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Bernie is asking you. That's all hes got. Sorry guys, no one else can do it.
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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I am also weary of Bernie's endless calls to do this or that while not specifying any way of doing it. I certainly don't expect him to do anything more, he's already made a much larger impact than most individuals ever can or will. But that entire tour with AoC kind of felt like only half of a useful thing. We all know it's a problem. We all want to put a stop to it. But nobody knows how, that's what's missing. What do you want us to do, Bernie?!? Vote in the primaries, I guess? Would be nice if the next steps were included in the message to take action. Like an instant macaroni box whose instructions just say "You must make the macaroni!", it feels a bit silly.
I get this feeling when I watch Jon Oliver. Jon's really good at identifying the problem, demonstrating why its a problem, and making you kind of upset about it.
God forbid you ever watched Jon Oliver back to back because you'd go mad with the immediate understanding that you live in bizzaro world.
So, it would be nice if HBO had a second show which was more like myth busters where people championed each of the problems Jon pointed out and left the viewer with a clear understanding what they can do or at the least, what can be done.
Grow your own food, make your own things, slash your expenses. If everyone does this, the enemy loses most of their power
As someone who lives this type of lifestyle, also share and barter within your community. It takes more than one household to manage everything. Meet your neighbors. Share skills and ideas. Support one another.
He does try to give a solution. It's just that there is little to nothing the average viewer can do to make it happen. Sadly, that is just the way it is. Same with Bernie. We actually can't make the solutions happen. But both are raising public awareness, which "can" impact policy. So I guess watching and listening is what we can do.
...and if nothing else, documenting what is being done, if it will ever come to a point where it can be turned around.
There's a reason the Nazis paved over and planted fucking trees on as many concentration camps they possibly could before they got overrun.
There are some tremendously powerful actions Bernie could be suggesting we do to fix this mess.
For example, he could be publicly calling for people to:
Vaguely calling for the end of oligarchy instead of loudly calling for those very actionable steps is a bit of a missed opportunity for the resistance.
However, If we put in the work, we can resist this and we can win. Look at how effective the above mentioned methods were when used in Chile in 2019.. If we completely reject the political system and rebel on a mass scale, there is NOTHING they can do to stop us.
I think he believes, like I do, that a general strike is not going to happen right now. If he were to call for it, and it fails to happen, he loses a lot of his influence. And most people aren't willing to put thier livelihood on the line yet. As for unions... they are already on the up swing. More and more places are unionizing. I don't think that effort needs his help at the moment. But I could be wrong on that.
Union membership declined from 2023 to 2024 to under 10% of the US workforce, despite a high public approval.
I think Bernie explaining to people how unionizing could be weaponized against the regime would help, and particularly if he endorsed the IWW; a more militant union who are not corporate captured, nor only seek increased wages and are then become pacified as other more normal trade unions tend toward. The IWW is the only worker-led anti-capitalist union in the US.
Hm, so why do you think he didn't?
AFAIK he's never spoken of the IWW before.
I would love to see a politician as prominent as Bernie openly call for that. But he'd get assassinated so fast...
Yeah I love it when he provides solutions.
I feel like Jordan Klepper would be perfect for that, he does great on the street engaging with folks and trying to explain their ignorance slowly
(FYI Jon is the frazzled old mensch, John is the increasingly frustrated Brit)
I do think that "the system" (not any particular person or group of people, but the more abstract social meta-organism) is evolved, all systems are, to integrate and channel possible destabilizing forces into neutralized or even system-reaffirming forces. The system does not "platform" people who would legitimately threaten the system as a general rule. Jon Oliver is a pressure release valve, if he was to propose solutions that threatened to alter the system too much (systems see significant alterations as akin to death), he would be deplatformed organically. Again, I must stress that it is not an actual person or organization explicitly setting out to do this, like some sort of shady Comedy Central Illuminati. It's just the same as how our body has a bunch of independent organs and cells that all work together without exactly trying to or knowing that they're doing so.
