Twitter is a case in point. Even as the campaign on the ground fosters a culture of radical listening, Twitter's character limit lends itself to short, declarative certainties, not openness, uncertainty, and certainly not curiosity. Even as Sanders asks us to "fight for someone you don't know," Twitter's algorithms goad us into brawling with one another over every perceived slight. And even as the campaign encourages us to put "me" on the back burner and find the biggest possible "us," Twitter (and Instagram and Facebook) are designed for us to flaunt and curate an idealized version of ourselves that is too often going to make somebody else feel like crap.
There is certainly a place for righteous rage in the Sanders campaign indeed rage at myriad cruelties that flow from bottomless greed is one of its core animating emotions. Sanders supporters also have every right to call out rampant double standards in how the campaign is treated, whether by the press or the Democratic National Committee (and these sorts of call-outs often win fairer treatment).
But Sanders is also right to ask his supporters to avoid attacks on political rivals that feel ad hominem, personal, or just nasty (and I admit that I have failed to control my tone from time to time). Plenty of the attacks are well earned, but that hardly matters. Because once an ugly mood starts to go viral, it has the power to overshadow an entire political project. And that's a big problem because it drastically undercuts what is most special and least understood about this historic campaign: that it is giving thousands of people permission to be kind to strangers and thereby build a movement so large, disciplined, and determined that it will make those truly deserving of our collective rage quake.
That, in summary, is why I stopped myself from rage-tweeting yesterday and wrote this instead. When I went back online to check in on how that inescapable platform had reacted to the tough juxtaposition of Sanders's call to "cool it" with Clinton's nasty provocations, I saw that #ILikeBernie and #NobodyLikesHim were both trending. There was some anger in there, sure, but for the most part, the hashtags had inspired a torrent of heartfelt stories filled with the fearsome power of us.
Not me. Us. That's how we win.
Postscript: I have endorsed Bernie Sanders for president and spoken at campaign events, but contrary to some reporting, I am not an official campaign surrogate.
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