Reprinted from Greg Palast Website
Note: If you're in Philadelphia, I will preview my new film, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy--a Tale of Billionaires & Ballot Bandits" this Wednesday, in FDR Park on the huge Jumbotrons around the main stage. Learn how they will try to steal the election before they steal it; and meet the billionaire bandit behind Donald Trump. [I track down the evidence with help from "detectives" Ice-T and Richard Belzer, a stoner with a guitar named Willie Nelson, and divergent angels, Shailene Woodley and Rosario Dawson.]
Shailene Woodley and Greg Palast in Palast's new film The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
(Image by Greg Palast) Details DMCA
Bernie's campaign is just beginning. No kidding. The real campaign. The one he was chosen for.
I got this idea of what Bernie and Berners should do from Satan, from the Anti-Christ. Or, as you might know him from television, the Reverend Pat Robertson. That's correct: the berzerko right wing televangelist -- and one of the most brilliant men I've ever met.
Years ago, the Guardian asked me to investigate Rev. Pat's diabolical plan to create the first web-only bank. (The goofy bank caper was foiled when The Guardian reported on his less-than-savory financial dealings that would likely disqualify him from getting a bank charter.)
When I visited The Reverend at his TV studio in Virginia Beach, I reminded him that, when he ran for President in 1988, he claimed that God himself had told him to run. My question: With a campaign manager like that, how come he lost?
Robertson's answer: "The Lord did not tell me to win. He told me to run."
As Robertson and his minions explained it, the race gave him a list of three million names, addresses, phone numbers -- and millions in non-stop donations. From that list of believers and their bodies and checkbooks, Robertson created the fearsome Christian Coalition. And for two decades, no one could run for dogcatcher on the Republican line without the endorsement of Reverend Pat's Christian Coalition.
If a diabolical voice called forth Pat Robertson, I'm certain the better a of our nature called forth Bernie not for a political moment but to create a political movement.
Unless he's been fooling us, Sanders himself has always said his campaign's moral purpose was not to win the nomination (and surely he must have known the DNC couldn't permit that), it was all about a revolution.
Now is the time to create that revolutionary movement that Sanders claimed, correctly, could be more powerful than a mere President.
It would be a terrible, terrible waste for the Sanders movement to make its goal some instantly forgotten lines in the Democratic Party platform. (Does anyone remember the 2012 Platform's position on minimum wage?)
A Sanders permanent organization could turn American politics toward the sun. He could lead a real political revolution more important than winning the California primary.
I'd call it the Un-Christian Coalition -- though I suspect there's a better name out there.
I don't, as a journalist, ever endorse candidates. But one can't ignore the movement his candidacy has engendered. It would be a tragedy for our nation if this non-violent insurgency of young people simply floated away because of electoral politics du jour.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
5
4
3