Unfortunately Bernie is largely the same sort of thing. We can be assured of this by the fact that he is influential. Almost without exception, the more influential someone wants to be, the more pro-systemic they must be. In Bernie's case he may not even realize how pro-systemic he is, he likely sees himself as more anti-systemic. But he is anti-systemic in the same way as a white blood cell is anti-systemic - that is, not at all, and only in appearance without inspection of the bigger picture. I suspect this is why he ends up not proposing any clear course of action. His role, although again I think he is unaware of this, is to create the sense that establishment dissent exists and is possible, that change and reform is possible. I say this without taking a stance on whether it is actually possible or not. Both in a system where it is possible and in a system where it is not possible, there would still be a flag bearer for that possibility regardless of its actual existence.
What I mean to say is that the system self-selects for the type of people who acknowledge problems but not the type of people who make proposals to fix them. It wants to appear to be investigating the desires of its constituents while not actually doing so - the system only cares about its constituents in so far as its constituents lead to the system's well-being as a whole. The system does not intrinsically care for its constituents well-being. So while systems do indeed evolve and legitimately investigate ways to improve their own well-being, they will only appear to investigate ways to approve the well-being of their constituents, if they can help it.
All just my impressions of course, I hate talking in an authoritative voice about my ideas, but it's better than prefacing every sentence with "I think", "it seems like", etc.
I don’t know how anyone can watch John Oliver for over 5 minutes. I like his points but man is he irritating. He sounds like a turkey when he gets excited
Lol. I like him, hes funny and I like his self deprecating comedy style. Not everything is for everyone, I know.
His energy is a bit much for me
Unfortunate, he's my favorite celebrity of all time. His humor is 11/10 for me. Maybe he'll grow on you eventually.
If he said what needs to be done, he'd be imprisoned immediately for inciting violence against the president, and for planning a coup. Until he has troops on his side, he can not tell you what actually has to happen.
Someone with power has to say it or nothing will happen.
Then it is doomed to fail. Power has to come from the bottom up. People need to learn how to take power back for themselves and their local community
We already know what needs to be done, we just aren't allowed to talk about it.
The Tree of Liberty is thirsty.
Hear hear. When I look at the state of American democracy from outside, what I find really distressing is that it's not just Bernie; no mainstream person or organization with national reach is giving concrete advice and/or instructions on how to depose the oligarchy, so you have people's energy going to angry tweets and meaningless parades.
What instructions are you looking for, exactly? Like, what are the instructions that 'should' be handed out at this point?
There's no simple, easy, or quick solution to this, and since the election, things have gotten considerably worse on the 'possible solutions' front. Calls to organize and seek alternatives to oligarch-controlled resources are the groundwork which orgs constantly call for but no one fucking heeds. So what're the instructions that will provide the solution that those calls haven't?
Yeah of course, which is why someone needs to be out there convincing people to do the things that aren't simple, easy or quick.
That's why I qualified my remark with "mainstream". I'm talking Bernie-like figures who are widely known and respected by liberals. Unless I'm mistaken that segment of the population still thinks elections and phone calls to Congressmen are going to fix this.
As I said above the problem is that the right people aren't providing those instructions, but also: strike, strike, strike. I'm getting past the point where I can make authoritative-sounding statements, but I find it really weird that what is arguably the strongest weapon in the working class's arsenal is barely being talked about. Yes I know groundwork is necessary for that (though I'd argue it's not nearly as much as commonly thought), but still someone needs to get the conversation from "strike? But my job/insurance/whatever!" to "how do we make it possible," and at least from my position outside America I haven't heard of anything on this front.
But Bernie constantly calls for people to organize at the grassroots level, to join unions, to seek alternatives to oligarch resources?
Bernie has spoken in support of strikes as a tool for pressuring not just employers but the oligarchy more broadly numerous times. If you're talking a general strike, that's a nice idea, but as you yourself note, there is a problem of needing groundwork (and support) for that. Groundwork which people seem disinterested in.
Organize and do what? Because the only thing I've heard Bernie saying in the past five months in the way of concrete action is "vote and call your representative".
Did he do so at any time after Trump's inauguration? If so I'll take back my statement, but I remember a conspicuous lack of such rhetoric during the oligarchy rallies, for instance.
Organizing is the first step, the groundwork. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I bitch about people wanting immediate action without placing the groundwork.
"Join your local unions, form local unions, support strikes"
Short of calling for illegal action (based but probably not realistic to expect from a sitting member of the legislature who will probably be hindered more than helped by a stay in jail) or a general strike (see: above comment about groundwork), again, as mentioned at the start of this, I'm not sure what you want him to be saying.
