notion that oligarchsen billionaires during the pandemic it was your delivery guy who delivering I work for they work for himself or was he actually like an independent contractor from Amazon you may have noticed like Jeff Bezos like without Amazon how do you get through to the pandemic question without people who um who provide the internet you know very rich people how exactly did did all those workers get supported throughout it who pays for the taxes in the United States the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes they pay way more than their fair share of taxes and so Bernie Because he believes that good stuff just magically appears ignoring the fact that capitalism actually produces new Goods Services Innovation technological growth instead of just he he can't acknowledge that so instead as such as magically appears it's a precondition to society quote it becomes clear that the time is long overdue for us to do away with billionaires which by the way sounds an awful lot like killing the gulags end a winner take all system based on greed corruption and rampant self-interest and move toward a system motivated by compassion cooperation and our common interest now this has become it's going to become another theme that I'll get to in just a moment the theme for Bernie is that policies don't matter intent matters which is about as evil a government policy as I can imagine he says this isn't about creating a rigid system that discourages creativity and Innovation there's nothing wrong with a business or an entrepreneur making a profit that as we'll see is just a throwaway that is literally the only throwaway he has in pretty much the entire book about the good of capital you say there's nothing wrong with you making a profit we just have to seize it and also we have to crush our business and we also have to make sure that you don't actually get to run your business even though he's never run a business dudes never run a Popsicle stand like the only business you ever ran made crappy educational videos about Eugene V Debs I'm not kidding you back in the 1970s in Vermont he says there is something profoundly wrong however when massive corporations controlled by the wealthiest people on Earth why cheat bribe and steal in order to make profits that are funded by the destruction of our lives our environment and our democracy again I'd like like a shred of evidence here would be would be great and then he says it's time to end a culture that not only accepts but actually creates the obscene degree of inequality and Justice and uncontrollable greed that is so damaging to our nation in the world again the idea here is that the natural state of humanity is good and normal and then we created a culture that loves greed and thus greed has become the prominent way of life this of course is silly exists throughout all human time and space human beings are very greedy this is just the way it is and what capitalism does is it actually says you don't get to steal your neighbor's money you have to make a thing and trade it to your neighbor capitalism is forced altruism as I've said before so this of course means that he never actually considers where wealth comes from at no point does he say how is wealth created that is not anything that he actually considers in this the entirety of this very long and boring book this is this book by the way charts out to 293 pages it's like 10 pages of actual content he doesn't actually care about where goods come from he just assumes he assumes them there's a famous joke in economics it originally came from a book from 1970 by a guy named Kenneth Bolding where he said there's a story that's been going around about a physicist a chemist and an economist who are strands in our own desert island with no implements in a can of food a physicist in the chemist each device an ingenious mechanism for getting the can open The Economist said assume we have a camera a can opener has a lot of Economics is sort of imagining theoreticals but Bernie actually does that he just assumes Prosperity assume Prospect don't imagine how we got there don't think about how we got there don't provide any proof how we got there just assume it this leads him to lines like this one quote the pace and direction of technological change cannot be left to the market if there is to be hope for a fair distribution of the benefits of that change so he has to control how it's distributed but he also going to control how it gets funded and how it gets directed even though he's never created a thing ever okay this of course is connected with theme three billionaires are evil so the reason billionaires are rich is because they're evil and terrible quote while an exceptionally wealthy few wallow and affluent and become exponentially richer with each passing day the majority of Americans live lives of quiet desperation they're not scheming to pay for trips to outer space yeah the billionaires are particularly evil so they weren't evil until they became billionaires like he he fails also to acknowledge that there is in fact income mobility in the United States there is many of us who are in the top one percent did not start off in the top one percent my family when I was growing up was definitely not in the top one percent I'm now in the top one percent so was I not evil then but I'm evil now like how exactly does this work well we'll get to more of Bernie Sanders's terrible book in just one second first you know there are people like Bernie Sanders would love to keep track of