It’s OK to Be Angry About Bernie Sanders

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally attributed to Will Truman in error. The author is Sanford Horn.]

Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Promotional event: $35-$95

Hypocrisy: Priceless

It’s easy to remember what a charlatan Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is – his initials are BS, after all, and although he claims to be a Socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, his lifestyle and actions prove otherwise. For years Sanders railed against the “lifestyles of the rich and famous,” – millionaires and billionaires – until he, himself became one – a multi-millionaire, who now just lambastes billionaires. Hypocrisy, jealousy, or covetousness? Either way, Sanders wears an ugly shade of green apropos of the Green Mountains of his state of Vermont.

Sanders became a millionaire hawking more than a half dozen books – the four written after his first run for president in 2016, netting him the most money, via speaking engagements, and his wife Jane isn’t exactly impoverished either. Make no mistake, I do not begrudge Sanders his wealth – that’s the essence of free market capitalism. I begrudge him his hypocrisy and that he is a grifter living off the backs of the American people, duping unsuspecting college campus indoctrinated drones into believing his lifestyle is that of a Socialist. The beauty of the free market system is that we the people have the right to work, earn, and accumulate as much as we are able – or not – and that includes Sanders, and that he egregiously takes advantage of that system making him the hypocrite’s hypocrite.

With the release of Sanders’ latest tome, It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism, he expects people to shell out $28 for the book. Or folks can receive the book by ponying up even more to attend his speaking gig on March 1 at The Anthem in Washington, DC. This event has a price tag ranging from $35 to $95, but the book is “included” for those purchasing the $55, $75, or $95 tickets to enjoy Sanders rail about the capitalist system he so fervently relishes. And if anyone wants to truly be angry, turn that anger toward Ticket Master from whom attendees will need to purchase their tickets with their added fees of upwards of 20-25 percent. Fees for what? For doing their job of selling tickets? Ticket Master has become a virtual monopoly – no sense of competition there, but that’s a whole other story.

And relish it he does – in comfort – owning three houses. Sanders, serving his third term in the Senate, owns a townhouse in Washington, DC, as well as homes in Burlington and Lake Champlain, Vermont. This coming from the man who supposedly advocates for wealth equality, supports the concept of equity, raising taxes higher, punishing the so-called wealthy, and the belief that government is the solution. On this, the anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, the reality is, as President Reagan said in his first inaugural address on January 20, 1981, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”

Demonstrating his hypocrisy yet again, is Sanders giving away his book? Making it available to read online for free? Is he offering his DC presentation for free? Putting it online, on Zoom, for all the world to experience? No? Why not? Hypocrisy – condemning capitalism while taking full advantage of it. And why? Because neither Socialism nor Communism have ever succeeded.

Was Fidel Castro a pauper? No, he was not. How about Che Guevara? Chairman Mao? Hugo Chavez? Nicolas Maduro? No; but virtually all who lived under those despots lived in abject poverty, oftentimes in countries that heretofore succeeded with free market systems. Look at Cuba before the Castro revolution. Venezuela before Chavez. The failed Greek economy under Alexis Tsipras. Compare the economies of the former West Germany with the former East Germany and current day North Korea with South Korea. Sure, one could find equity in East Germany and North Korea – everybody was equally impoverished, starving, and without rights or freedoms.

Rights and freedoms – G-d given at that – are what lead to free market systems, capitalism, and republican democracy. The things that forge growth, competition, supply and demand, as well as the mother of invention. What has Soviet Russia invented? Nothing – save for worthwhile classical music and literature composed from the fertile minds of thinkers who, more often than not, suffered their government’s wrath. What about China? Invented nothing, but they certainly have stolen the best technology American minds have produced.

For those who still, ignorantly believe Socialism and/or Communism to be winning philosophies and lifestyles, consider what life is like in Angola, China, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. Russian composers Aram Khachaturian (1903-78), Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), and Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-75) were all denounced by the Department of Agitation and Propaganda. The existence of such a department speaks volumes – just as long as they are not spoken in Soviet Russia.

Poet, novelist, and professor Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s (1933-2017) writings earned him a travel ban from the late 1950s through the early 1960s. Another poet-novelist, Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), a Soviet dissident who wrote anti-Soviet and anti-Socialist materials, found his works censored by the government. And, novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) suffered a sentence of eight years in a Soviet gulag for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter.

There are those in the United States of America who believe this nation is headed in that very direction. Others would say that time is now. Tech companies serving as agents of the government, or not, censoring the words of ordinary Americans for offering contrary opinions or even for posing questions about what the government is doing. Travel bans were executed in this country due to the Chinese gift of Covid-19. And there are Americans in prison for exercising their First Amendment right to freely assemble on January 6, 2021 – Americans who have not been afforded their civil liberties or due process. We the people must be more vigilant; must pay more attention to what the government of these United States is doing to its own citizens, all the while continuing to allow an invasion at the southern border where millions of people illegally in the United States are furnished with a plethora of freebies.

Bernie Sanders should end his facade of faux Socialism, or if he is a true believer, sell two of his houses, and use the proceeds of them along with his book proceeds to begin to help the tens of thousands of homeless American veterans deserving of so much more than they are getting. End your hypocrisy Comrade Sanders.