Writing On The Bernie Sanders Campaign: The Denial Of Agency

Bernie Sanders cannot win the general election. He is unelectable. He will not win Ohio, Virginia, or Florida. The Republicans will eat him–a self-proclaimed socialist who keeps talking about ‘revolution’ and ‘economic inequality’–alive.

The most interesting of these several proclamations–all speaking to the hopeless, Quixotic, quest that calls itself the Bernie Sanders campaign–is, by far, the last one. The one that says that the ‘Republican machine’ would prefer that Bernie Sanders–indeed, it desperately ‘wants’ him to–be the Democratic nominee for president.

As this vision of the future goes, there is a well-oiled, Swiftboats-at-the-ready bunch of Republican party operatives who are just waiting to go to town on Sanders, and when they do, by golly, the rest of us are going to have to, just like those passive plastic sheets in Dexter‘s kill sites, stand back and let the gore and body parts splatter all over us. Because those Republicans, they are so powerful, so effective, so efficient, in their demonizing and their summoning up the forces of darkness, in their control of the media machine, that when they get to work on a mere human being, who is only supported by, you know, other humans, those Republicans are just going to chew him up and spit them right out and then its all going to be over, because you know, evil Republicans are just about the strongest force there is on this planet and we can’t fight them, so we might as well just call off the elections right now.

In this awe-inspiring conception of Republican operatives who can make and enforce any narrative they choose of reality, the universe is divided into two components: Republican Architects of Reality and then the Rest of Us. The Rest of Us do not have access to words, ideas, images; we do not have access to media; we do not possess rhetoric, writing, or any other tools of persuasion; we are incapable of responding to invective; we cannot summon up flights of fancy; we do not possess the means by which to purchase access to the airwaves;  we are objects, the Republican architects of Reality are agents; we are the objects that are acted upon, molded, pressed, manipulated; they press forth, we respond; we are putty, they are molds. They make, we accept; they give, we take; They do, we are done unto; theirs is the power, the glory, for ever and ever, amen.

Phew. Just writing about how powerful those guys are–and how weak we are–made me a little excited. So much power; who needs to go to the movies and watch lame Death Stars when you can fantasize about a real-life Death Star like this? One that has no single point of failure?

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled off was not that he made us think he didn’t exist, but that he made us think his power could be taken out on interest-free loans by any two-bit rogue passing through town.