Bernie Sanders Lost Illinois, but He Changed Chicago

[The Magistrate]

13. Beyond That, Sir, It Presumes No One Changes

Young people tend to be more radical because they have little to lose, and have little appreciation for long-term consequences, to themselves as well as others. My favorite line of the old Bo Diddley 'Hoo-Doo You Love' has long been 'I'm just twenty-two and I don't mind dyin'!' Personally, I got a lot of mileage out of having nothing to lose during my adventurous youth. Makes a man fearless, and that's frightening. Young ones who live on, however, do learn appreciation for hazards and consequences and how often things just don't turn out the way you thought they would, or to be quite so simple as you used to think.

Old radicals are a special breed, impervious to learning from experience, and in most instances proud of the flaw, though it's really a debilitating one. Personally, I would consider myself a failure as a human being if I could honestly say I thought just as I did when I was twenty or even thirty years of age. That could be true only if I had not grown appreciably over decades.

The secret of Sanders' success with 'the youth vote' is simple. Sanders has not grown, he still thinks and believes what a dorm-room bullshitter thinks and believes. By now, however, he can present the image of an elder's maturity. When a dorm-room bullshitter's views emerge from a lined face beneath grey hair, it lets the dorm-room bullshitter imagine what he thinks already is the distilled wisdom of age and experience.




"When things are not called by their right names, what is said cannot make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed. When plans do not succeed, people become uneasy. When people are uneasy, punishments do not fit crimes. When punishments do not fit crimes, people cannot know where to put hand or foot."