Spreading the Bernie Word--One guy's thoughts [View all]

[Jackpine Radical]

I tend to rely on random encounters with people. I'm the type who talks a lot to store clerks, etc. when I'm out & about. I start out by maybe asking questions about their merchandise that implies that I respect their opinion; not just "Where are the oranges," but "Have you tried any of these oranges? What do you think?"

For some reason, people seem to like to tell me things, all sorts of things. I often steer them onto politics and just draw them out, never try to assert my own stuff. If they're committed wingnuts or fundamentalists, it becomes obvious pretty soon, & I move on to other topics & disengage. However, if they start showing their malaise (to borrow Jimmy Carter's word), I might ask them if they've heard anything about this Bernie guy.

I'm going to start carrying along Bernie's 12 Steps. (That, BTW, is a great entree when you run across someone in a recovery program. "Hey, here's another 12-step program. What do you think of these?"

This is what works for me. Everybody needs to work out their own style.

But imagine this: Suppose you manage to really turn on 1 person a week, and each of them goes on to turn on others at the same rate. Starting with Bernie's 100,000 known supporters, at the end of 1 week, we would number 200,000, and so on, in a geometric progression. It would take something like 11 weeks to have 100 million recruits.

Now, obviously, it's not going to play out exactly like that, but sometimes it helps to have that kind or arithmetic in mind when we contemplate our actions. It's not all futile. There is a path toward the world we want. It can be made to work.