Bernie Sanders Quotes

The problems we face, did not come down from the heavens. They are made, they are made by bad human decisions, and good human decisions can change them.

An angry man in cinema is Batman. An angry male musician is a member of Metallica. An angry male writer is Chekhov. An angry male politician is passionate, a revolutionary. He is a Donald Trump or a Bernie Sanders. The anger of men is a powerful enough tide to swing an election. But the anger of women? That has no place in government, so it has to flood the streets.

You can’t become a billionaire stepping over children sleeping on the street.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reminded us: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.

When we stand together there is nothing, nothing, nothing we cannot accomplish.

And let me make the radical statement that I don’t believe that you can say something profound in the 140 characters that make up a tweet.

The rich and large corporations get richer, the CEOs earn huge compensation packages, and when things get bad, don't worry; Uncle Sam and the American taxpayers are here to bail you out. But when you are in trouble, well, we just can't afford to help you, if you are in the working class or middle class of this country.

The only solution for female anger is for her to stop being angry. And yet, when Jesus flipped tables in the temple, his rage was lauded. King David railing to the heavens to rain fire on his enemies is lauded as a man after God’s own heart. An angry man in cinema is Batman. An angry male musician is a member of Metallica. An angry male writer is Chekhov. An angry male politician is passionate, a revolutionary. He is a Donald Trump or a Bernie Sanders. The anger of men is a powerful enough tide to swing an election. But the anger of women? That has no place in government, so it has to flood the streets.

Democracy is not a spectator sport

We don't want to see our kids and grandchildren be the first generation in the modern history of America to have a lower standard of living than their parents.

The American people want to know that when they borrow a book from the library or buy a book, the government won't be looking over their shoulder. Everybody wants to fight terrorism, but we have to do it in away that protects American freedom.

Both political parties have moved to the right during the neoliberal period. Today’s New Democrats are pretty much what used to be called “moderate Republicans.” The “political revolution” that Bernie Sanders called for, rightly, would not have greatly surprised Dwight Eisenhower. The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the minimum wage—which sets a floor for other wages—tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.

Anyone who can’t tell the difference between an ordinary Bernie Sanders supporter and a Stalinist revolutionary, or between Donald Trump’s average voter and a Nazi, is either willfully ignorant or needs to get out of the house more. Today, our public discourse is shockingly hyperbolic in ascribing historically murderous ideologies to the tens of millions of ordinary Americans with whom we strongly disagree. Just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean it’s hate speech or the person saying it is a deviant.

We are living in a nation which worships wealth rather than caring for the poor. I don’t think that is the nation we should be living in.

more tax breaks for the very rich is only one symptom of an economic and political system that is grotesquely failing the average American.

For 70 years Democrats bitterly denied being "socialists". Bernie Sanders has done the service of exposing them.

This campaign was never just about electing a president of the United States—as enormously important as that was. This campaign was about transforming America. It was about the understanding that real change never takes place from the top on down. It always takes place from the bottom on up. It takes place when ordinary people, by the millions, are prepared to stand up and fight for justice.

Republicans have cultivated, into a fine art, the ability to divide people up by race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation. That’s what they do. That is the essence of their politics. They get one group to fight another group while their wealthy friends and campaign contributors get richer and laugh all the way to the bank.

Change comes, even in the face of overwhelming odds. And the recognition of the changes we have already made, of what we have won, inspires us to fight even harder. When

Indentured servitude is banned, but what about students seeking to sell shares of their future earnings in exchange for money up front to pay for their college tuitions?

It is a challenge that progressives face throughout the country. We lose when we are divided. We win when we are united.

The United States invests just 2.4 percent of GDP in infrastructure; whereas, Europe invests twice that amount.

Yo mama so stupid, she watches Fox News and voted for Trump.

Let's be clear. The debate over health care in this country is not a debate about medical treatment or the best way to prevent disease. It is a debate about economics and class politics. Either we maintain a profit-driven health care system whose main function is to enrich certain individuals and institutions, or we develop a nonprofit, cost-effective system that provides quality health care for all people as a right of citizenship.