literally everything you do all day long so they can tax the living hell out of you but what if there was somebody who actually did you belong about every single thing that you did every minute of the day that'd be weird and creepy but that is exactly what happens when you go online your internet provider is tracking logging every single website you've ever visited it can legally sell that information to anyone that's why I always use expressive VPN expressvpn reworks your internet connection through their secure servers so your internet provider cannot track your online activity you might be wondering if I'm rooting all my death through a VPN can't that VPN log my data instead and that does in fact happen but not in the case of expressvpn expressvpn is the only VPN I trust because they use it trusted server technology and it makes it impossible for their VPN servers to store data they even had one of the biggest Assurance firms pricewaterhousecooper audit their technology so you know you can trust it I've been using expressvpn for years to protect my own data you should do exactly the same stop letting people keep logs of what you do online visit expressvpn.com Ben YT that's expr essvpn.com Ben YT get three extra months for free expressvpn.com Ben YT and listen listen to this sort of leninist
ugliness that he directs against people who make money in our country it really is amazing quote we need to recognize once and for all that for people on top enough is never enough how much do they need the answer is always more like heroin addicts oligarchs are never satisfied with what they have they need a new fix more and more and more no matter what the consequences of their greed I mean that's probably we should kill them they sound pretty evil all they want is more and more and more now in reality it is Bernie who wants more and more and more of their income because he doesn't produce anything I can't get over this he has not produced a single thing of value in his entire stupid life not a single thing nothing zero zilge nada but he says that it's they're greedy they want more as opposed to Bernie who is altruistic as all hell from his lake house was in the kind of language quote when a criminal walks into a store and shoots the clerk behind the counter we make the moral judgment this behavior is socially unacceptable and the gunman should be punished yet when the wealthy and Powerful make calculate a decision that are destructive and life-threatening to millions of people or to the planet we're told it's just business so he's now equating a business owner making a decision and people participating in the market with a person who shoots a clerk at a store he says quote real politics recognizes that the corporate Elite are not nice guys no matter how much they contribute to charity or how many awards they receive from universities and hospitals to which they've donated buildings so it doesn't matter it you say that you know Bill Gates you know that guy is the Gates Foundation he's living on your political side like don't you like him no it doesn't matter that he's given a lot of Charity doesn't matter that he's employed to tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people and giving them a living no they're still bad real politics recognizes corporate leads are not nice guys they're ruthless day after day they sacrifice human life and well-being in order to protect their privilege I mean again this is rather murderous language they literally spend their days figuring out the rich people how to kill you so they can make more money to kill you to murder you and steal your wealth real politics fights for real choices says Bernie progressives must make it clear there are two sides in this fight on one side are the wealthy few who will see nothing to the many on the other side are the many who must demand what is rightfully theirs now he never actually answers why it's rightfully theirs it's a real question why why is somebody else's stuff rightfully yours explain I want to know like what what did Bernie do to deserve any of your money the answer is he doesn't bother because again the billionaires are bad people which excuses you in actually going and taking their money all of this is utopian nonsense right so we have three themes so far one everything that's bad in status quo as capitalism two all the good stuff that just magically exists three the billionaires because they didn't they didn't create any good stuff that starts magically existing the billionaires are evil and terrible and bad and probably we should eat them and four there are no limitations on dreams none and this brings us to what I think is actually the most evil line of the book there's a lot in the book that's kind of evil there's one line in uh Bernie Sanders is it's okay to be angry about capitalism that is particularly evil okay quote the goal of any Democratic moral and rational system must be to create a society where people are healthy happy and able to live long and productive lives that's not the evil part here we go with the explosion of new technology and productivity that we are experiencing we now have the capability to provide a good life for every American okay so you can even in that line he's assuming that the prosperity just exists right capitalism has nothing to do with it free markets systems they have nothing to do with it it just exists here's the evil part our economic debates should not revolve around questions of resources they should revolve around questions of intent and will let