Giving thanks for Bernie

Tougher than that leftover, overcooked turkey

Top: Bernie endures and continues to fight. Below: The senator explains dialectical materialism to a young constituent.

One of the things I find myself grateful for these days is Bernie. Yeah, he is a curmudgeon (doesn’t tolerate fools and applies that definition broadly), irascible (“Already said that. What’s your problem?”), dogmatic (In the 1980s, we had a screaming match in the parking lot of the General Electric plant when, as mayor of Burlington, he confronted us protesters who wanted the city to pressure the GE plant to stop manufacturing the Gatling guns used to kill Salvadoran rebels—whose cause Bernie supported.) But local workers came first and they would lose jobs, he argued, if arms production went elsewhere.)

In Bernie’s early days he tended to reduce everything to class analysis. Over time, he increasingly incorporated struggles against racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental pillage, and other injustices into his analysis. He also used to be terrible on Palestine-Israel, but has evolved into one of the most vehement proponents of stopping weapons sales to the Netanyahu regime.

Throughout, Bernie has been persistently principled—astonishingly so by the standards of US pols.

So, hey Bernie, you were wrong about the Gatling guns, but you are right and rightly outraged about so much else. I am thankful that you are still fighting for the underdogs, and that you know who they are.

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