In some cases, they are already doing so. Influenced by a coalition of community groups, the New York City Council passed a historic budget in the summer of 2014 that created a $1.2 million fund for the growth of worker-owned cooperatives. Richmond, California has hired a cooperative developer and is launching a loan fund; Cleveland, Ohio has been actively involved in starting a network of cooperatives, as we’ll see in the next chapter; and Jackson, Mississippi elected a mayor (Chokwe Lumumba) in 2013 on a platform that included the use of public spending to promote co-ops. On the federal level, progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders are working to get the government more involved in supporting employee ownership.130

Economic inequality has long been a signature issue of the left, and it rose in prominence after the Great Recession began in 2007. It ignited the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 and the presidential candidacy of the self-described socialist Bernie Sanders in 2016, who proclaimed that “a nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much, while so many have so little.” 2 But in that year the revolution devoured its children and propelled the candidacy of Donald Trump, who claimed that the United States had become “a third-world country” and blamed the declining fortunes of the working class not on Wall Street and the one percent but on immigration and foreign trade. The left and right ends of the political spectrum, incensed by economic inequality for their different reasons, curled around to meet each other, and their shared cynicism about the modern economy helped elect the most radical American president in recent times.

The former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina, ran for Senator. This is what she said when she was the CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 2004: “There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore.” I could go on and on and on, but I think we have the point.

You can’t have it all. You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can’t continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens while there are massive unmet needs on every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities.

Education is the way out of the poverty trap. It shouldn't be the poverty trap itself and make those trying to better themselves incur massive student debt.

The sheepish will vote for Joe Biden and those against government and corporate corruption will vote for Bernie Sanders.

Democrats care about what's fair and true. Republicans only care about winning, no matter how much they have to lie and cheat.

Democracy is about one person, one vote. It’s about all of us coming together to determine the future of our country. It is not about a handful of billionaires buying elections, or governors suppressing the vote by denying poor people or people of color the right to vote. Our job is to stand together to defeat the drift toward oligarchy and create a vibrant democracy.

It is six months before the election, and the Republicans have already done their focus groups. How do I know? I can hear it in their “message,” which they repeat over and over again like a mantra: “Bernie Sanders is ineffective. Bernie Sanders is out of touch. Bernie Sanders is a left-wing extremist. Bernie Sanders rants and raves on the House floor and still no one listens to him. Susan Sweetser, on the other hand, is a sensible moderate who can work with everyone.” They think that’s how they can beat me. Maybe.

If children of 5 are not taught to obey orders, sit still for 7 hours a day, respect their teacher, and raise their hands when they have to go to the bathroom, how will they learn (after 17 more years of education) to become the respectful clerks, technicians and soldiers who keep our society free, our economy strong, and such inspiring men as Richard Nixon and Deane Davis in political office.

It's almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should not debate American wars in public, but only express concerns 'privately with the administration.' That's just a small sliver of Johnson's radicalism: replacing Feingold in the Senate with Ron Johnson would be a civil liberties travesty analogous to the economic travesty from, say, replacing Bernie Sanders with Lloyd Blankfein.

We live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, but that reality means little because almost all of that wealth is controlled by a tiny handful of individuals. There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much as the bottom 90 percent, and when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. There is something profoundly wrong when one family owns more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans. This type of immoral, unsustainable economy is not what America is supposed to be about. This has got to change, and together we will change it. The change begins when we say to the billionaire class: “You can’t have it all. You can’t get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can’t continue sending our jobs to China while millions are looking for work. You can’t hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, while there are massive unmet needs in every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities as Americans.

When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to do more than just win the next election. It's about creating a situation where we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved, and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling. A campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected. It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that, we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90 percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with.

The dogs went crazy last night,” Gennie said. “Do you want me to tell you about it?” “Definitely,” Grace replied. “Start at the beginning. Leave nothing out. What are the dogs’ names?” “Bernie Sanders, Elliot Stabler, Olivia Benson, Sandra Day O’Connor, and RuPaul were the troublemakers,” Gennie said. “Unsurprising, with that group,” Grace said. “Go on.

when we talk about justice, we have to, in my view, understand that there is no justice when so few have so much and so many have so little.

Jesus was a socialist.

The goal of real healthcare reform must be high-quality, universal coverage in a cost-effective way.

The very existence of a rapidly expanding billionaire class in the United States is a manifestation of an unjust system that promotes massive income and wealth inequality.

