About a year ago (in 2023), upon watching:

Bernie Sanders spells out why capitalism is failing us | Down the pub with Bernie Sanders

at:

https://youtu.be/eNXoL5Qwu8g

I wrote the following:

First (the least important point:), I am glad that the stupid music which accompanied the conversation at the beginning went away later. Second, I am glad that the people sitting in the joint did not make any noise, nor interrupt the conversation. Bernie Sanders was given enough opportunity to say things that he believes are important. Sadly, he is a man of intellectual courage only by the low standards of intellectual cowards. The 'ruling class' of intellectual cowards imagine that political thought is REQUIRED to depict a BINARY world-view, and pick only ONE side --and at least one side. We are also expected, in the 21st Century, despite the long record of the damage that our species has been causing on this planet, to DISREGARD INTERGENERATIONAL HARM, and act as if the villains and (potential) heroes must be the people living today.

Neither Bernie Sanders nor his vocal supporters seem to have ANYTHING CRITICAL to say about arguably the most transformative and destructive revolution in the story of our species: THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION. They don't even demonstrate any intention of showing an opposition to HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH or MINDLESS URBANIZATION. They pat themselves on the back for their 'heroic' opposition to the transfer of wealth from the poor to the (ultra-)rich. (I am certainly with them in that fight; but I do not pat myself on the back just for that.) But they SEEM TO BE OK with the transfer of wealth, and time, and intangible resources, from the NONPROCREATORS to PROCREATORS. (Of course, we know which group includes more voters.) They seem to assume that everybody should be OK with, if not utterly orgasmic about, subsidizing human procreation, even when offered a mountain of information proving that ours is the most destructive species on this planet. (Refusing to fall pray to another BINARY world-view, I concede that many, but not all, nonprocreators cause far more harm to the planet than _some_ procreators.)

Bernie Sanders insists on speaking and writing as if there is something inherently virtuous or praiseworthy about WORKING PEOPLE, without bothering to ask what those people are working for. Could it be that they are working hard to produce lethal weapons, weapons systems, jet fighters, tanks, explosives, etc., that his country has been selling to its allies and others --all over the globe, and for many decades? Could it be that they are working hard to produce gas-guzzling vehicles?  Could it be that they are working hard to produce pesticides some of which ends up killing marine life as far as the Arctic Zone? Could it be that they are working hard to produce tobacco? Could it be that they are working hard to build housing ('affordable' or otherwise), while leaving less and less space for the rest of living beings? Could it be that they are working hard to channel water exclusively for the direct or indirect benefit of our species? Could it be that they are working hard to produce widgets that are programmed to break down in a few years or months (thanks to the obscene amount of R&D that goes into 'built-in obsolescence')? Could it be that they are working hard to extract resources that are scarce, polluting the environment in the process --causing intergenerational harm? Could it be that they are working hard to produce plastic --tons of which end up in the rivers, lakes, and oceans, bits and pieces of which end up in human and animal bodies? Well... if that is the case, all the blame rests on the shoulders of the ultra-rich, right?

In the 19th Century, as Native Americans were being regularly massacred, untold numbers of bison were slaughtered in North America --about 60 million, by some estimates. Billions, if not tens of billions of passenger pigeons were brought to extinction in a few decades. Tens of thousands of whales were slaughtered, until cheap kerosene rendered the slaughter too costly to the whalers. In less than 500 years, about a third of the topsoil, in some parts of the U.S., was washed into the oceans. In her 2009 TED talk entitled "How to protect the oceans", Sylvia Earle stated that ~ 90% of the big fish were already gone from the oceans

(https://youtu.be/43DuLcBFxoY). But, ... we can all be sure that such harm was due entirely to the greed of 'capitalists' or the 1%ers, right? If some weirdos claim otherwise, we can blame them for being apologists for the capitalists, right? Or we can call them "Splitters!". After all, it was written (somewhere in the unquestionable scriptures) that there is a struggle between the working class and the rest, right? Why should we even TRY to be intellectually honest, and own up to some undeniable facts? "We are many, they are few!", right?

Bernie Sanders does not even seem to be aware that the overwhelming 'majority' of the WORK that is done to make human lives possible on this planet is done BY OTHER SPECIES, especially those that are responsible for PHOTOSYNTHESIS and PLANT PROPAGATION.

Anybody who attempts to pontificate about 'economic matters' should, in my view, be prepared to demonstrate an awareness that ours is a HETEROTROPH species. We rely entirely on OTHER SPECIES to generate our life energies. Given this fact, it would be criminal for us to act as if a 'just economic system' should limit itself to matters of distributing wealth and other resources among human beings --with no thought given to what is being done to 'the plant kingdom', the topsoil, the atmosphere, the water cycle, etc.

Given time, I will continue, I promise.

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On 31 August 2024 I write: I am glad that Bernie Sanders stood in opposition to Israeli government's crimes of commission and omission in Gaza and the West Bank. That said, I think that my criticism above is fair. Of course, countless millions. all over the world, appear to deserve similar criticism.