Today I read the Review section in the Sunday Times and the Opinion section of my local newspaper. I had the feeling all the political pundits are asleep or that they're living in the 1980s. In the Times, Timothy Egan wrote a rambling and largely incoherent essay about Bernie Sanders. Egan said Bernie's plan for a free college education and universal health care "are no more thought out than a bumper sticker."
Egan's observations are so false as to be almost libelous. Sanders' health care plan and his higher-education proposal are quite sound, and both are less expensive and more egalitarian than Obamacare and our federal student-loan nightmare.
In my local paper, George Will dismissed the rise of Trump and Sanders as "political silliness," and lumped them both with the simplistic socialist politicians of Great Britain. Will derided supporters of both candidates, calling them Trumpkins and Sandernistas.
I am astonished by the near unanimity among political columnists on both the right and the left regarding the upcoming presidential election. Almost with one voice, they ridicule both Trump and Sanders--basically implying by their arguments that Americans would be better off if Crooked Hillary became President
Some write from a conservative perspective and some call themselves liberals, but almost all of them share one thing in common--their columns appear under photographs of themselves that are about 20 years out of date.
Indeed all these people are from another era--from a time when the oligarchs had Americans convinced that our politicians were aligned into two political parties based on political principles. But of course we all know now that the Democratic-Republican divide was a charade--just a puppet show to amuse the rubes while politicians on both sides of the aisle lined their own pockets.
But the saps woke up. Some threw their support behind Trump, and some went to Sanders. Now the media elites are hysterical, writing mad drivel that cannot be identified by ideology. Froma Harrop insinuates Bernie Sanders is a racist, and Bill O'Reilly ridicules Bernie as doddering Socialist. Or is the other way around?
All these people--Froma Harrop, George Will, Timothy Egan, Frank Bruni, Steve and Cokie Roberts, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, etc.--need to wake up and join the 21st century. The peasants are rising, and their fury will not be assuaged by stale prose written by people who come across like eccentric nursing-home inmates writing letters to the local newspaper.
I hate to break it to you, George, but Ronald Reagan is dead. |
References
Timothy Egan. Bernie's Last Stand. New York Times, June 5, 2016, Review Section, p. 2. Accessible at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/bernies-last-stand.html?_r=0
George Will. Britain, too, is infected with political silliness. Baton Rouge Advocate, June 5, 2016, p. 7B. Also accessible in the Washington Post at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/britain-too-is-infected-with-political-silliness/2016/06/03/77560a20-28e8-11e6-b989-4e5479715b54_story.html
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It’s fascinating how some pundits seem to cling to the past instead of embracing the present. George Will has such a rich history in political commentary, yet it feels like he’s stuck in a bygone era.
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