One of the more profound lessons that I've learnt in politics is that everything is related to everything else. Nothing exists in a vacuum.

If a nation is morally judged by how we treat the weakest and most vulnerable among us, our health care system fails miserably.

Inequality, corruption, oligarchy, and authoritarianism are inseparable. They must be understood as part of the same system, and fought in the same way.

This book is about how anger works for men in ways that it does not for women, how men like both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders can wage yelling campaigns and be credited with understanding--and compellingly channeling--the rage felt by their supporters while their female opponents can be jeered and mocked as shrill for speaking too loudly of forcefully into a microphone.

In short, decades of evidence demonstrate that the presence of women in politics makes a tangible difference to the laws that get passed. And in that case, maybe, just maybe, when Bernie Sanders said, ‘It is not good enough for someone to say, “I’m a woman! Vote for me!”’, he was wrong. The problem isn’t that anyone thinks that’s good enough. The problem is that no one does.

Republicans have cultivated, into a fine art, the ability to divide people up by race, gender, nationality, or sexual orientation. That’s what they do. That is the essence of their politics.

Sometimes it feels as though American policy is pasted together from the random thoughts of the four-year-old product of a biker rally tryst between Bernie Sanders and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who was the hope of so many, considering Democratic losses after the 2018 midterm elections, remarked, “There are a lot of white folks out there who are not necessarily racist who felt uncomfortable for the first time in their lives about whether or not they wanted to vote for an African-American.” How is not voting for someone simply because they’re black not racist?

In August 2008, the General Accountability Office issued a report. According to this report, two out of every three corporations in the United States paid no Federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005.

Is it really too much, in the twenty-first century, in the wealthiest country on earth, to begin creating an economy in which people actually have some power over what they do for forty hours or more a week?

There is no justice, and I want you to hear this clearly, when the top one-tenth of 1 percent—not 1 percent, the top one-tenth of 1 percent—today in America owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent.

Bill McKibben named his climate change advocacy group 350.org, because 350 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide is what Dr. James Hansen, former head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the most respected climatologists in the world, says is the maximum level to “preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.” Tragically, we have now exceeded 400 ppm.

I found it especially terrible that when it came to racial politics, many young progressives, across racial lines, were far more willing to train their hatred on Hillary Clinton, a white woman, than on Bernie Sanders, a white man. White women have absolutely been accomplices to the American project of white supremacy, but their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons have always been the masterminds. Let us never forget that.

In Israel, we spent time working on several kibbutzim. It was unique experience and a very different type of culture than I was used to. I enjoyed picking grapefruits, netting fish on the "fish farm", and doing other agricultural work. Mostly, however, it was the structure of the community that impressed me. People there were living their democratic values. The kibbutz was owned by the people who lived there, the "bosses" were elected by the workers, and overall decisions for the community were made democratically. I recall being impressed by how young-looking and alive the older people there were. Democracy, it seemed, was good for one's health.

Humanity is at a crossroads. We can continue down the current path of greed, consumerism, oligarchy, poverty, war, racism, and environmental degradation. Or we can lead the world in moving in a very different direction.

The Supreme Court decided that corporations are people and they have the right of free speech and the right without disclosure—all of this is through the Citizens United Supreme Court decision—to put as much money as they want into campaigns all over the country.

American socialists and leftists were some of the most ardent devotees of Stalinist and Maoist socialism. They also embraced German national socialism, Italian national socialism, Cuban socialism, North Korean socialism and now Venezuelan socialism. We can see this devotion in contemporary progressives and socialists from Bill de Blasio to Bernie Sanders. We also see it in leading progressives and socialists of the past: Charles Beard, Herbert Croly, Corliss Lamont, W. E. B. Du Bois, Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal “brain trust.

I would like very much to see the American people saying to our Republican colleagues and some Democratic colleagues: Excuse me. Don't force my kids to have a lower standard of living in order to give tax breaks to the richest people. What the President and all of us should be doing is going out and saying to those people: Call the Members of the Senate, call the Members of the House and say: Excuse me. How about representing the middle class and working families, for a change, rather than the wealthiest people. That is what democracy is about.

