Fee­ling the Bust – I – II

Gepubliceerd op bij Antony

— Geplaatst in columns, proza

Fee­ling the Bust – I – II
 
 
I

The Ame­ri­can poli­ti­cal dis­course won’t cease to sur­prise and offend us. Its rhe­to­ric, the sha­me­les­sly show­ca­sed vanity, the blind hat­red, bla­tant miso­gyny and racism, it seems all so much more exag­ge­ra­ted, loud and grim, more Hol­ly­wood-like gro­tesque than what we’d find civi­li­sed or tolerable.

I must say, it’s star­ting to make me sick.

Under­stan­da­bly the admi­rers of Sena­tor San­ders won’t give in to the demand they’d com­mit to voting for Secre­tary Clin­ton after she beco­mes the demo­cra­tic nomi­nee. Not now, not just yet. I get that. What I don’t get is that loud fana­tic shout for ‘Ber­nie or Bust’.

Jef­frey Sachs, Foreign Affairs spo­kes­man for the San­ders admi­ni­stra­tion, calling the Clin­tons the ‘Ulti­mate Schmoozers’... Susan Saran­don, appe­a­ring on The Late Show as the Vir­gin of Gua­dalupe droo­ling over Ber­nie, insis­ting that she is a femi­nist in need of a $15 dol­lar mini­mum wage. How over­be­a­ring and smug.

I must be fee­ling a split­ting bust and I don’t like it one bit.
 
 
II

I was going to write some­thing enti­rely dif­fe­rent. Some­thing kind. Toying with the con­cept of recon­ci­li­a­tion (and sal­va­tion) I plan­ned to emp­ha­size the bene­fits of Sena­tor San­ders’ effort to change the poli­ti­cal lands­cape by pus­hing an unpre­ce­den­ted agenda into the Demo­cra­tic dis­course and by mobi­li­zing mil­li­ons of peo­ple for soci­o­po­li­ti­cal change. Like I said before, I’m con­vin­ced that San­ders addres­ses the right issues, mat­ters that should be dealt with, if we’re to keep any hope for demo­cracy and civilization.

I was going to write that I had a rising hope for Sena­tor San­ders to change his grim tune of demo­ni­zing Hilary Clin­ton, kee­ping his sup­por­ters in check, let­ting the bust slowly extin­guish wit­hout alie­na­tion of the bus­ters. Wit­hout sen­ding them back to the Trump circus.

I wan­ted to stress that on policy Ber­nie San­ders and Hil­lary Clin­ton just aren’t as far apart as the rhe­to­ric sug­gests, and that soon eve­ry­thing would start to calm down and eve­ry­body would come to their sen­ses under the wise guid­ance of the Senator.

Just leave it to the San­ders cam­paign to shat­ter ones dreams.
 

Antony Oomen
6.V/2016
Amsterdam