me read that last line again our economic debates should not revolve around questions of resources they should revolve around questions of intent and will understand how evil that is here's what you need to understand economics has always been about the distribution of scarce resources and how you actually use scarce resources to create plentiful resources right supply and demand is about the distribution of scarce resources how is how are those resources allocated how do you create incentives with resource allocation that allow people to innovate and create new products and services right that's what that's what policy has always been about he says you should never think about that stop thinking about questions of resources instead the only the only way to adjudicate whether a policy is good or bad or whether an economic system is good or bad is the intent and the will the intent and severe men of great that's what matters that you aspire to Greatness and you must have a virtual power that's the only way in the intent and will that is the worst way to adjudicate whether a policy is good or not who cares about the intent of policy makers seriously what matters is how their policies work as a general rule and will so what he means by this presumably is if you intend to equalize society and if you have a strong enough will to do it Society will magically be solved everything's great you had the intent and you had the will magic wand but in reality what that means if you have the you know who had the intent in the will Stalin he did let's assume the best of intentions from Stalin he wanted a more equal society in which everybody got their fair share and he had the will all he had to do was kill a few million people in a giant famine and he could he could get less some I mean you can really get there but he could try now same thing he had the intent the intent was that we were going to develop and industrialize and he had the will he was able to force all those dumb Farmers to melt down their plows into useless lumps of metal and Then star 40 million of them he had the intent in the will any politician who tells you that politics is about intent and will should scare the living hell out of you and Bernie just says it right out loud now again this is all part of his broader utopianism which suggests that um you can just wave magic wands and magic things happen right quote six trillion dollars he's talking about Joe Biden's build back better six trillion dollars a day large an unprecedented number but we were living then and continue to live in in unprecedented moment and talk about a non-sequitur like the big question about Bill back better was how are we going to pay for that what does it do and he's like well it doesn't matter it was a big number but these are Big times what that's like saying you know taking this frying pan and slamming myself six times directly in the face with this frying pan it'd be an unprecedented thing to do but these are unprecedented times okay and that's all of his that's all the economic proposals quote do we create a new system based on the principle that Healthcare is a human right and that every man woman and child in this country should in a cost-effective way be guaranteed quality and Equitable Health Care regardless of economic status um well I don't know do you have a magic wand that would achieve this because if so sounds great also you don't and then he one of the things he proposes in his book is what he calls a jobs guarantee literally every single person in the United States will be guaranteed a job by the government quote we can meet all those needs and those that arise in the future if we create a job guarantee that is sufficiently visionary and sufficiently funded he doesn't actually explain what he means by sufficiently Visionary or sufficiently funded because those costs would just blow you out of the water this is will a job guarantee cost money of course but failing to invest in our future costs even more again this is another variation on it's an unprecedented moment so we have to spend an unprecedented amount of money will a job guarantee cost money yes will I say how much no but I promise you it'll cost you more if you don't world's worst con man right here con man shows up at your door and he's like I'm going to tell you this bridge in Brooklyn how much money is it going to cost a lot but you know what if you miss out on this opportunity you're going to be just cursing yourself the rest of your life you could own that Brooklyn Bridge your failure to invest in the Brooklyn Bridge would have cost you even more my goodness he uh concludes his book by the way with it with a bunch of recommendations on how to fix Society here's what he says quote make the Constitution relevant to the 21st century rethink the United States Senate rethink the United States Supreme Court end all forms of bigotry and all forms of bigotry you want to cure cancer while you're attitude and all forms of bigotry there there are there are a few things here that are that are pretty spectacularly nonsensical when when it comes to his sort of utopianism I love this this particular line really got me says our struggle is to end a system that evaluates worth as a measure of Market profitability a system in which we are asked to believe based on salaries paid that the star athlete who helps a billionaire team owner increases bottom line is worth more than a thousand teachers who help children Escape poverty the American people never approved these brutal trade-offs