Amen i hope more of you see the dire circumstances of our times

I am on many Senators and House members mailing lists The usual info from them of both parties is how great they are Blah Blah Blah but each week Bernie send out emails like the one below with a real message. please take the time to read it…

We Must Not Move Toward Authoritarianism

Dear Fellow American,

It is no great secret that our country is divided politically.

I would hope, however, that all Americans and Vermonters come together to support our democratic way of life and oppose the very aggressive movement toward authoritarianism that the Trump administration is pursuing.

Let’s be clear.

When you have a president who withholds funding that Congress has appropriated or abolishes agencies that Congress has established – that is authoritarianism.

When you have a president who threatens to impeach a judge for rendering a decision that he doesn’t like, or whose administration ignores a 9-0 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court – that is authoritarianism.

When you have a president who sues the media for writing stories that he disagrees with, or threatens to take CBS’s license away because of a program that was critical of his policies – that is authoritarianism.

When you have a president who threatens law firms who represented clients who opposed him or his policies – that is authoritarianism.

When you have a president who tries to withhold funding from major universities because of the political views of their faculty or the content of their courses – that is authoritarianism.

When you have a president who allows the richest man on earth, elected by nobody, to fire tens of thousands of federal employees and dismantle the Social Security Administration, the Veterans Administration and other federal agencies – that is authoritarianism.

The Founding Fathers of our country were no dummies. Having won a Revolutionary War against the absolutism of the king of England, they were determined to create a new country where no one person had absolute power over others. The result: they created a constitution with three branches of government – the executive, the legislative and the judiciary – and a strong separation of powers.

In an unprecedented manner, President Trump is attempting to undermine that separation of powers. He wants more and more power for himself. He is undermining our Constitution. He is undermining our democratic way of life.

As a U.S. Senator, I will do everything I can to stop this movement toward more and more power for one man. Too many brave men and women have fought and died to protect our democratic form of government. We cannot, and must not, move toward authoritarianism.

Sincerely,
Berniie

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All fine points made, as he usually does.

Presuming we don’t have a junta soon, we need Independents to run in an aligned manner for 2026, changing our laws; all else is mere catharsis. I can guarantee any such effort to do so will be massively sabotaged by the two parties with many candidates-in-bad-faith entering such an alliance and working against it -if not at campaign time, later once they are seated in Congress.

He’s the only one I can think of who could organize a group of fairly unbribeable people that could maintain the integrity of such an alliance and prevent that from happening, jettisoning candidates that work against two fundamental principles that the other corporate-owned parties refuse to touch: worker rights+conditions and fighting pollution. He can step back from it once he establishes it.

And yet he still does not.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fighting Oligarchy is more than just showing up at rock concerts and making fine speeches (though that could have been a great opportunity to get petitions to ballot vetted congressional candidates for Congress signed -no?) It will take getting people to run for Congress

AS INDEPENDENTS

yet still aligned to the core principles of worker rights+conditions and fighting pollution, with their feet always held to the fire by a group that vets them.

American workers have to accept that the Democratic Party has locked them out, and no amount of shaming will ever get that Party to cede decision-making to candidates with those interests in mind…

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I absolutely agree that Bernie says powerful things. My worry is that he’s just using a new spin on the ineffective “Fight the Fascism,” isn’t laying out clear plans or policies, and believes we must turn to the Democrats. I could totally be wrong! (My cardiologist still wants me to avoid the news, so I’m totally out of the loop.) What do you think of Tim Walz?

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Walz, Beshear, More -all reasonable 2028 candidates (if we don’t get a vote-suppressed or military junta…) But right now the task at hand is getting enough ALIGNED Independents seated in 2026. That means petitions need to get done, and a mechanism for alignment, and choosing what to be aligned on. I gave my two cents: worker rights+conditions and fighting pollution. All other issues can be left up to each candidate.

Always remember: we got Trump because the Dems offered a shit-sandwich to workers. Corporations that owned the Dem Party sooner wanted existing corporate tax rates than to throw some new bones to the working clas that workers could see that their lot was going to be improved if they voted Dem -and I didn’t want Bunker Boy!

It wasn’t an Election with an Open Convention; it was a SElection for what the corporate owners of the two parties would accept…

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I agree, and I think it’s essential to establish a leader (besides Bernie) that the candidates can get behind to bolster the '26 and '28 elections.

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Agreed :folded_hands: i love what him and AOC are doing but to play devils advocate, My conspiracy theorist brain says in a time when a fascist is taking over, Bernie is saying what we want to hear. Behind the scenes he has been told if he makes REAL change or votes against the reich trump will just get rid of him. Why would trump be going after people like biden still when Bernie is out there saying and doing all this with AOC, because its all bs to give us plebs the illusion of fighting back.
Why wouldnt any of these morally better politicians do what trump had planned from the 80s or w/e he said “republicans will vote for and believe anything” so run as a republican and pass universal healthcare or something ffs instead of fighting the democrats

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I think he’s just afraid to do something that is outside the control of the Dem Party -which makes no sense to me. He’s nearing retirement. He already demonstrated that he can work with Dems as long as it doesn’t screw over working class people.

Unless he does a surprise announcement, it’s a real bummer. Nothing will change without non-corporate Independents running for the House in 2026…

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Yeah true that.

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As far as I’m concerned, he can establish a vetting committee for Independents and then go take a well-deserved retirement and milk cows on his farm in Vermont. But his present actions so far are not resulting in any candidates getting aligned and seated for legislative change

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I think you all missed the point I posted this using Bernie’s words to depict just how serious of a crisis we are facing. right now…
The both sideism of ALL media is not truly calling out the EVIL Trump is.

NEVER GIVE EVIL 1 INCH OR THEY WILL DESTROY YOU IN LESS THAN A FOOT.

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My point was: if it’s so serious, why isn’t he calling for Independents to run OURSIDE of the Dem Party, whose owners have shown they will never work towards bettering the lives of people who work??

Without him doing it, such a political initiative would either be sabotaged by the other two parties at its formation, or be a herd of cats arguing over wedge issues if extremely focused issues were not enforced…

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