I believe...we are in this together. These are not just words. The truth is on some level when you hurt, when your children hurt, I hurt. And when my kids hurt, you hurt. And it’s very easy to turn our backs on kids who are hungry or veterans who are sleeping out on the street and we can develop a psyche, a psychology which says, 'I don’t have to worry about them, all I’m going to worry about is myself, I need to make another five million dollars.' But I believe what human nature is about is that everybody impacts everybody else...in all kinds of ways that we can’t even understand. It’s beyond intellect. It’s a spiritual, emotional thing. So I believe that when we do the right thing, when we try to treat people with respect and dignity, when we say that that child who is hungry is my child, I think we are more human when we do that... That is my religion. That’s what I believe in.

If a Member of the Senate wants to look that veteran in the eyes and say to him or her that they think we cannot afford to help that individual who sacrificed so much for this country have a family, well go do that. Tell that individual that you think we cannot afford to help him or her, but when you do that, I hope you will also tell him why you voted to give $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent at a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well. Virtually all of my Republican colleagues thought it was appropriate to provide huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires.

We, proudly, were the only campaign not to have a super PAC. In a manner unprecedented in American history, we received some 8 million individual campaign contributions. The average contribution was $27. These donations came from 2.5 million Americans, the vast majority of whom were low- or moderate-income people.

Let’s be very clear. Corporate media is not “objective”; they are not the “referees” trying to provide “all sides of the story.” Corporate media are profit-making entities owned and controlled by the ruling class and some of the wealthiest people in the country. And, like all private corporations, they have an agenda.

WHO OWNS THE MEDIA? Most Americans have very little understanding of the degree to which media ownership in America—what we see, hear, and read—is concentrated in the hands of a few giant corporations. In fact, I suspect that when people look at the hundreds of channels they receive on their cable system, or the many hundreds of magazines they can choose from in a good bookstore, they assume that there is a wide diversity of ownership. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. In 1983 the largest fifty corporations controlled 90 percent of the media. That’s a high level of concentration. Today, as a result of massive mergers and takeovers, six corporations control 90 percent of what we see, hear, and read. This is outrageous, and a real threat to our democracy. Those six corporations are Comcast, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS. In 2010, the total revenue of these six corporations was $275 billion. In a recent article in Forbes magazine discussing media ownership, the headline appropriately read: “These 15 Billionaires Own America’s News Media Companies.” Exploding technology is transforming the media world, and mergers and takeovers are changing the nature of ownership. Freepress.net is one of the best media watchdog organizations in the country, and has been opposed to the kind of media consolidation that we have seen in recent years. It has put together a very powerful description of what media concentration means.

In this unprecedented moment in American history, there is no more time for tinkering around the edges. It is time to reject “conventional wisdom” and “incrementalism.” It is time to fundamentally rethink our adherence to the system of unfettered capitalism, and to address the unspeakable harm that system is doing to us all.

In 2007, the top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income, more than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. That is not the foundation of a democratic society. That is the foundation for an oligarchic society. The rich get richer. The middle class shrinks. Poverty increases.

What is the goal of the system? Should an entire layer of corporate bureaucracy called “insurance companies”—which employ hundreds of thousands of people who have absolutely nothing to do with the actual provision of health care—be allowed to continue determining policies and priorities with the sole purpose of maximizing profits?

(Bernie) Sanders came to think all (Hilary) Clinton said was ‘vote for me I’m a woman’. The data shows that she certainly didn’t. A word frequency analysis of her speeches by Vox revealed that Clinton mostly talked about workers jobs, education, and the economy... She mentioned jobs almost 600 times... and women’s right a few dozen times.

Reader, let’s talk about ambition. First of all, the word is almost always used against young people—especially women. No one calls Bernie Sanders ambitious, but the man ran for president twice. When he ran in the eighties, Joe Biden was condemned for his ambition; no one said that in 2020. All her life, people have flung this accusation at Hillary Clinton.

Further, police officers must be trained to understand that lethal force is the last response, not, as is too often the case, the first response.

all killings that took place when people were in police custody or being arrested would prompt a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

tired of status quo politics and wanted real change in the world in which they were living.

we are living in a time where a handful of people have wealth beyond comprehension.

52 percent of all new income generated is going to the top 1 percent.

Not one word about income inequality, climate change, Citizens United or student debt. That’s why the Rs are so out of touch.

Change will not take place without political participation.

