A Rose By Any Other Name Still Smells As Sweet

As an ardent Bernie Sanders supporter who has many friends among my fellow Democrats who are not, I find it very dismaying, upsetting and ironic to read posts and comments on social media mischaracterizing Bernie and we who support him. Bernie Sanders is the most decent, classy person and campaigner I’ve ever witnessed. In 2016, journalists and debate moderators were constantly trying to bait him to personally attack his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and he would not. For example, he refused to entertain questions on the whole email server thing, and said he wanted to stick to the issues. He constantly said, throughout 2016, that he hoped the debate between candidates for the nomination would be substantive, stick to the issues, and avoid personal attacks. And he stuck to that and ran a beautiful campaign.

His entire life’s work, platform, choices and actions, up to and including his 2020 campaign for the Democratic nomination for President have all been about INCLUSION, respect, civil rights, social justice, economic fairness and a society that invests in and is for and about all the people, not just the wealthiest individuals and corporations. At every campaign rally, from 2016 through the present, he talks about how “we cannot allow anyone to divide us up. When we stick together, black and white, straight and gay, men and women, old and young, there is nothing we cannot do.”

Most of us who support Bernie, do so precisely because of the decency of both the man and his platform, period. I, and every other actual Bernie supporter I know, are kind, fair-minded, loving human beings. So it hurts to see us constantly mischaracterized on cable news networks and on social media as being the opposite, and I won’t even give the specific words that are being used ANY oxygen.

What is so ironic is, I see and hear all this commentary about how terrible Bernie and, particularly, us Bernie supporters are. Yet, from our perspective as Bernie supporters, it sure seems like WE are the ones taking a lot of incoming missiles and being generalized about.

Perhaps if people would actually take the time, and make the effort, to listen to what Bernie himself actually says, and what is actually in his platform, and his life’s choices and actions, instead of believing what is said *about* Bernie and those of us who support him, by the media and those who aim to take down his campaign, they would realize that Bernie stands for respect, tolerance, pluralism, civil rights, social justice, economic justice and inclusion. There is zero way, if you actually LISTEN to what Bernie says, that anyone could misconstrue it as being--as the media and those who oppose Bernie are working very, very hard to have you believe, and are clearly having success at getting you to believe--the opposite.