First of all, for those of you who haven't heard me say this, Bernie Sanders isn't running against Jill Stein unless he wins the nomination, which is still a fair possibility at this time, despite what the media tells us; and if that happens it will be the best choice we've had in a long time.
So we shouldn't let the political establishment or media use divide and rule tactics to elect another representative of the rich pretending to defend the rest of us.
This trick has already worked way to many times; and if a growing number of people recognize it we can finally stop falling for it. There may be some signs that this might be happening as we speak; and even if it doesn't help elect a real grass roots candidate it could further expose the corruption of the establishment and provide lots of votes for real grassroots candidates showing them that we won't fall for it much longer and they have to at least try harder to pretend to address legitimate concerns.
We should be able to expect more than a better job pretending to do a good job!
Recently I posted Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein or Revolt in the Streets? based on the water crisis in Flint Michigan and explained that there are many more disasters that aren't being widely reported, which can be found through independent research from local or alternative media outlets. The traditional media sells enormous air time to oil companies which are profiting from the destruction of our environment; but they bury these stories where hardly anyone notices unless they do their own research. Shortly after posting this, I updated it since, the number of reports about lead in water around the country at schools, especially where poorer people live grew; however, once again, they were only reported sporadically.
Our current political establishment isn't willing to report on this but, believe it or not they're already setting the stage for environmental genocide in progress.
Don't believe me; check the facts the more you look at economic and environmental destruction the more evidence you'll see for yourself, assuming you haven't already done so.
It's hard to imagine how we got into such an extreme situation but the most likely explanation seems to be that when a few of these environmental disasters first appeared like Love Canal or the ones exposed by Erin Brockovich they fixed a small percentage of them, at least partially and learned to do their dirty work in the poorest areas with least political clout that the media rarely reports on and it escalated from there until the media consolidated selling air time to the polluters and the pollution is now creeping back into areas where the shrinking middle class live.
Most of the coverage of the Arizona, Utah, and Idaho caucuses or primaries was preempted by another terrorist attack in Brussels. This has lead to more panic calls for retaliation. These tactics routinely do the opposite of what they intend, primarily since the media is unwilling to do a good job reporting on foreign affairs any more than they report on environmental destruction. The United States has constantly been financing armed people that eventually turn against us. This has become so common that unless people pay attention to alternative media outlets they might not be able to keep track of it. We financed the Mujaheddin before they became Al-Qaeda and the Taliban; we funded Syrian rebels before they became ISIS and many other examples.
This means the vast majority of people with "experience" in foreign policy have experience doing incredibly corrupt things that routinely back fire.
Once again they're calling for "solidarity" with the people of Brussels but if that solidarity doesn't involve searching for the root causes of terrorism and preventing them it won't do much if anything to prevent future attacks, and could even prop up the establishment that is inciting retaliation. Some of the people showing "solidarity" might go home to realize that they don't have clean water or they might have some other social or economic problem the establishment isn't addressing. Most of these people are unlikely to become terrorists; but if even a small percentage of them conclude that "solidarity" doesn't benefit everyone they might consider the "terrorists" the lesser evil when the government doesn't protect them from multinational corporations.
I went into this more in Bernie Sanders wins foreign policy debate hands down despite propaganda but the short version is simply that people around the world don't like it when we attack them and refer to it as "Collateral Damage" anymore than we do!
No doubt that the religious differences the media points out is part of the problem but the attacks against their own people and the support for tyrants around the world by the United States is also a big part of the problem! Also while we're destroying the environment in the poorer areas of our own country, the multinational corporations are doing much worse around the world which will only increase the breeding ground for terrorism.
The same goes for preventing crime. Bernie Sanders has indicated that he believes we have to recognize the root causes of violent crime and prevent them, and as I elaborated on in Bernie Sanders Wins Least Violent States the states that do the best job doing this vote for him overwhelmingly; while the states that support the least effective authoritarian tactics have the highest murder rates and vote for Hillary Clinton, although their voter turnout is much lower.
Whether it is at home or abroad, maintaining a rational functioning social and economic system is necessary to prevent crime or terrorism and carry out basic functions for society, like providing education, clean water, safe energy without destroying the environment and more.
Maximizing profits for campaign contributors without addressing the concerns of the majority isn't doing this; and the media only gives reasonable coverage to the candidates that support corporations, not the people.
Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein are relying much more on the grassroots and alternative media outlets for their support and it shows when people take a good look at their track record compared to establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton or anyone the Republicans run.
A few weeks ago Hillary Clinton took a question from a little girl who was crying and worrying that her family might be deported and she took her in her lap and told her she would do the worrying for her and that everything would be OK; however her history when it comes to deportation involved saying that even children had to go back including refugees from Honduras that were fleeing after a coup which she supported according to declassified E-mails. She helped create this crisis and is trying to present herself as the more rational candidate compared to the Republicans; but as I explained in, Why would anyone consider Hillary Clinton if they knew this? this is just one example where she says one thing for political campaigns but does the opposite when in office; and there are a long lest of additional stories exposing past lies or flip-flops.
It's a good thing I still have lots of hair because every time I see propaganda making her look like the more rational candidate repeated over and over again in the media while the stories exposing her lies are quickly forgotten or relegated to alternative media outlets that actually try to report the news, I feel like pulling my hair out!
Donald Trump may appeal to emotions but he's supporting the same policies that many of the other corrupt Republicans that got his supporters into financial trouble in the first place. The Republican Party has been appealing to emotions and hatred for so long they're indoctrinated their constituents to support irrational policies and search for scapegoats when everything fails, instead of teaching them to think rationally and choose better policies or leaders.
Most of the states that are most likely to support Clinton have already voted, thanks to the front-loading of the primaries by the political establishment; which means that most of the remaining states are much more likely to support Sanders, possibly by large margins like in Utah and Idaho. This clearly means that he is much more likely to win the nomination than the media is trying to indicate.
However there is still a chance that he may not and if he is going to avoid that he will have to convince many of the "super-delegates" which are chosen by Party insiders, to switch sides. These "super-delegates" have the right to veto the will of the people under the current rules, which is highly undemocratic. If Bernie Sanders is going to convince these party insiders to switch sides he has to be prepared to exposed how corrupt these rules are, and hopefully overturn them before the next election.
He may have a better chance of doing this if they think that the grassroots are going to bolt from the Party, as they should, if the Democratic Party is Democratic in name only while representing multi-national corporations. Some Bernie Sanders might hesitate to ask him to endorse Jill Stein while he still has a chance to win the nomination but there is a movement to do just that on Facebook and if the establishment realizes that their grassroots will bolt if they take them for granted it might just help convince them to support Sanders, who has a better chance of winning in November and implementing real reform.
If they rig the primaries anyway then this could be the start of major reform if enough people join in support of alternatives like Jill Stein. Both Donald Trump and Hillery Clinton have enormous negative approval ratings in all polls. It is hard to imagine why the media would provide so much coverage fro candidates that the public don't like while ignoring those that they like much more.
Clearly greed and ideological fanaticism have a lot to do with it; but as long as they think they can get away with it every damn time they won't have incentives to address legitimate concerns and accepting incredibly bad candidates won't change that!
Both Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein are far better than establishment candidates but neither of them are as important as major grassroots reform. They can both do far more to help grassroots reform than establishment candidates, assuming they don't become like them once they get elected. One way for them to show they're not doing this would be to support reform while running by opening the debates for all grassroots candidates and supporting Instant-Run-Off elections that could break up the corporate duopoly controlling both parties. Even if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination he should support open debates inviting the most popular candidates like the Green Party or Libertarian Party and more. This was allowed more often before the Commission on Presidential Debates took over the process and started rigging it to preserve the duopoly. If they threaten to ban candidates that debate with third or fourth party candidates Bernie Sanders could do it anyway and demonstrate how the Commission on Presidential Debates has been censoring the debates for decades. If the only debates are with grassroots candidates and the media and Commission on Presidential Debates refuse to cover it they will indicate that they're heavily censored, which people reading alternative media outlets already know.
Both candidates should also update their Project Vote Smart questionnaires; both Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein filled out them in the past, and they're available, which is better than establishment candidates do; but it would still be better if they updated them.
Ironically, if there is a candidate as good or better than Bernie Sanders on the Palestine or Israel issue, it is Jill Stein, and they're the only two Jewish candidates running. The Palestinians weren't the ones responsible for the Holocaust and they've had their land for centuries after the Romans drove out the Jewish people almost two thousand years ago; but in order to justify taking their land they had to make them seem like the villains with their propaganda. Unfortunately the traditional media isn't willing to cover the majority of this reasonably.
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