The Many Faces of Bernie Derangement Syndrome

It’s getting pretty damn near impossible, even for a vengeful anarcho-cynic like myself, to deny that the system clearly despises Bernie Sanders. Both the DNC and their moronic B-team in the so called mainstream media seem to be downright apoplectic over the fact that the grizzled old buzzard is leading the presidential pack in all the ways that count. Not that you’d ever know it by watching the news. Based on the coverage, you would think Bernie was trailing behind the Yang Gang in the polls. Even at the debates, they avoid his perpetually pontificating old ass like the drunk chick at a wedding party, while they softball grounder after grounder to poll-fucked centrist losers like Amy Klobuchar.

CNN’s January surprise, a totally toothless collection of anonymous accusations about a single hypothetical sexist comment made years ago to progressive rival and pathological opportunist, Elizabeth Warren, is just further proof of this prejudice. The sheer absurdity of the idea that Bernie just randomly went all Archie Bunker all over Warren’s ass and everyone, including her, just happens to remember the event just in time for the last debates before the Iowa Caucus, is downright dumbfounding. The only thing more bugfuck nuts in my mind is the fact that any suite-and-tie wearing member of the status quo actually considers this asshole a threat. He’s a fucking poseur and he’s their best hope for taking back the White House. Clintonism has officially become a mental illness. Call it Bernie Derangement Syndrome and call those TERF’s at the DSM.

In case you missed it, I’ve never liked Bernie Sanders. It’s not the pie in the sky welfare spending or the tiresome FDR (founding father of the modern American concentration camp) worship. I could begrudgingly live with all that. But it’s the simple fact that the motherfucker, a self-proclaimed Eugene Debs loving leftist, just isn’t antiwar. It’s the one issue I vote on as an anti-imperialist syndicalist vehemently apposed to any mockery of “democracy” that doesn’t begin and end on the factory floor. Oh sure, Bernie says all the right shit and voted No on a couple bloodbaths, but when push comes to shove, he’ll vote for any atrocity sanctioned by the Democratic Party, whether it’s starving half a million children to death in Iraq under Clinton or sending half of Africa to hell through the black hole of that rapist’s wife’s Libyan no-fly-zone. And this is largely what defines Bernie’s absolute lack of character. In spite of his populist pleasing Independent pedigree, like all social democrats, Bernie is a creature of the party. The party, the party, the party, all else falls beneath the godlike benevolence of the party, including the peasants, fuck, especially the peasants. If the party wants a war, the party gets a war. If the party deems it necessary, they’ll feed the war-shy proletariat to the Freikorps dogs like puppy-chow, and Bernie will loosen the leashes.

This is what makes the powers-at-be’s Bernie Derangement Syndrome so goddamn vexing to me. This is the limp-wristed prick who stood silent with that goofy Chucky Cheese grin and his hands in his pockets while Hillary the Barbarian pegged his young supporters out of one rigged primary after another. The bitch cheated on him worse than Bill at a Weight Watchers convention, and he still fucking endorsed her. What is so damn scary about a devoted pussy who has never once taken a serious stand against his ungrateful party? Are the so-called centrists really so greedy for the crown that they’d rather lose with Biden than win with Bernie? Or is their something bigger to this electoral mental illness?

I think the only quasi-logical answer to this question lies among the riving young throngs of America’s other electoral class inflicted with BDS, my longtime frenemies, the Sandernistas. Young, intelligent, yet almost stupidly loyal, these kids follow Bernie like battered Pitbulls trailing Michael Vick. No matter how many times that old bastard sets them up to get fucked in the rape-cage, they follow, limping and bleeding, they follow. But unlike their duplicitous master, these kids are the real fucking deal. Much like the unsung better half of Trump’s deplorables, this set is sick to death of the very wars their sensei condones and commits. And unlike Miyagi, Daniel-son likes to kick ass.

This was proven to be fantastically true when a few diehard Sandernistas actually managed to crash congress. AOC may have learned to play good dog to that million dollar plastic surgery disaster, Nancy Pelosi, but the Muslim half of the Squad has proven to be an epic migraine headache for warmongers on both sides of the aisle. And what’s even scarier than the veiled scourge of little Ilhan the Great, is Bernie’s former DNC rep, Tulsi Gabbard, who has actually launched a legitimately revolutionary campaign, I believe in a semi-successful Kamikaze mission designed to push Bernie into a more consistent antiwar direction. This madness simply can’t stand. The children of the revolution are out of control. So their dickless leader has to go, by hook or by crook.

The saddest thing about the many faces of Bernie Derangement Syndrome is that it exposes the very flaws that keep a legitimately dangerous movement from achieving the kind of revolution they so clearly crave. Much like their parents in the new America First movement, these kids wanna burn Babylon to the ground for its sins, but they’re just too goddamned shackled by the learned helplessness of statist hegemony to realize that they don’t need a deflateable cult of personality to achieve this. Like much of America in these all-or-nothing days, it takes me back to that ultimate allegory for post-imperial nihilism, Breaking Bad. I just want to slap these sweet babies and tell them, You are the danger, children! It is you, not your surrogate Walter White’s who are the ones who knock. Stop being little Pinkmans and burn this meth lab of an empire to the ground with Heisenberg in it. Sometimes I feel like a genderfuck Mike Ehrmantraut. No more half measures, dearest motherfuckers. We need a real revolution, not another empty handed charade.

Nicky Reid is an agoraphobic anarcho-genderqueer gonzo blogger from Central Pennsylvania and assistant editor for Attack the System. You can find her online at Exile in Happy Valley.