Yesterday, as I was walking a six year old girl to pick up her three year old brother from daycare, she said, “I have a trivia question for you, Sara. What do all animals avoid above all else?” After I wrongly guessed taxes and Fox News, she schooled me with “death, cold & sickness.” She went onto explain that all animals seek above all else “life, warmth, shelter & mates.”
It struck me that she understood better than most cable news commentators why Bernie Sanders is not just appealing but necessary to those who have been left out by the wall street economy and why the establishment doesn’t understand it. You see there are vast numbers of voters in this country who are fighting death, cold & sickness, seeking life, warmth and shelter and can’t afford to reproduce (which is the animal point of a mate, not just saving on rent).
The establishment, including people who are not insiders but who are comfortably well-established with intergenerational wealth to pass on, can’t understand Sanders’ appeal. This is why many comfortable progressives like Elizabeth Warren better than Bernie Sanders, she doesn’t sound desperate. See Vox, why isn’t Elizabeth Warren doing better when all my friends like her? The only existential threat we perceive is climate change & Donald Trump. We don’t have to create a GoFundMe to give ourselves cancer treatment or pay for childcare.
Many of us can’t see how someone who is so angry about other people’s needs getting met can meet our need to get things “back to normal.”
For a human animal who is scrambling to survive, like many are in this country, normalis not knowing how or where you could get ahold of as much as $500 in an emergency. See CBS News report from 2017 on a majority of Americans would have to go into debt to get $500.
Moreover, when we’re in survival mode, we can be manipulated into hating & fighting with our brothers and sisters. We can believe that the problem is immigrants stealing our jobs.
For those of us, like me, who never ever have had to worry how we’re going to pay the rent or the mortgage, what on earth we can scrabble together to feed our family, or how to pay for insulin, it is time for us to act on behalf of the rest of our human family.
This election is not about going back to feeling comfortable. Its about addressing the conditions that allowed an out of control demagogue to rise to power.
If we want to go back to feeling comfortable, we’ve got let others feel comfortable too. As Bernie puts it, “Are you ready to fight for someone you don’t know?” I am.
Amazing, Sara. I'm ready to fight for someone I don't know too.