Fucking hate the enshittification of search engines, finding a set of transcripts or simply searching tweets is a fucking Herculean task. I'll get back to you on this if I find more than fucking two transcripts.
Certainly true, but what you're organizing for is also important, because organizing can be the groundwork for anything from negotiating better wages to starting a revolution. My point was that it's very possible that the sort of organizing we're talking about is very different from what Bernie is calling for. It's still useful advice, but not "fighting words," so to speak.
Uh... good luck, you'll need it.
I would argue that organization is a tool - unions have long been used for much broader ends than just the welfare of the workers in the individual union against the individual employer they are formed around. Being organized is, itself, a means to coordinate action on much broader issues - being organized to negotiate better wages puts you in a better position to start a revolution as well, even if that's not your initial intent. I mean, that's why unions have been at the forefront of nearly every major leftist revolution.
More broadly, it's why fascists (and, before fascism as a mass movement arose, late 19th century imperialists) co-op things like sports clubs, and why, historically, guilds and public fellowships were often suppressed or coopted by the reigning authorities - a tool may be made with a single intent, but it invariably has many uses if people become motivated to apply them.
Yeah, I'm... not sure that I have the motivation or morale to continue much more on that account.
Normally I'm an enemy of nostalgic thinking, remembering quite distinctly what the mid-late 2000s were like, but fuck, man, at least the search engines worked.
Of course, which is why it's still good advice, but to follow up on that example I'd argue that the unions at the forefront of major leftist revolutions were a lot more aggressive than anything America has now, because for instance they were the ones who (sometimes literally) fought for essentially everything modern workers have. Compare to modern unions who won't even strike if it's illegal and you'll see two completely different mentalities at work; unions back then were already predisposed to forceful direct action, which is at least part of why they were such important revolutionary actors. It's still better to have the organizational infrastructure (assuming it's not captured by capital) than to not have it, but the mentality shift needs to happen for anything near what 19th and early 20th century unions were doing to take place and so far almost nobody with nationwide prominence is even trying to have that conversation. This gets us back to my original point: The people best positioned to hasten this mentality shift such that it happens within a reasonable timeframe are all in denial. I'm not asking for people like Bernie and AOC to call for anything illegal, but the fact they're not out there actively calling for active resistance to the regime is a problem; someone needs to fill that hole and fast.
But how would they go about it? The system is so entrenched. Anything socialist is considered 'commie' and anti-american, a sentiment carefully cultivated since WWII. The two party system that relies on huge donations means the oligarchy has a huge input in politics no matter which party wins. The only thing that's being decided is which oligarchs will rule.
There's just no way to turn this around until things get bad enough that they can't hold the floodgates anymore. America is (fortunately for the little man who would suffer the most) still far from that.
Damn it, now I am going to put on a Bernie voice and shout “you must make the macaroni!” next time I’m making some mac and cheese.
That’s always been my issue with sanders. Also as much as people hate to hear it, he couldn’t even win the support of the Democrats, there’s just no way he would win a general election.
Another thing, im tired of hearing leftists say “we want old white men out of politics” while asking for Bernie. He should be an advisor to a younger candidate, not the candidate himself
Edit: Lemmy is wild, you could give the most inoffensive criticism or point about Bernie sanders and you get downvoted. There is zero tolerance for dissenting views when it comes to Bernie, he’s become a god to some people, like the opposite end of the cult of Trump
You're getting downvoted for this bullshit misinformation:
That's pushing the fallacy that partisan primaries are somehow necessarily picking the candidate most likely to win in the general election, but they're not. And the assumption breaks down particularly hard in Bernie's case, because a huge part of his path to victory would've been his ability to transcend American political parties and draw a lot of support from exactly the people who ended up voting for Trump because they wanted to burn down the political establishment at all costs. He, uniquely among Democratic candidates, could've beaten Trump at his own game.
But that would've required neoliberals to "vote blue no matter who," so we got fascism instead.
He lost the democratic primary, that is literally losing the support of your party
The point is, just because the party prefers a certain candidate does not mean the public as a whole prefers that candidate. The assumption that the winner of the primary is that party's most electable option for the general is false.
The entire concept of having political parties that hold primary elections is fundamentally bad.
Who would be a suitable younger Bernie replacement?
AOC off the top of my head but I’m not American so I don’t know all your young players