Yep, while I’ve thrown my own critiques at Sanders and doubt he can be elected, I think one reason so many under 40’s are as all in for him as Trumpers are for him, is that they don’t hear him talk the subtleties and political gobbledygook of most politicians, but see a consistent and plain message about our predicament and what is needed, while refusing to take money from the corporations that he argues block such solutions.
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Here is what Sanders stated recently (courtesy of The Babylon Bee):
U.S.—In a televised interview, Bernie Sanders has praised slave owners for their free housing program offered to all slaves working the plantations.
“Of course, the slavery was bad, but the slaves were housed, for free I might add, for their entire employment,” Sanders said in an interview with 60 Minutes. “So it’s unfair to criticize the whole thing. Also, the slaveowners were pretty impressive guys. The plantations were very clean, very nice buildings. I actually honeymooned at one in Virginia back in 1845, and it was an eye-opener for me as to how much propaganda has been used to malign slaveowners and their healthcare, housing, and literacy programs.”
At publishing time, sources had also confirmed that Bernie Sanders had defended hell itself, saying the place of eternal torment has “gotten a bad rap” and “isn’t such a bad place.”
Gotta love that Babylon Bee.
I actually think Bernie is more trustworthy than the other candidates - and he has been fairly consistent over the years, though he has flip-flopped greatly on the immigration issue and a few other things.
But I totally believe he wants to turn the USA into a socialist paradise - I believe him - even though it has NEVER worked anywhere, and would be the end of the greatest country in history.
Bernie Sanders would not even live as one of us in his new society. Flagrant hypocrisy. Will he give up 2 of his 3 homes to live ‘like us’? NO.
But he definitely belongs in the postmodern category, as does the entire far Left. The abandonment of Modern enlightenment thinking - Truth, Reason, Knowledge : all of those things, to people like the Bern, are mere social constructs of white male privilege, or perhaps of a colonial imperialistic structure, and must be torn down in the name of – what?? If everything is relative, if the world is a social construct and we have no actual access to ‘reality’ - so the only reality is what we MAKE - how can a pomo trust his or her own mind enough to tell US what is right/wrong/mora/. etc etc? all claims to objectivity and truth can be deconstructed and explained away on the basis of whiteness, sex - and replaced with what?
Ah well - Some arguments cannot be made in a paragraph. Read the book.
Has Sanders asserted that we have no access to reality, or that there is no objective truth? He seems to me to be as dogmatically certain as any modern on the right about his views of what is real and moral.
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I can’t speak for Bernie Sanders - but you don’t have to be a post modernist to think that truth can be distorted by power relations in any given society. That is not to deny the existence of objective truth - it is to say that we need to be humble about our ability to grasp the truth entire.
There were, for example, pseudo-scientific beliefs - such as eugenics and the inferiority of non-European races (including s semitic races) - that gained influence among Europeans and Americans in the late 19th/early 20th century. I’m sure many thought that these beliefs were based on scientific fact - but they were actually an false interpretation of the scientific facts.
I think it is entirely right for us to be cautious about how much truth we grasp on any giving matter - and be open to having this challenged. Critical realism is not the same as post-modernism. And critical realism is well able to take into account how power can distort our aspirations to objectivity I think without lapsing into nihilism. And sure - there is then a latitude for debate about when criticisms of what are perceived as facts on the grounds of ideological distortion are actually been misused to undermine any sense of objectivity - but getting the balance right is a perennial problem for us two legged creatures.
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The post-modernists would deconstruct your thoughts entirely, Dick - aren’t you white, and a male, and living a privileged life? Your foundations are crumbling under the onslaught of pomo ‘thinking’ and your critical realism is nothing but will-to-power disguised. You are in short a homophobe, racist, bigoted white supremacist and those things are so systemic in your being that, probably, you should be exterminated for your own good…LOL
Critical Realism is fine, sure…but to the extent it relies on Truth, Reason etc. as foundational it is often ineffectual. Politicians both sides do not appeal to those foundations any longer - the short-cut is to emotional appeal, soundbytes, propaganda, manipulation of mood by image and all the tools of mendacity.
(I hope my tongue-in-cheekiness was obvious 
)
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To the extent that the right or anyone else dismisses reason, truth, science, facts, etc, I think in the long run the most effectual move is actually to reject such thinking.
I wasn’t thinking Right or Left in that comment, but sure we should ‘reject’ the thinking, I agree. But our rejecting it does not seem to have an effect in the Realpolitik of the world.
Perhaps ‘we’ understand the world - but ‘they’ are changing it.
I have a DEEP philosophical and artistic question. Are the 3 Stooges creating postmodern art here? 
Notice the rich gentleman at the end, wanting to buy them all.
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Yes of course I got your tongue in cheekiness here Dave old chum 
Just because I’m not po mo – it don’t mean I’m po faced :-D.
As for this –
‘’I wasn’t thinking Right or Left in that comment, but sure we should ‘reject’ the thinking, I agree. But our rejecting it does not seem to have an effect in the Realpolitik of the world.