that insult our values um so a few things first of all the American people do not have the ability to tell you what you are quote unquote Market worth but notice how he just conflate human worth with Market worth now he's a socialist he shouldn't do that as a socialist he should believe that those are two very different things that economic value is not the same as spiritual value I mean that's something forget about socialism as a capitalist I don't believe that human value equals economic value I know a lot of people who are not wealthy who I think have extraordinary human value I know a lot of people who are wealthy who I think are kind of garbage people but Bernie equates the two and so the idea is that our struggle is to end a system that evaluates worth as a measure of Market profitability but that's exactly what you're doing you're evaluating worth as a measure of economic receipt so you're working within the economic system are you not but his idea presumably is that um he should make the call and I guess all teachers should be paying a million dollars and that's again the comment that is theme number four here there are no limitations on your dreams Utopia is achievable theme number five and this one runs again throughout his book it's okay to be angry about capitalism so he says a big defender of democracy he is uh and he does this directly in opposition to Donald Trump right Donald Trump is the great threat to democracy he says Bernie socialist centers who loved the USSR Back in the Day quote it is no small feat that in four short years Trump annihilated the long-standing leadership of the Republican party and converted a central right political organization into a vehicle for right-wing extremism that Drew comparisons with European neo-fascist parties yes Donald Trump was basically turning the Republican Party writ large into a neo-fascist party right challenging democracy is bad he thinks that the Donald Trump challenged democracy and that's really bad except when he does it because the entire book talks about how there's no real democracy in the United States as it turns out there is no democracy the system should be overthrown quote we live in a democracy but they own that democracy he says we live in a democracy by the way there's democracy or scatter quotes around the first democracy we live in a scarecrow democracy but they own that so we don't live in a democracy is what you're saying you know who else was was saying that the guy who you say was a fascist that's who Bernie and then he says true individual Freedom cannot exist without Economic Security and Independence economic rights are human rights true individual Freedom cannot exist without those rights uh no that's using rights in two very very different ways typically when we talk about rights we talk about the freedom of from he is talking about the idea that there are certain preconditions to living okay those preconditions to living are just preconditions to living generally they apply in Communist States in fascist States in monarchies in oligarchies those preconditions to living are things like food and water right but but you Proclaim those rights is a very different thing and talking about the political rights you have from the government that's not the same thing at all those are necessities necessities are not the same things as right again sloppiness is the is the Hallmark of Bernie Sanders and Democratic Socialist thinking more broadly but again the bottom line here is that he believes that we don't have those economic rights in the United States so there are no human rights in the United States we live in a democracy without human rights there are a few points in his book where his his latent hatred for the United States really comes out like really comes out and uh here is one of them quote recently there has been much political and media discussion about the oligarchy surrounding Vladimir Putin the veteran KGB operative was emerged as Russia's authoritarian leader but oligarchy is not a uniquely Russian phenomenon what about the oligarchs of America what about the perverse and destructive role they play in shaping our society why is there no acknowledgment by our political and media Elite that there is an American oligarchy every bit as dangerous as the oligarchies we decry in other countries uh maybe because the oligarchies that are allied with Vladimir Putin involve pushing people they don't like out of like seventh-story Windows and invading foreign countries and legitimately executing their their dissidents and jailing them equating Vladimir Putin with the United States system and the actual Russian Olympics paid by Vladimir Putin with like Elon Musk is absurd but again fine points are not his strong suit his challenges to democracy are throughout the book right democracy is great except that he hates it quote The Establishment through our political system our media and our schools perpetuates the mythology we are a Democratic Society in which the people are Supreme and control the destiny of the nation really really so democracy don't challenge it unless your name is Bernie Sanders there are a few other themes that hold true throughout the book but I mean this is a it's an anti-American book right I mean this is it's not just an anti-quote-unquote capitalist book he never actually critiques capitalism he just critiques the status quo and blames capitalism for it and assumes all the goods in American society are the results of magic but he he wants to the main theme of the book