#NotMeUs

In the aftermath (not necessarily afterglow) of Iowa's first in the nation primary, I've been reading articles like this and shaking my head because "real" journalists even while filing timely and accurate reports continue to NOT get the campaign and appeal of Bernie Sanders.

I don't think they can help it. To a man with a hammer the whole world is a nail and in the politics of America 2016, we're having a fire sale on hammers, except when we're not. And when we're not, we're too easily confused.

Nothing about the Sanders' campaign has been business as usual and that really is the point. His unstated campaign argument should seem familiar, it was adapted and adopted by Occupy Wall Street on full display at Zuccotti Park, but Sanders has been at this for decades. And to my eyes, he shows no signs of fatigue.

The guys, and gal, on the other side of the aisle are offering variations of some concoction that's one part Ayn Rand and one part Jesus Christ. Except that Rand had no use for Christianity (or any religion actually) which may make it kinda hard to stick the landing come Election Day but if any GOPper can do it, I'd put my money on the Canadian Texan. Yeah, he does look like a greasy weasel but these days over there, between the greedheads and the speedfreaks, who doesn't?

Speaking of both, you know who we need to come back from the dead and cover this entire election? Sure you do, HST. I know it's not your birthday (though Adam and Claire are closest I suppose) but here's a present, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972, A Generation of Swine. You're welcome.

But let's face it, the good doctor ain't making a housecall even as The Republic shakes and quakes. We'll have to slog this one out ourselves, but we've got a puncher's chance with Bernie Sanders.

And unlike Ayn (and how I hated slogging through The Fountainhead as summer reading at Browning), I know just the literalist he needs, D. H. Lawrence and a little something to read while at the barricades.

If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.

Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.

Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.

Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.

Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!

-bill kenny