Dear Bernie Supporters

Dear Bernie Supporters,

I think you're being played for demagoguery rubes by yet another guy who's discovered the inertial power of a great big angry mouth and whose proposals are as patently unviable as "bringing back coal".

Bernie would fracture the country pretending to accomplish those ridiculous fake goals - while inciting you to a high Taliban pitch (we've seen that game up close once already). And it dumbfounds me that you've failed to notice that Bernie's grown old and wrinkly while holding extreme power for decades and achieving nothing - not even incremental evolutionary progress, much less the complete transformation of our political and economic system he promises (mirroring the shameless empty moron hubris (#moronhubris) of "Only I can fix it!").

It's obvious to those of us outside his alternative cult of personality that Bernie is all mouth, all incitement, all brutish anger, with no pragmatic substance (sound familiar?).

And yet.....fine. Really. Tis the season for demagoguery, I get that, and I cannot hold your preferences against you. You have the right to support and vote for whomever you want. Bless you, and same for my MAGA friends. Democracy doesn't mean my side always wins. Everyone gets a shot. Hell, I'll even vote for him, though a Democrat will undoubtedly carry New York either way.

However, I have a question.

If the Democrats nominate Bernie and he loses 44 states because the critical segments of Trump-averse Republicans and moderate Democrats both turn out poorly (figuring "A pox on both demagogues!"), will you guys say "It was still worth it"? Will it seem worth four more years of Trump to have gotten your message "out there"? If so, I can respect you as I hastily move north to Canada.

However, when those results come in - and those results will come in - and even one of you says, "Whoa, what the hell happened?!?", I will erupt with the fury of a thousand suns. My peak will blow and my lava will spit.

I will carry neither gun nor knife, to ensure no one's murdered (jail food would not agree with me). I will wear velcro sneakers to remove the strangling temptation of laces, and attach pillows to my fists, elbows, knees, and feet to avoid injurious gratification of my savage fury. But my mouth...my mouth will be unstoppable. My words will dissolve your brain and reduce you to a mumbling, insensate vegetal state. I shudder at the imagining.

I can view MAGAs - even the vicious ones - sympathetically. They know not what they do. But you (gifted with higher perspective from recognition of the intrinsic con of the large MAGAllanic cloud from the other mouthy/angry outer boroughs demagogue - and having been given an opportunity to restore sanity by declining the sugary enticements of Bernie's small MAGAllanic cloud) will be left, post-election, stranded, naked, with neither shield nor excuse; a blotchy pink mole rat choking on its own spleeny foolishness, blinking confusedly at the panicked citizenry of a nation you've failed. It will all be on you.

Again, if Bernie's the candidate - and so Trump inevitably wins 44 states - and you feel, in the aftermath, that it was worth it, that's a different thing. There's a consistent through-line there that I can respect as I pack my bags for Canada. But you'd better be damned well prepared to own that result.


I've been kicking myself all these years for voting Nader in 2000 (an immoderately reactive pendulum swing away from my renounced libertarianism), helping to elect George W Bush and make possible the Iraq debacle, but your action will make that look like the sanest, wisest, savviest, most beneficial political choice any citizen ever made. What Trump's done for the legacy of Warren Harding, you'll have done for me. And I won't even appreciate it.