WELCOME TO MY FANTASY

Tuesday's Mother Jones article on Bernie Sanders younger days gave rise to today's misogynist corporate press rantings over his 1972 piece that gives incredible insight into the state of the women’s movement in that year, publishing a blurry yet readable scan of a Sanders' Freudian essay called "Man and Woman" from the "Vermont Freeman."

Of course the puerile obsessions of the Chuck Todd-crowd that surfaced over the piece on the Sunday blather-fests demonstrates that those who didn't get it them still fail to comprehend the dominant-subservient dynamic of the rape culture that Sanders understood even 42 years ago.


At the time, despite the era's "revolution in the air," movement gatherings were still male-dominated affairs where women were kept in the kitchen and condescendingly told how "cute" their all-female "consciousness raising" sessions were.


Press accounts have "keyed in" the most prurient parts of an essay that was apparently meant to demonstrate the social science behind men's knee-jerk rejection of social equality and women's internalization of basic troglodytic male insecurities. But of course they've left the insightful parts that follow on the cutting room floor because four decades have done nothing to bring these suits and hair-dos into the 21st century.


If "news"- and I use the term loosely- of this smear hasn't reached you yet, it will. It took a while to follow the links to find the original amidst the breathlessly and selectively out-of-context excerpts to find the original article. I doubt you'll be seeing the full text any time soon.


In 1972 few men were able to grasp the concept of a social component and go beyond "equal pay" type issues being raised by the nascent women's movement of the day. Sanders on the other hand, got it then the same way he does today. Sanders continues to be in the progressive forefront of the battle, especially in the military, citing current legislative efforts as woefully inadequate.


And by the way, do read the rest of MJ's profile of his younger days.


I'm not about to revoke my Green Party affiliation to join the Hawai`i Democratic Party to vote in the caucuses but I'll be doing everything I can to see if we can raise Sanders' already incredibly 15% showing in the national polls to 51%- despite the clueless, gotcha, issue-free, industrial press- by grabbing the potential of the so-called "social" media by it's horns and rallying people to utilize it for our own designs. All we have to do is reverse the perverted, self-fulfilling reasoning of the "he can't win so I won't vote for him" loons.


Hey- it could happen.


My "now you see it, now you don't" eyes ain't what they used to be and I'm really bad at keying in text. So scroll down, squint a little and read Sanders' essay in full. And if you don't see what it really says perhaps that's a clue as to why despite the gains in the treatment of women over forty-plus years we, as a still-male-dominated society, still have so far to go.