Bernie Sanders is William Wallace & His Movement Will Win Even if He Doesn’t

This article is in response to @MitchWLerner’s article yesterday on Medium where he compares Bernie Sanders to Tonya Harding, the American figure skater who had her goons kneecap fellow American Nancy Kerrigan at the 1994 Olympics. In Mitch’s analogy, Hillary Clinton is the Kerriganesque victim here simply because Bernie is STILL competing against her rather than stepping aside to join corporate America slow-clapping Hillary’s coronation. It is true that Hillary is as annoyingly entitled as Kerrigan was, but everything else in Mitch’s silly article is a complete fail, especially the comparison of Bernie to Tonya, not to mention associating the blameless Oksana Bauil to Donald Madman Trump.

Mitch went back in time one year too far. He should have stopped in 1995 when Braveheart won the Oscar for Best Picture. Braveheart perfectly illustrates the state of American politics today. Edward Longshanks is corporate America, ruling the nation with ruthless efficiency toward consolidating more power and more wealth. The Democrats and Republicans are the Scottish nobles, wholly owned by Longshanks. They are hopelessly co-opted by their ruler and faithfully carry out orders without regard for the interests of the people that they purport to represent. Bernie is William Wallace, a nobody who is courageous enough and crazy enough to believe that the people will come together to overthrow a horribly corrupt and oppressive system.

Let’s start with Longshanks. He doesn’t mind betraying a peace accord and murdering Scotsmen, even children. He is perfectly happy to push someone out the window to his death. So long as he gains more power and more wealth, it’s all just part of doing business. The same goes for corporate America. Of course there are responsible companies out there, but when we see Halliburton make billions off the Iraq War, pharmaceuticals overcharging Americans to the point where many die from lack of medication, oil companies getting tax subsidies instead of paying taxes, Wall Street getting bailed out for the very crash they caused while millions of ordinary people suffer, private prisons building school-to-prison pipelines to line their coffers while robbing our youth of their future, and on and on and on, it’s easy to see that while Longshanks may have been bloodier, the results are similar. And while Longshanks fucked you on your wedding night under Prima Nocta, corporate America fucks you almost every day.

Unfortunately, we have the same representatives in government as the Scotsmen had under Longshanks. Like the Scottish nobles, Hillary and all the corporatists in Congress, are bought off. They serve their masters rather than the people they represent. Is it any wonder that they constantly call for caution, and push for slow, incremental change? They benefit from this system so they have no interest in changing it. Yes, some nobles are uglier and more vulgar than others, and some nobles wrap themselves in pleasantries. And that is the “choice” that the people are given. Lochlan or Mornay? Trump or Clinton? And while there are certainly short-term differences in which noble you choose, the long term effect is that the existing system will endure.

But here comes Bernie! Like William Wallace, Bernie is not “7-feet tall” and he doesn’t shoot “fireballs from his eyes and lighting bolts from his arse,” and they both have crazy hair, but they both command tremendous excitement, respect and love from the people. Go see a Bernie rally. It’s packed with thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, cheering him on because they finally have a leader who they believe in, who speaks for them, who fights for them. They embrace him the way the Scottish army does when Wallace delivers his “Freedom” speech. What is Bernie fighting for? Income equality, universal healthcare, free tuition for public colleges, the environment, and getting the corrupting influence of money out of politics. He is fighting for ordinary Americans who are increasingly marginalized by the billionaire donor class that has taken control over American democracy.

Fighting corporate America might be as scary as fighting Longshanks, and many politicians know that going against the money is often the death of their political career. To fight corporate America, the people have to join in the fight, and to join the fight, they need a leader. Who will be that leader?

There’s a scene in Braveheart when Wallace tells Robert the Bruce, “men don’t follow titles, they follow courage.” That is absolutely true, and it explains the difference between Bernie’s fervent following and Hillary’s lukewarm support. Her Clinton title is not enough to rally the people to her side. As for courage, I don’t ever recall her forging a brave path forward. Every word out of her mouth is coached, parsed, vetted, focus group tested, and preapproved by her handlers. She’s always taken the side of power, from sitting on Walmart’s board and going along with all of their anti-labor practices to voting with the Bush Administration for the Iraq War to taking millions of dollars from major corporations to attending Donald Trump’s wedding. When did she ever fight for something that she didn’t personally benefit from? When has she ever taken an unpopular position because it was the right thing to do? From her shifting positions on gay marriage to her flip-flopping on TPP, it’s clear that she is always gauging the political winds before she takes a stand. That is not courage.

In contrast, Bernie’s courage has been inspirational. He does not have a Super PAC because he doesn’t want to even take the chance of being corrupted by large donors. As we all know, the average contribution of his grassroots donors is $27! Not taking millions from corporations and billionaires and instead relying on ordinary working class Americans?!? In politics, that is as courageous as it gets given that money rules politics. But that’s not all! He is the only candidate who has been pro-gay rights long before that became a popular cause, he voted AGAINST the Iraq War at a time when the drumbeats to war were loudly beating in unison across the nation, and he has consistently and unapologetically fought for workers’ rights even while much of the media and political class demonized unions. Yes, Bernie is our William Wallace, the champion of the people fighting against a seemingly unbeatable opponent.

So how does it all end? Wallace is captured, tortured and executed by Longshanks. Bernie is likely not going to be physically tortured by Lloyd Blankfein,

but he is likely to lose the primary against Hillary. But just as the end of Wallace didn’t end the movement for Scottish independence, Bernie’s loss will not end the movement that he has helmed. Braveheart ends with Wallace’s voiceover: “In the Year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland — starving and outnumbered — charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets; they fought like Scotsmen, and won their freedom.” Likewise, in some future year, Bernie will say, “the American people waged a political revolution; they fought like hell, got money out of politics, and restored our democracy.”

Steve Oh is the Chief Business Officer of The Young Turks. He is a Bernie supporter and a huge fan of Braveheart. You can tweet him at @stevenoh88