The media likes to refer to his as a "long shot" or a "protest" candidate. And then they realize he's only trailing a few points behind Clinton and raised more money in the first 24 hours from small donations than any Republican did.
He's considered "crazy" and "weird" because he actually voices the same arguments the average person in this country has been making for the past 20-30 years; fair pay, environmental protection, preserving the middle class, offering healthcare to all, free college tuition, preserving Social Security, ending our constant military-occupations and providing for our wounded veterans.
Total freakin' nut job! Actually like... wanting... stuff.... for his voters!?
Where I live, in the UK, that sort of talk is considered widely as the ONLY opinion to have for those particularly on the centre-left or futher left, even those on the centre. What seems to be apparent in the United States is, particularly in the big, more progressive coastal cities, a universal shift from the Cold-War 'red scare' and paranoia of Socialism to a shift of more liberal, progressive politics. I sincerely hope that the United States does not venture too deep down the road of redistribution of wealth and young revolt, in my opinion. There are a huge variety of ways to reduce the nation's deficit for example, and Bernie Sanders does seem to know what he is talking about, but is he offering solutions that would work if they were actually placed into real legislation?
Going back to my original point about the UK's political swinging. Universally my generation and slightly older are mostly swinging hugely to Socialism. Huge discontent in the media for figures like Margaret Thatcher and an overwhelming exaggerating use of words like 'compassion' and 'fairness' from both politicians and celebrities seems to have caused more damage than real legislative change. For example, 'constant military occupations' that need to be ended. I do not see them as occupations, but rather relief forces setting up camp in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to wipe out the threat that is posed not only to the general populace of the country, but of neighbouring countries. It occurs to me that recently, people have been jumping on bandwagons regarding interventionism, and it's high-time the armed forces aren't smeared in such a way just because they're in a foreign country fighting wars which split public opinion. Ironically, pseudo-liberals (I don't call them real liberals as they like to call themselves as such) love this kind of smear, and then hypocritically call for the improvement of care for our veterans, such veterans which have been directly involved in said interventions which they find so appalling and immoral. Look at what the United States (and Britain) has done for Iraq. Created a semi-stable democratic government, and the population (in-particular the Kurds) are no longer constantly threatened by their own self-destructive fascist government under the sado-masochist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Terrorists have not been 'created', they have spawned out of pure hatred for Western values and actions which, by the way, is not an excuse to say that the terrorists would stop being terrorists 'if we weren't so mean to them'.
If anyone is savvy on British politics, they'd understand where I am coming from (Unless they were Socialists, of course), particularly with media outlets like Channel 4 and Sky News. Sky News is our equivalent Fox News, only it is reversed; I've watched many Sky News broadcasts during times of great political, social, and cultural events and they seem to give large platforms to people that actually support groups such as ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas. After the gunning down of 12 journalists in Paris back in January, Sky News gave a 20-minute platform to a man that represented the Muslim Public Affairs Committee in the UK. See for yourself instead of reading my blocks of texts
[video=youtube;27FBUpokmIo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27FBUpokmIo[/video]
Anyone read Bernie's rape fantasies? Sounds like an awesome guy!
Let me guess, you read the Fox New-ertainment version taken out of context of the actual article, written by a 30 year old, 43 years ago? One word foreign to most newspapers is called "satire".
Where I live, in the UK, that sort of talk is considered widely as the ONLY opinion to have for those particularly on the centre-left or futher left, even those on the centre. What seems to be apparent in the United States is, particularly in the big, more progressive coastal cities, a universal shift from the Cold-War 'red scare' and paranoia of Socialism to a shift of more liberal, progressive politics. I sincerely hope that the United States does not venture too deep down the road of redistribution of wealth and young revolt, in my opinion. There are a huge variety of ways to reduce the nation's deficit for example, and Bernie Sanders does seem to know what he is talking about, but is he offering solutions that would work if they were actually placed into real legislation?