under undergirding all of this is that he is going to activate a new generation via the systems of power he's going to create an entire new generation of apparatus who agree with them it is kind of amazing what he says about the educational system in in his book Bernie Sanders so for example he says for education to get focused on the real needs and real possibilities for students in the 21st century they have to break out of the mentality that considers our elementary and secondary schools merely training grounds for workers so you're not supposed to have a skill set that leads you to be employable no that's not what education is really about says Bernie really what education is about is indoctrinating you into a left-wing worldview he quotes a um a scholar about Finland quote saying we began by explaining her view that for progressives the world over education must be a focus not just in and of itself but as part of a broader struggle to create a Freer and more equal Society education is not about gaining a skill set education is about remaking an entire Generation Well curriculums are organized so children can examine complex societal problems like climate change in all of their classes as well as in clubs and after school activities think about that students being taught about problems and then being taught they can solve them so we have to turn our Educational Systems not into skills inculcation but into bizarre indoctrination factories I mean the book is pretty frightening is the truth that's filled with bad political analysis like he claims that Joe Biden's failure to pass Bill back better is the reason why he's suffering in the polls that's obviously untrue is the Afghanistan debacle that drove Joe Biden into the 40s his analysis of the squad where he just talks up the squad endlessly which is of course ridiculous he tells a bunch of lies in there like there's one lie in particular where He suggests that half of all the personal bankruptcies in the country are connected to unpaid medical bills which of course is wildly unproven it turns out that among the many many things that people don't pay when they go bankrupt there are medical bills it doesn't mean the medical bills are what drove the bankruptcy that's fact checked by The Washington Post or he says things like countries around the world have been surpassing the United States when it comes to life expectancy and that of course ignores the the fact that the United States has a far higher rate of injury death and that because of that that creates a life expectancy Gap there's an article in Jama the Journal of American Medical Association back in 2016 pointing out that if you actually get rid of things like injury deaths that that closes the mortality Gap in the United States with other countries pretty quickly but you know truth is not Bernie Sanders's strong suit it's just not a strong suit I do have to end my analysis of Bernie Sanders is not very good book with a couple of quotes that are just crazy towns because this really shows who he is and Bernie Sanders really is the guy who questions why we need so many brands of deodorants on our shelves why can't there just be two he really is the guy who thinks that bread lines are good because at the end of them you get bread that's who Bernie Sanders is and the fact that this guy has become a mainstream political voice in the United States right now demonstrates how stupid we are politically my favorite line from the book I have to conclude with this because it really is spectacular quote over the past 40 years the ruling class in the United States has gone to war against organized labor and as part of that war they've eviscerated the entire concept of class and class Consciousness in the country okay so put to the side of the fact that that in and of itself is crazy the United States has never had a solid class conflict because unlike the countries of Europe there was never an entrenched class system right in Britain there was an in French class system you were a lord or you were a commoner in the United States that never applied this goes all the way back to Alexis to tocqueville but here's the great part quote we regard it as normal for example that corporate media and big business encourage us to identify with the New England Patriots the Chicago Bulls or the Los Angeles Dodgers we are not encouraged however to root for our class that's a weird statement so he's saying that they bought and paid for corporate media are the ones who are encouraging you to be a Yankees fan and if they really were not bought and paid for they would be encouraging you to be a Bourgeois fan or a or a impoverished class fan the hell is he talking about but you know crazy old Moon yelling at Sky is in fact one of his things it is apparently the charm of the man unfortunately this career useless person has now become as I say a major voice in American society so the truth is there's not that much more to Bernie Sanders's not very good book and I hope that he makes a bundle off of it using the mechanisms of capitalism and then he can try to explain to all of his fans why exactly he has a lake house and why he's charging 95 bucks a seat for his public appearances for it's okay to be angry about capitalism suffice it to say there ain't much there there ain't much there and you should remember this when it comes time for your Democrat socialist friends to explain to you the genius of Bernie Sanders not only is Bernie Sanders not a genius he barely has two neurons to rub together
2023-04-08