If Bernie is courting progressive voters, why Liberty University?

[zazen]

292. yes, educate, and you haven't heard his speech yet, so how can you excoriate him for it?

BainsBane, I don't know what has happened to you. You were gone from DU for awhile and I've honestly wondered if another human being is using your "handle." Is that possible? Maybe I'm violating "meta" here but I suspect others have this question too, but I write out of respect, so this may be the most complimentary callout in DU history. Jury me if you must.

You used to apply your brilliance and courage as a radical feminist to issues like violent pornography and everyday sexism across all cultures and give voice to girls and women who are usually unable articulate the micro aggressions that saturate their daily experience. I could always rely on the brilliant insight and consistent, strong presence of BainsBane in any argument dealing with gender issues. Now it seems that all of that energy is taken up with trying to convince us that Bernie Sanders is some sort of closet misogynist and that the critical global struggle to rein in capitalist's excesses somehow subverts rather than energizes our ongoing struggles for gender, racial, and other forms of social inequalities.

These challenges are in fact intricately interrelated, and I wish we could enjoy the benefits of your insights into this intersectionality rather than read again and again snarky comments about Sanders or anyone who critiques Ms. Clinton. I have the utmost for Ms. Clinton's accomplishments on behalf of women and stand up against any woman-hating attacks on her (and there are many on the Right and sadly a few on the Left, whom I called out here on DU back in 2007 when I wrote the controversial Obama sex toy post to illustrate the offensiveness of the Hillary nutcracker ad that DU used to run). But she is a neoliberal hawk through and through and doesn't seem to comprehend how the policies she' has supported as FLOTUS and since have impoverished millions of women and minorities through abetting the rapacious greed of the very few.

We need your brain examining and articulating intersectionalities, not attacking the candidates who are finally getting the issue of economic justice back into the mainstream. Economic justice is vital in dealing with global climate change and the impending energy crises of the 21st century. If we don't rein in rapacious capitalism now, we are that much closer to a more brutal world where the first rights to go will be women's hard won gains (as always), intersected by attacks on whatever minority group the demagogues can successfully scapegoat. A climate where citizens have basic economic rights is much more conducive to confronting police brutality of minorities, the prison-industrial complex that systemically decimates minority communities, and attacks on women's bodily freedom.

I want the old BainsBane back.

Written respectfully

Zazen in NC