Feeling the Bust – IV‑a/b
IV‑a
Take Bernie Sanders’s long lasting flirtation with Daniel Ortega in the ‘80s. Sanders was invited to the seventh anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Managua. By his own boasting account, he was the ‘highest ranking American official present’ at this event and upon return he declared to be ‘impressed’ with the ‘intelligence and sincerity’ of the Sandinista leaders, arguing that they were not the ‘political hacks’ some had portrayed them to be.
Those very intelligent and sincere leaders of the Sandinista National Liberation Front had started their revolution with confiscating all Jewish property, after which they sequestered the only synagogue in the nation, and expelled what was left of the Jewish community of Nicaragua.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign never used this shit.
IV‑b
It’s Mother’s Day today so let’s talk about mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, mothers and guns.
Let’s call your attention to the 26-year-old Milwaukee mother who was shot dead recently by her 2½ year old toddler, who ‘found’ a firearm in the car. Let’s remember the six children, their mother and her boyfriend in Houston, Texas or the 28-year-old mother of two in Indianapolis whose new husband shot her in the face 13 times. Let’s remember them and all the other 13.000 people who have been killed in the United States in 2015 in a gun homicide, unintentional shooting, or murder/suicide.
Let’s think about all the mothers left mourning and let’s grieve alongside with them. And most importantly, let’s apologize to them.
For most of these killings should have been avoided with decent restricted gun laws in place. And let’s acknowledge that these laws are not in place due to the gun industry and its powerful lobby machine, the National Rifle Association of America, one of the top three most influential lobbying groups in Washington.
And let’s also acknowledge that it was this very NRA that launched Bernie Sanders’s political career in Washington in 1990.
A couple of days before the 1990 Election Day the NRA sent a letter of endorsement to its 12,000 members in Vermont, with an urgent piece of advice about the race for the state’s single House seat. Bernie Sanders was the more honourable choice for Vermont sportsmen, it said. And Bernie Sanders won over the gun rights groups by promising to oppose the bill they hated — a measure that would establish a waiting period for handgun sales. Being a man of integrity, as a Congressman, he kept his promise.
Fine. That’s how politics works. It’s a dirty business and Sen. Sanders knows it well. So that he voted five times against The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a.k.a. the Brady Bill, is not what I hold against him per se. Nor his vote to give gun manufacturers immunity. What I dislike is that he won’t own it. And what offends me is that he accepts that his followers condescendingly insult the mothers, fathers and families of the Sandy Hook victims by accusing them of letting themselves be ‘exploited by Hillary Clinton’.
And yes, Hillary Rodham Clinton, mom, grandma, women&kids advocate and future president of the United States of America (if she doesn’t get shot, that is) did touch this shit in her overall extraordinary civilised campaign, simply because it’s relevant and verifiably true.
Antony Oomen
10.V/2016
Amsterdam