Perhaps ‘we’ understand the world - but ‘they’ are changing it.’’
OK – I want to look into an example from a conservative thinker rather than talking about dead Frenchmen. I think Jordan Peterson would argue that his model of the ‘dominance hierarchy’ tells is something about an essential and objective truth about life. Why is this truth and not simply a subjective inference made on selected data from the natural world and from evolutionary psychology (a discipline whose ‘hard truth’ claim pretensions are a matter of dispute – which is even more the case with the archetypes of Jungian psychology that Dr Peterson draws upon for his architecture of meaning). Isn’t Jordan also guilty of trying to change the world – back to an idealized past – rather than trying to understand it? I’m being an agent provocateur here so I can get clarification btw
Perhaps Postmodernism is bringing up fears. This informative article will help us deal with it.
This invention sure looks “postmodern” to me.
What Jordan says must be deconstructed - his writing/speech means absolutely nothing unless it is exposed as to what his privilege and learning, whiteness etc is, first. Then a truly ‘woke’ person can see the disguised powerr moves, that Peterson and you are unable to see. lol.
It’s perhaps important to remember that pomo thinking rejects all the fruits of the Enlightenment, including science and other STEM disciplines; by the very nature that they are based on supremicist foundations of Truth, Reason - they are fruits of the poisonous tree. But that is your dead Frenchman for you.
I admire your provocateur-ness, but you cannot reason around a world-view than denies YOUR type of ‘reason’ because of who you are.
Really I think it goes back to a dead German - Karl Marx - who more or less invented the concept of ‘class’ in order to foment unrest and eventually revolution. The Left has run with that for 100 years - as witness their only hope, which is identity politics - us against them, poor versus rich - but just because he came up with a concept does not mean it is valid. For instance, the proletariat during the 1800’s generally did not care that the bourgeois had more money and therefore the means of production - they were glad to have a job but wanted fair wages, that would have kept them happy and productive. As soon as that relationship was defined as ‘class struggle’ - there we go.
I’m not avoiding your question - but asking how one can avoid the pomo analysis?
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I’ll get back to you on this one Dave
Just need to clarify a few things here. Marx didn’t invent the concept of class. To talk about how societies divide up into different groupings unequal in wealth and power is an empirical observation rather than a theoretical one I reckon.
As Mike notes – conflict between these different groups in different societies has been a perennial feature of history. Ancient Rome had its protracted struggle between the Patrician and Plebeian orders and – of course – the Spartacus Revolt. Also there were a large number of peasant revolts against the landed aristocracy in the late Middle Ages – and sometimes also revolts by the new mercantile class against the aristocrats. And this is all before we get to the early modern period.
In the mid-nineteenth century Marx and Engels– and Bakunin too – did start to talk about ‘class’ in a different way – and I think/know that’s what you mean here (because you’ve used the word ‘relationship’ in your last sentence ). Marx saw class in terms of relationship which was always a conflictual relationship; the conflict was based on the struggle for ownership of the means of production which – according to Marx – would only be resolved when these were in common ownership. And, of course, for Marx the engine of change had to be violent revolution.
Marx and Engels based their social analysis on Britain in the 1840s. Much of the early industrial revolution had entailed appalling suffering for the new industrial working classes – including the wickedly harsh provisions of the 1832 Poor Law, and the appalling conditions in which people – including very young children - laboured. There had been much working class agitation in Britain – the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Cato Street Conspiracy, the awful Peterloo Massacre of a peaceful demonstration for working class suffrage in Manchester etc…
What happened in the mid-Victorian period changed all of this. There was a progressive understanding among sections of the middle classes that things needed to change which allied with organised working class movements in the Mechanics Institute, the Workers Education Association, the Christian Socialist Guild etc. It wasn’t just wages that needed to be raised– education, sanitation, universal suffrage (starting with male suffrage) were also necessary to create a big society in which all classes had a stake. And part of this – in Britain – was driven by the idea of ‘bottom loaded utilitarianism’ which was the premise that everyone could not have happiness by right but they should have the means to be happy by right.
Marx’s prediction of revolution in Britain was completely wrong – as was his prediction that in Marxist States the ruling class would wither away. But one doesn’t have to be a Marxist to be concerned about the need to build and maintain a society which works for the many and not the few. Very few mid and late Victorians of any class were Marxists. But they were aware of the need to build a fairer society in which the divide between classes was ameliorated.
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I think we should also explore postmodern literature. This article from today’s Patheos’ Evangelical newsletter, might shed some insight.
Good point about Marx - he did nuance his ideas of violent praxis it seems (at leat later on, post the period of revolutions against monrachy in the ate 1840s). Hoever, his main exponents in the tetieth century had no nuance. It’s a bit like Rossau’s Social COntract inasmuch as Rosseau appended the note 'None of this is woth paying for in human blood. Yet the authoritarian ideas about the rule/will of the people he expounded in it resulted in the Terror (we’ll there is at least a small analogy although - as you say - Marx never ruled out violent revolution as a legitmate path).
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