The wealthiest 400 Americans now earn, on average, $345 million a year, and they pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent.

At both rallies I spoke at length about the need for criminal justice reform and for ending the absurdity of the United States having more people in jail than any other country on earth.

As circumstances grew increasingly desperate for the Democrats, I proposed a “radical idea.” I wanted “the world’s greatest deliberative body” to actually start deliberating. I wanted Senate Democrats to bring to the floor legislation that addressed the needs of working families, and force Republicans to vote for or against these very important and very popular initiatives.

If we are going to create a financial system that works for all Americans, we have got to stop financial institutions from ripping off the American people by charging sky-high interest rates and outrageous fees. In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM. It is unacceptable that millions of Americans are paying credit card interest rates of 20 or 30 percent. The Bible has a term for this practice. It’s called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante reserved a special place in the Seventh Circle of Hell for those who charged people usurious interest rates. Today, we don’t need the hellfire and the pitch forks, we don’t need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.

Raising money from the rich is not only debilitating, it’s time-consuming. While it is certainly not true for all, many wealthy contributors are arrogant and self-centered and demand a lot of time and access for the money they donate. Instead of just sending you a check, they want to talk, talk, and talk about their needs or the issues that concern them. This process drains the energy right out of you.

They are rightfully tired of turning on the television and seeing videos of unarmed blacks being shot and killed by police officers. They want criminal justice reform. They want police department reform.

While it is not likely that Democrats will start winning statewide elections tomorrow in Alabama, South Carolina, Kansas, Wyoming, or Utah, they will never win if they don’t plant a flag and start organizing. My own state of Vermont is a good example. Forty-five years ago, Vermont was one of the most Republican states in the country. Today, as a result of a lot of hard work by many people, it is one of the most progressive.

[T]he Federal Communications Commission should reestablish two principles that formerly served this country well: the public service requirement and the fairness doctrine. Every television and radio station should once again be required to devote a meaningful percentage of its programming to public service broadcasting. The public, after all, owns the airwaves through which signals are broadcast, and the rights-of-way in which cables are strung. And every television and radio station should once again have to follow the fairness doctrine: those with opposing views should have the right to respond to viewpoints expressed on the station.

The only way to get it is by breaking the shackles of the old thinking that says there is no alternative to unfettered capitalism. We’ve got to upend the lie we’ve been told for decades, the one that says: This is how the system works. This is how globalization works. This is how capitalism works. This is how employers and employees will always relate to each other. There’s nothing you can do about it. So just shut up and get back to work.

The American people were sick and tired of endless “negotiations.” They were sick and tired of politicians hiding behind closed doors. They wanted the Senate to vote on legislation to improve their lives. At the very least, they had a right to know where their senators stood on the issues. But Senate leaders preferred to do nothing rather than “divide” their caucus by exposing the pro-corporate stances of a handful of their Democratic colleagues.

The decision by the ruling elites in ancient Rome—dominated by a bloated military and a corrupt oligarchy, much like the United States—to strangle the vain and idiotic Emperor Commodus in his bath in the year 192 did not halt the growing chaos and precipitous decline of the Roman Empire. Commodus, like a number of late-Roman emperors, and like Trump, was incompetent and consumed by his own vanity. He commissioned innumerable statues of himself as Hercules and had little interest in governance. He used his position as head of state to make himself the star of his own ongoing public show. He fought victoriously as a gladiator in the arena in fixed bouts. Power for Commodus, as it is for Trump, was primarily about catering to his bottomless narcissism. He sold public offices to the ancient equivalents of Betsy DeVos and Steven Mnuchin. Commodus was replaced by the reformer Pertinax, the Bernie Sanders of his day, who attempted in vain to curb the power of the Praetorian Guards, the ancient version of the military-industrial complex. The Praetorian Guards assassinated Pertinax three months after he became emperor. The Guards then auctioned off his position to the highest bidder. The next emperor, Didius Julianus, lasted sixty-six days. There would be five emperors in AD 193, the year after the assassination of Commodus. Trump and our decaying empire have ominous historical precedents.

