Bernie or The Donald

Watched interviews of Bernie Saunders and Donald Trump today and cannot believe how different, despite people trying to compare them,  the two really are. Saunders answers questions directly and sensibly, with calm, detailed answers that are directly applicable to the question. When asked about foreign policy, which he has not addressed as yet, he has clear intelligent, sensible replies and seems unlike any other candidate to understand that military action, which should always be on the table, should nonetheless always be the last option.

He seems very much to be a man who has his priorities straight, in that he wants to address domestic policies first and foreign second, but in addressing domestic policy he realizes that what is important, is what most affects the most people. His domestic policy is about what people need, not what their prejudices demand. Sanders, is about wages and living standards, not about religious issues like abortion or how much some are offended by gay lifestyles. He has already decided where he stands on abortion, contraception, gay marriage and immigration and has dismissed them as issues in favor of what he considers his most important mission and the most important mission for the president of the United States, the regeneration of the middle class and the raising of the living standards of the poor.

Then we listen to Trump, who rails against every complaint that any potential voter has raised but has no solution to any of them except that he is a winner and will get it done. We all like guys who can get it done but most of us have some need to get it done the right way, and so far Trump has only shown us how to get it done the wrong way. He boasts ad nausea, about how he’s made billions, but seems proud that he’s how he’s done it by bribing and cheating those who are innocent enough to believe his bombastic blustering and naïve enough, much like his current backers, to trust him. Is that the kind of President we want? I think not.

The press all carry on about how Hillary’s emails make her untrustworthy but they don’t seem to see that Trump, because of his methodology, is a disgrace to any profession to which he aspires, regardless of his financial success.

The big complaint against Sanders seems to be that he has described himself as a socialist. So what. This country is, despite our democratic designation, to a great extent socialist. A democracy, to be sure, in that we vote for our leaders, and capitalistic in that we live with laws which protect business, but unlike a purely capitalist society we take care of our citizenry. In a purely capitalist state, everyone is left on his or her own and the only function of society is to make as much money as is possible to the exclusion and detriment of everyone except ourselves.

This country is not run that way. We have government run; school systems, public transportation, hospitals, support for the indigent and roads. We take care of our senior citizens and now we have a fairly broad if not universal medical care system. We have unemployment insurance, retirement plans, Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. If you think that this isn’t a socialist society you just ain’t paying attention. And, oh yeah, that’s why we are already great.

The problem is that most people don’t understand the difference between a socialist government and a communist government. I’m not going to get into that here, look it up, but when you do, be aware that most European governments have at least as many aspects of socialism and most many more, than we do. That’s partly why we have dropped so far down the international scales of Freedom and Livability.

Bernie Sanders is a socialist because he believes that we, as human beings, have a moral responsibility to help others and ourselves make the country in which we reside and the world in which we live, better for all those who inhabit both. Donald Trump believes that we should stomp on everyone who gets in the way of any of our wants and that he who dies with the most toys wins, regardless of methodology. He is willing to lie about any and everything. A perfect example of that was evident on this Friday when he pronounced on national TV his opposition to the Iran Treaty to a great extent because Iran was going to get hundreds of Billions of dollars from us.

The reality of that lie is that the money that Iran will be getting is their money that has been grabbed by banks because of the sanctions, and the further reality is that almost none of it is being held by American banks. Close to 100% of that money, is being held by foreign banks. Trump knows this, he just lied about it because he also knows that statements like this are inflammatory to his rather already outraged and seriously dense supporters. It makes great demagoguery and after all, isn’t that what Trump is all about?

The difference between Sanders and Trump comes down to one simple question, who do you want running the country you live in, an honest socialist or a lying scum who bribed his way to success and boasts about it?