Trump is not just a bad president. His regime is a fatal sickness infecting US, and not only US, society. A sickness rising from poverty, racism, the immense class divides, and out of control capitalism. If you compromise with this sickness, you will get it. Recovery will cost you your skin, if not your life, at the minimum.
To be honest, I have not met a "Bernie Bro" -- the abusive type of folks Elizabeth Warren used to slam Sanders (again) today with Rachel Maddow. We have anarchists, and some moral crusaders against "greed" who have their feet planted in mid-air politically, in West Virginia. But I do not see much meanness in them.
However, I know the fake leftist and fake militant type well, from years in the labor movement: Mostly middle and upper middle class -- almost always white -- youth organized into sects with big plans to invade the labor movement, replace its "sell-out" leadership, and turn it into some fantasy version of a Bolshevik brigade.
If the company had a skilled labor relations staff, and if the union leadership was inexperienced or naive, these types were easily manipulated into helping destroy the strike, if not the entire union.
Before I learned more economics, I was a better strike organizer than negotiator. The workers in most of these shops (they were all manufacturing during my service) could tell when the company was lying, but they did not always know why. Unless you could put a fire under the ass of the employer, he would rarely bother to tell you the truth.
Strikes are semi-legal, semi-civil, warfare. They require the maximum degree of unity and solidarity and DISCIPLINE among the members to win or prevail, or simply NOT LOSE, as most -- in my memory ALL -- strikes are defensive in motivation and NOT designed to ATTACK their employer. These constraints make it very difficult in the midst of a struggle to denounce any "supporter" showing up at the picket line every day. The union has NO weapon other than unity. In every case I can recall where this became a problem, at least one of the "fools" was not a fool, but a company agent deliberately plotting confrontations that would give the company grounds for injunctions against picketing and for mass arrests. In some cases the only remedy was to use our own muscle, and do our own policing -- a risky and imperfect solution. But if you go on strike, you are your own protection, or you lose -- -- no one but your own strength can save you. The courts will not defend you. The "fools" and parasites that latch on to the movement are not there for you to win -- they always prefer "glorious defeat". Fortunately, in most cases, our union had a deep bench of people very experienced in this matter. Not all unions or locals, however, did.
IN at least two instances, we had the fools fired as a condition of settling the strike. For which I earned the hatred of he fake Left -- I welcome it!
A presidential campaign on socialist values seems not unlike a meta-strike. Bernie's campaign is the first such mass campaign in US history. Other countries have more experience. In my view -- after the campaign -- there will be time to eval the wins and setbacks of his historic, and heroic effort. And it will not be for naught. He has brought a LIGHT to the the salvation of this nation and shined it on the path. His powerful campaigns must found broad based and sustainable organization to the Left so it can discard its 75 year marginalization.
While I do not agree with EVERY point in Bernie's program, I know from personal experience, he is real, and wise, and without guile. And I will support his campaign, in solidarity, until it is over, at the time HE and his team decides. If Joe Biden ends up as the nominee, Bernie will support him.
BTW, WITHOUT that support, and help, Biden will lose.
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