Warning: political post follows! I’m still thinking about why the continuing Black Lives Matter demonstrations are bothering me a little bit. This Ross Douthat post (the New York Times token conservative op-ed guy) has helped me crystallize it a little bit. Police violence is an important but narrow issue. Renaming streets and tearing down statues is justified in some cases but doesn’t do much to address systemic problems. Maybe the movement will expand to encompass larger issues like violence of all types, mass incarceration, discrimination and inequality afflicting black people. All good, but only a slice of the much larger problems affecting our country and planet.

Many of the people demonstrating in the streets voted overwhelmingly against the candidate who would have done the most on these issues. The article is called “The Second Defeat of Bernie Sanders”. The way I look at it, Bernie Sanders didn’t fail, we all failed to support the candidate who could have brought about real change for all the hard working people of this country, black people included. The “socialism” Bernie stood for was to take just a little of our country’s enormous wealth and use it to provide the benefits that would make ordinary people’s lives better, and that most other wealthy and even functional-but-not-so-wealthy countries in the world are providing. Health care, education, child care, and retirement for a start. If we ever decide to pay reparations for slavery, it is likely to look…something like this. Bernie would have fought to provide these benefits to the descendants of enslaved African people, and to everyone else who needs them. Big business and wealthy individuals would have fought back, tooth and nail. And Bernie would have maybe led a Congress that would have fought back by enshrining meaningful anti-corruption provisions in our nation’s Constitution. He would have led us in doing our nation’s fair share (at least) to address the climate crisis and accelerating ecological collapse. Maybe. Most likely, he would have made real progress on one or two of these issues in our messy real world political system, then tried to lay the ground work for others to continue the fight. But that is more than the next Joe B. Democrat in line is likely to do. Prove me wrong Joe!