Going back to my original point about the UK's political swinging. Universally my generation and slightly older are mostly swinging hugely to Socialism. Huge discontent in the media for figures like Margaret Thatcher and an overwhelming exaggerating use of words like 'compassion' and 'fairness' from both politicians and celebrities seems to have caused more damage than real legislative change. For example, 'constant military occupations' that need to be ended. I do not see them as occupations, but rather relief forces setting up camp in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to wipe out the threat that is posed not only to the general populace of the country, but of neighbouring countries. It occurs to me that recently, people have been jumping on bandwagons regarding interventionism, and it's high-time the armed forces aren't smeared in such a way just because they're in a foreign country fighting wars which split public opinion. Ironically, pseudo-liberals (I don't call them real liberals as they like to call themselves as such) love this kind of smear, and then hypocritically call for the improvement of care for our veterans, such veterans which have been directly involved in said interventions which they find so appalling and immoral. Look at what the United States (and Britain) has done for Iraq. Created a semi-stable democratic government, and the population (in-particular the Kurds) are no longer constantly threatened by their own self-destructive fascist government under the sado-masochist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Terrorists have not been 'created', they have spawned out of pure hatred for Western values and actions which, by the way, is not an excuse to say that the terrorists would stop being terrorists 'if we weren't so mean to them'.
If anyone is savvy on British politics, they'd understand where I am coming from (Unless they were Socialists, of course), particularly with media outlets like Channel 4 and Sky News. Sky News is our equivalent Fox News, only it is reversed; I've watched many Sky News broadcasts during times of great political, social, and cultural events and they seem to give large platforms to people that actually support groups such as ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas. After the gunning down of 12 journalists in Paris back in January, Sky News gave a 20-minute platform to a man that represented the Muslim Public Affairs Committee in the UK. See for yourself instead of reading my blocks of texts
[video=youtube;27FBUpokmIo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27FBUpokmIo[/video]
Nixon gets impeached for Watergate but people think he's a hero. Clinton has an affair with an intern, and people still think her's a hero. Gee-double-yah and Dick Shoot-anything-that-moves Cheney kill tens of thousands of people in an illegal war and people worship them still. This guy writes a piece of fiction 43 years ago, a year after A Clockwork Orange comes out and people think he's some type of sex offender?
That's the exact bullshit wrong with this country; people are more interested by the drama of a presidential race than by the actual issues that come up.
[video=youtube;PDBOwPORHGU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBOwPORHGU[/video]
It would appear that you display an absence of responsibility, coupled with an underlying layer of a personal will to want to smear the Bush administration by claiming the armed forces 'killed tens of thousands of people'. This responsibility is and should be given to the United States, the richest and most powerful country which has a global duty to relieve dictatorial systems which by definition almost scream out for international coalition to come and rescue their citizens from certain death or worse. Whether that be due to dictatorial regimes, a spread of a deadly virus, or a terrorist organization attempting genocide or invasion of sovereign territory. But the use of the word 'illegal'? The Iraq war is actually not just one of the most justified wars legally, but morally also. However, for now I shall speak solely on legal terms, and through those terms the following is the case: Saddam Hussein committed four international crimes several times by violating four separate international humans rights treaties and conventions. They are as follows...
-Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2 of the United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 260.
-Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (The use of mass chemical weapons against the Kurds).
-The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, Article 47, Section III: Occupied territories, restricted the effects of annexation on the rights of persons within those territories.
-The International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (Hussein had ties to harboring members of Al-Qaeda several years prior to 2003, and were investigated by the CIA, GCHQ, MI6, FBI, WTC and the DIA).
You also mention that the Bush administration, in-particular Dick Cheney were worshiped. I'd dispute that heavily and attempt to turn your attention to the level of forced coerced worship of Saddam Hussein which only intensified post-1991. It became so severe that he wasn't just hated, he was feared by Iraqi citizens to such an extent that a new era of self-destructive fascism would inevitably implode on itself via external intervention. What he did to his own people, the crimes he committed, even the method he used to gain power in 1979: by forcing one half of his party to shoot the other half, in order for their complete admiration and deity-like worship of Saddam was absolute. It was worship or death. Worse than death; your family would be part of the punishment too, raped, gassed and thrown in a mass grave with the rest of the Kurds. If that is the sort of country people over here really want to be in total domination of weapons of mass destruction and oil, I'd like to offer the only alternative before too many of these attitudes seep into deep political power and protect countries like North Korea, or worse.