I believe we can be serious and optimistic. I believe we can recognize the overwhelming odds against us and forge coalitions that overcome the odds. The point of beginning is not political strategy. It is a shared sense of necessity, an understanding that we must act. I believe that Americans, battered by job losses and wage stagnation, angered by inequality and injustice, have come to this understanding. I hear Americans saying loudly and clearly: enough is enough [. . .] When we declare, "Enough is enough," we are demanding a country and a future that meets the needs of the vast majority of Americans: a country and a future where it is hard to buy elections and easy to vote in them; a country and a future where tax dollars are invested in jobs and infrastructure instead of jails and incarceration; a country and a future where we have he best educated workforce and the widest range of opportunities for every child and every adult; a country and future where we take the steps necessary to ending systemic racism; a country and a future where we assure once and for all that no one who works forty hours a week will live in poverty [. . .] When we stand together there is nothing, nothing, nothing we cannot accomplish.

It is my strong belief that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, with exploding technological progress that will greatly increase worker productivity, we can finally end austerity economics and achieve the long-sought human dream of providing a decent standard of living for all. In the twenty-first century we can end the vicious dog-eat-dog economy in which the vast majority struggle to survive, while a handful of billionaires have more wealth than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes.

Here is the simple, straightforward reality: The uber-capitalist economic system that has taken hold in the United States in recent years, propelled by uncontrollable greed and contempt for human decency, is not merely unjust. It is grossly immoral. We need to confront that immorality. Boldly. Bluntly. Without apology. It is only then that we can begin to transform a system that is rigged against the vast majority of Americans and is destroying millions of lives. Confronting that reality and mobilizing people to bring about the transformational change we need is not easy. That’s why I’ve written this book. We need not only to understand the powerful forces that hold us down today but, equally important, to have a vision as to where we want to be in the future.

Is it moral that, when millions of seniors are unable to afford the medicine they need, the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent? Is it moral that, when we have the highest rates of childhood poverty of almost any major country in the world, the twenty wealthiest people in the country have more wealth than the bottom half of America—160 million people? Is it moral that, when our citizens are working longer hours for lower wages, 52 percent of all new income generated today is going to the top 1 percent?

Ordinary voters are beginning to sense that the democratic mechanism no longer empowers them. The world is changing all around, and they don’t understand how or why. Power is shifting away from them, but they are unsure where it has gone. In Britain voters imagine that power might have shifted to the EU, so they vote for Brexit. In the USA voters imagine that ‘the establishment’ monopolizes all the power, so they support anti-establishment candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The sad truth is that nobody knows where all the power has gone.

Especially important are the political implications of the idea that the new possibilities opened by a certain act are part of its content - this is the reason why, to the consternation of many of my friends (who, of course, are no longer my friends), I claimed apropos the US 2016 presidential elections that Trump's victory would be better than Clinton's for the future of progressive forces. Trump is highly dubious, of course, but his election may open possibilities and move the liberal-Left pole to a new more radical position. I was surprised to learn that David Lynch adopted the same position: in an interview in June 2018, Lynch (who voted for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary) said that Trump 'could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the thing so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way.' While Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might. 'Our so-called leaders can't take the country forward, can't get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this.

Cherubim perhaps, take practice shots with the Big Bang. I would have preferred to write a book about the course of actions taken during this election campaign and how that course of actions led to certain results. But there was no discernable course. The course might as well have been at Trump University. And the results might as well have been determined by a pair of twelve-sided dice used by stoned Bernie Sanders supporters in a game of Dungeons & Dragons. (Dungeons & Dragons being a not-bad alternative title for what you hold in your hands.) Anyway, if my book lacks a coherent narrative it’s because I couldn’t find one.

Ordinary voters are beginning to sense that the democratic mechanism no longer empowers them. The world is changing all around, and they don’t understand how or why. Power is shifting away from them, but they are unsure where it has gone. In Britain voters imagine that power might have shifted to the EU, so they vote for Brexit. In the USA voters imagine that ‘the establishment’ monopolizes all the power, so they support anti-establishment candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. The sad truth is that nobody knows where all the power has gone. Power will definitely not shift back to ordinary voters if Britain leaves the EU nor if Trump takes over the White House.

