Lick and load (some Cherry Garcia)
For decades, long before he ran for president, Bernie Sanders has been exhorting people to get active in the democratic process — to vote, to get involved in local politics, to form and support unions, to speak out for progressive and against regressive and reactionary government policies. Among his oft-repeated statements are that social change always comes from the bottom up and so the country needs a “political revolution,” i.e. a groundswell of progressive activism. The first slogan that appeared on his presidential campaign’s official T-shirts was “Join the political revolution.” It was quite a lofty, motivating phrase for supporters of a dark horse candidate. I remember seeing those T-shirts for the first time at his exuberant campaign kickoff on the Burlington waterfront. But the folks who were enthusiastic about joining this “revolution” weren’t holding muskets or pitchforks — just Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cones, which were free that day, as they sometimes are on celebratory occasions in this city.
Indeed, the way Sanders uses the phrase “political revolution” has always been as benign as a course in American civics. But in the wake of the recent attack against Republican politicians by a lone gunman — an assailant who had also been a Sanders campaign volunteer — I noticed in this Daily Kos diary a comment suggesting that Sanders should “retire” the word “revolution” from his rhetoric. The comment did get lots of pushback, including from the venerable Meteor Blades, but it was also recommended by more than 20 folks, including the venerable Catte Nappe, who elaborated in this comment the case for this term being potentially incendiary. And some folks, even if they aren’t anti-Sanders per se, simply never have cottoned to the term “political revolution,” particularly if they interpret Sanders’s “revolution” the way Daily Kos writer brooklynbadboy does in his recent diary:
Sanders voters are going to have to accept that the this [sic] is the system we have and plent [sic] of Americans, far more than they could ever beat in a national election, are fine with it. Hot Red Leftist Revolution isn't as popular as they think, and that gets proven time after time at the ballot box.
Put it out to pasture?
Should Bernie Sanders “retire” a phrase he’s used for decades on the theory that it could be incendiary in the wrong ears — very troubled folks on the fringe who might hear a call to activism as a call to assassination?
In practice, we’re all accustomed to reasonable precautions being exercised in the public arena. For example, it’s pretty normal for police and EMT to be present at big events, because we realize in any large group of people the chances go up that some sort of emergency could arise — anything from someone falling ill to someone acting violently.
But some things go beyond a reasonable precaution — which is how I’d categorize the idea of purging from our political vernacular the word “revolution,” which has been used for generations by liberals, conservatives, and the media in the context of political movements — e.g., the “Reagan Revolution.”
(Speaking of Reagan: The reason I supported Sanders in the primaries wasn’t this fiction of “Hot Red Leftist Revolution.” I thought Clinton would make a good president, but I thought Sanders’s unabashed rallying for grassroots progressive activism — i.e. not just rallying for particular policies but for a vibrant political movement to press for those policies — suggested that his presidency might, like Reagan’s, be a catalyst for change well beyond his own term in office. I made that case in a diary last year, but Daily Kos blogger and Democratic party-builder Chris Reeves — who of course no one would mistake for an advocate of Hot Red Leftist Revolution — penned what may have been the definitive mainstream case for Sanders in his January 2016 diary, “The Positive, Pragmatic Case for Bernie Sanders. From a Pragmatist.”)
There do of course exist in our culture examples of genuinely egregious political rhetoric. For example, Donald Trump for years propagated the racist lie that America’s first African American president was not born in the U.S. He also called Obama the “founder of ISIS.” During his presidential campaign, he called for all Muslims to be banned from entering the United States. And as if that wasn’t enough to foment hatred, he incited his crowds at campaign events by suggesting it’s appropriate for protesters to be roughed up and his political opponent locked up. (At a rally here in Burlington, he spoke giddily about tossing Sanders supporters out into the freezing cold after confiscating their coats.) Since the election, he’s referred to reporters as the “enemy of the people.”
In a post with the headline “The New York Times had two embarrassing takes on the Alexandria shooting,” New Republic writer Graham Vyse noted:
In fact, for all the hand-wringing on cable TV today about our toxic political discourse, few politicians could fairly be accused of inciting violence—but the greatest exception to this truism occupies the White House. “To be sure,” Alcindor wrote, in a false equivalence for the record books, “supporters of Mr. Trump, as well as Mr. Trump himself, have assailed opponents and the news media.” No, Trump’s supporters have assaulted opponents and called for the murder of both Hillary Clinton and journalists, while Trump himself egged them on.
While some folks may sincerely argue for an abundance of caution in political rhetoric in the wake of the Alexandria shooting (and for I all know, Bernie Sanders may be sympathetic to that view and might tweak his rhetoric) we do have to be on guard to the false equivalencies Vyse speaks of. The effort of decent politicians to encourage political activism is nothing like the malignant speech of a demagogue like Trump, even when the words are quite passionate. And surely we need the good folks on our side to be full of passion, full of energy, in both their words and their deeds in standing up to the reactionaries and the demagogues on the other side.