Why I’m for Bernie Sanders, by Oliver Stone

One prominent Democrat has Hillary Clinton pegged. From Oliver Stone at huffingtonpost.com:

When fear becomes collective, when anger becomes collective, it’s extremely dangerous. It is overwhelming… The mass media and the military-industrial complex create a prison for us, so we continue to think, see, and act in the same way… We need the courage to express ourselves even when the majority is going in the opposite direction… because a change of direction can happen only when there is a collective awakening… Therefore, it is very important to say, ‘I am here!’ to those who share the same kind of insight. — Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Monk, The Art of Power

I’ve been in deep despair these last few months about our political landscape. This quote from Thich Nhat Hanh recently elevated my spirit, and I share it with you. Because I am — we are — still here! Though it’s clear that the die is cast and that Clinton will win — that is, if you believe in numbers and materialism, but I don’t, not completely.

I enclose here (below) several recent articles, which you need to read to understand how difficult a situation we’ll be in if we continue with a harder-line version of Obama. Hillary Clinton has effectively closed the door on peace, blasting both the Palestinian peace process and the Russians in the same week. NATO is her god, the best thing the “exceptional” US has to export in this new “American Century.”

But who set this policy and who controls this country? Her point of view is steeped in the traditional post-World War II, Atlanticist, NATO-domination of the universe. It’s set in stone. No president it seems, no democratic vote, no dissenting media can alter this. We’re going to be in border, resource, and forever wars for the next 10, 20, 100 years, until Trump (who our shadow government will never allow to exercise power) actually said in his straight way of talking, “our cities go bust.” Our media has been drained and made callous by war, increasingly sensationalized by TV, looking for the next high in the next headline, the more outrageous the better. Modesty in American politics is dead — it’s better to be sensational.

Ironically, as they call Trump unelectable (which he is), it leaves you to think Clinton is the “new normal,” in which case you’ve been deceived by the unnecessary dichotomy that Clinton is actually “respectable” in the same way that Eisenhower/Dulles 1950s were respectable when we went about intervening and overthrowing governments in many countries. But the difference was they at least had the brains not to get into shooting wars. To suggest that NATO should’ve expired in 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated, I suppose, isn’t questionable anymore. NATO, which has expanded to 13 countries since 1991, must be supported and Clinton has been brainwashed by the neoconservatives to believe it’s about “Russian aggression” when it’s the United States that’s ensuring the greatest build-up on the European borders of Russia since Hitler did it in World War II.

We’re going to war — either hybrid in nature to break the Russian state back to its 1990s subordination, or a hot war (which will destroy our country). Our citizens should know this, but they don’t because our media is dumbed down in its “Pravda”-like support for our “respectable,” highly aggressive government. We are being led, as C. Wright Mills said in the 1950s, by a government full of “crackpot realists: in the name of realism they’ve constructed a paranoid reality all their own.” Our media has credited Hillary Clinton with wonderful foreign policy experience, unlike Trump, without really noting the results of her power-mongering. She’s comparable to Bill Clinton’s choice of Cold War crackpot Madeleine Albright as one of the worst Secretary of States we’ve had since … Condi Rice? Albright boasted, “If we have to use force it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.”

To continue reading: Why I’m for Bernie Sanders

 

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