The data that drives algorithms isn't just a few numbers now. It's monstrous tables of millions of numbers, thousands upon thousands of rows and columns of numbers....Matrices are created and refined by computers endlessly churning through Big Data's records on everyone, and everything they've done. No human can read those matrices, even with computers helping you interpret them they are simply too large and complex to fully comprehend. But the computers can use them, applying the appropriate matrix to show us the appropriate video that will eventually lead us to make an appropriate purchase. We are not living in "The Matrix," but there's still a matrix controlling us. What does this have to do with the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories? It has everything to do with it. These algorithms are quickly becoming the primary route down the rabbit hole. To a large extent this has already happened, but it's going to get far, far worse. Tufekci described what happened when she tried watching different types of content on YouTube. She started watching videos of Donald Trump rallies. 'I wanted to write about one of [Donald Trump]'s rallies, so I watched it a few times on YouTube. YouTube started recommending to me, and autoplaying to me, white supremacist videos, in increasing order of extremism. If I watched one, it served up one even more extreme. If you watch Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders content, YouTube recommends and autoplays [left-wing] conspiracy videos, and it goes downhill from there." Downhill, into the rabbit hole....Without human intervention the algorithm has evolved to a perfect a method of gently stepping up the intensity of the conspiracy videos that it shows you so that you don't get turned off, and so you continue to watch. They get more intense because the algorithm has found (not in any human sense, but found nonetheless) that the deeper it can guide people down the rabbit hole, the more revenue it can make.

During the 2016 US presidential campaign, the hatred shown toward Hillary Clinton far outstripped even the most virulent criticisms that could legitimately be pinned on her. She was linked with “evil” and widely compared to a witch, which is to say that she was attacked as a woman, not as a political leader. After her defeat, some of those critics dug out the song “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead,” sung in The Wizard of Oz to celebrate the Witch of the East’s death—a jingle already revived in the UK at the time of Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013. This reference was brandished not only by Donald Trump’s electors, but also by supporters of Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s main rival in the primaries. On Sanders’ official site, a fundraising initiative was announced under the punning title “Bern the Witch”—an announcement that the Vermont senator’s campaign team took down as soon as it was brought to his attention. Continuing this series of limp quips, the conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh quipped, “She’s a witch with a capital B”—he can’t have known that, at the Salem witch trials in the seventeenth century, a key figure had already exploited this consonance by calling his servant, Sarah Churchill, who was one of his accusers, “bitch witch.” In reaction, female Democrat voters started sporting badges calling themselves “Witches for Hillary” or “Hags for Hillary.”48

issue a statement attacking the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. I announced that I would only nominate justices to the Supreme Court who publicly acknowledged their intention to overturn that terrible decision. I was glad to see Hillary Clinton make a similar statement a short time later. I also stated, “It is a national disgrace that billionaires and other extremely wealthy people are able to heavily influence the political process by making huge contributions. The Koch brothers alone will spend more than the Democratic and Republican parties to influence the outcome of next year’s elections. That’s not democracy, that’s oligarchy.” During this period, under the radar, our grassroots efforts were growing rapidly. Two examples come to mind:

A Lake Charles-based artist, Sally was a progressive Democrat who in 2016 primary favored Bernie Sanders. Sally's very dear friend and worl-traveling flight attendant from Opelousas, Louisiana, Shirley was an enthusiast for the Tea Party and Donald Trump. Both woman had joined sororities at LSU. Each had married, had three children, lived in homes walking distance apart in Lake Charles, and had keys to each other's houses. Each loved the other's children. Shirley knew Sally's parents and even consulted Sally's mother when the two go to "fussing to much." They exchanged birthday and Christmas gifts and jointly scoured the newspaper for notices of upcoming cultural events they had, when they were neighbors in Lake Charles, attended together. One day when I was staying as Shirley's overnight guest in Opelousas, I noticed a watercolor picture hanging on the guestroom wall, which Sally had painted as a gift for Shirley's eleven-year-old daughter, who aspired to become a ballerina. With one pointed toe on a pudgy, pastel cloud, the other lifted high, the ballerina's head was encircled by yellow star-like butterflies. It was a loving picture of a child's dream--one that came true. Both women followed the news on TV--Sally through MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, and Shirley via Fox News's Charles Krauthammer, and each talked these different reports over with a like-minded husband. The two women talk by phone two or three times a week, and their grown children keep in touch, partly across the same politcal divide. While this book is not about the personal lives of these two women, it couldn't have been written without them both, and I believe that their friendship models what our country itself needs to forge: the capacity to connect across difference.