Nice Guys Finish Second to Last

Bernie Sanders and his “Bernie Bros” have come under a lot of fire over the last few years. For those of who aren’t in the know, a “Bernie Bro” is an ardent Sanders supporter who tends to get aggressive online with those who don’t agree with their opinion of Sanders and his policies. There is name calling, sarcasm, and other slightly toxic behaviors that essentially live online and rarely leave the cyber-reality.

A lot of it isn’t nice, some of it is pretty shitty, almost none of it is actually dangerous, but it is relatively tame in the grand scheme of the bizarre and often dangerous world of online activity. The level of violence and depravity you can find on one porn website outweighs the vast majority of actions of “Bernie Bros” by an immeasurable scale. Compared to what you can find on Pornhub, a “Bernie Bros” actions wouldn’t even register on the Richter Scale. It’s literally a joke in comparison to Trump’s legion of online psychos and the hateful vitriol they spew on a daily basis.

But you wouldn’t get that from the amount of attention that “Bernie Bros” have gotten from the mainstream cable news networks and from the Democratic establishment. They have made this a serious talking point and laid the “Bernie Bro” criticism on pretty thick. It has been brought up in the debates by all the major candidates, been a subject of repeated news stories online and on all the major news networks, and most recently, Rachel Maddow’s interview with Elizabeth Warren where the topic took up what seemed like the majority of her first major interview after dropping out of the race. She talked about a bunch of things but Bernie’s online supporters was the single topic she discussed the most. It’s almost like it’s actually a big deal in real life even though it truly isn’t.

I get it. It’s politics. Nobody in the establishment wants him and they are dying to get rid of him so they use this and other things to shut him down. In the grand scheme of politics it’s just another dirty trick in the dirtiest game around.

But this is where all that bullshit ends and the real shit begins.

Some reptilian version of a human being unfurled a Nazi flag on Thursday night during a Sanders rally and reminded people what real bullying looks like. And it’s not the nasty words on the internet type bullying that Democratic candidates and pundits have crying about for weeks, some even years. It’s the pure, legitimate hatred type of bullying. The not letting your kid go to the same school or sit in the front of the bus type bullying. The stomp the shit out of the gay kid type bullying. The round them all up and put them in a gas chamber type of bullying. The real McCoy.

Liberals have long been criticized by many on the right for being overly sensitive about things that they think shouldn’t matter that much. It’s the whole “not everyone gets a trophy” argument that I’m talking about where Conservatives think that not being tough makes you a weak person. Being nice is a sign of weakness and in a dangerous world it could be the reason you don’t make it. A lot of times they are off-base and indeed not sensitive enough with their John Wayne tough guy act. But this is where they are in the right. It’s in situations where the going gets tough that if you’re too soft and too sensitive the result will be you getting your brains bashed in.

Liberals have been spending inordinate amount of time worrying about things like Bernie Bros being too mean and uncivil all while there are people like this fascist at the Sanders rally are growing in strength all across America. And they are emboldened by none other than the President himself who is overtly racist. He speaks their language and he’s been whistling to call them home for the last 4 years. Their numbers are growing and they are less and less afraid to show their once hidden and shameful faces.

To cite an example of why this approach is toxic, I’ll remind you of one of the early points in the Democratic debates that in total have been so “civil” that they lack any teeth at all. When Julian Castro brought up the subject of Joe Biden’s cognitive health by intimating he was “forgetting something he said two minutes ago” he was essentially ripped to shreds by every other candidate and by the media. Castro should have been applauded for talking about the elephant in the room but instead he was vilified. But now the front runner for the Democratic Party is in fact a guy who appears to be forgetting things to such a degree that one has to wonder not if he is in cognitive decline but what stage. This is what nice gets you. Understand?

Nice time is long gone. If you want to be nice, buy your coworkers bagels one day. Donate to charity. But there is no time left to be nice with politics. The other guys have not been nice for a long time and they have a lot of practice.

Get out of your house. Do something. March. Write letters. Be mean. Listen to the voice in your gut that tells you to do something.

Stop being nice. It doesn’t look good on you right now.

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