They had mounted a television set on the wall of the restaurant – there was no avoiding it. In the international news bulletin, there was Bernie Sanders calling for nothing less than a political revolution. He was more explicit about the “powers to be overthrown” than young Obama eight years ago: The one percent, corporate America, and his personal nemesis the Koch brothers were to blame for the deplorable inequality in the country. To a critical communitarian thinker like myself, the prospect of radical change or rupture in the narrative of indefinite capital accumulation cannot fail to invoke a somewhat divine lust. Not the craving for redemption to be enjoyed in apathy, but a promise that the world could once again become interesting.
I don’t fall for Sanders, or at his feet. As long as I’m not convinced that the nationalist, imperialist rhetoric and his seemingly unreflected upon tagging along with the rusty carousel of endless economic growth, is only a political device to lure a flock of voters or devotees into electing him.
The next image on the television was a certain Donald Trump, and what he said so perfectly illustrated that he is to Bernie as death is to life, that I can’t resist quoting it here:
“I’ll bring back waterboarding, I’ll bring a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”
The inconvenient truth of this lies in the answer to the question, who will be subjected to this worse than waterboarding. it is not unthinkable, that Trump’s torture chambers are devised for Bernie’s revolutionaries. It would follow the logic that has proven to be so painfully adequate in human history, namely that those in power know no limits when it comes to defending their wealth.