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Arguing Bernie Sanders supporters....

I meant to finish this long ago, right after the Democratic convention when I became, rightfully as it turned out, concerned that the way Bernie supporters talked about Hillary Clinton sounded alarmingly like the way Trump supporters talked.

A young woman responded to something I wrote in the comment section of a YouTube page that showed Bernie supporters leaving the arena when Hillary came on stage to speak. They had drank the same coolaid Trump supporters had with the whole false narrative about Hillary that was fact free. When I challenged her to prove she knew what she was talking about, and she couldn't defend her position, she did what Trump supporters do. She went fact free into another rant mentioning she had protested the Iraq war. I think I told her something along the line of "opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one. You are entitled to  your own opinion. However, you are NOT entitled to your own facts. You don't know what the "f"you are talking about".

The main part of her rant was about Hillary's role in "the US war in Libya". Of course we did not go to war in Libya. We launched some cruise missiles he first day to take out the air defenses so the no-fly zone ordered by he UN could be enforced and and offered command and control for the NATO and Arab League air campaign but most all of the air strikes were by the French and the some by the British. So she had already proven ignorance of the events that I'd been following closely. She had evidently been tweeting about every lady gaga fart at the time. She had no idea of what was happening as Qaddafi's forces surrouned Benghazi and of course ignorant of the fact this was all done through UN resolutions that had such wide support even the Russians didn't veto it. UN resolution 1973. I just pulled that out of memory, let me see if I have it right. Ok, I was mostly right. It was UN Security Counsel Resolution 1973. I remember it because it WAS a big deal. Qaddafi was tightening the noose around a huge civilian population that mostly opposed him. His generals had been saying they'd kill everyone. I'm serious. The leaders in Bengazi were pleading to stop Qaddafi's tanks and artillery from breaching the city, which they began to do and Libyan war ships were on the way to bombard the city.

I had been specifically and repeatedly asking  if she actually could tell me what was happening around Benghazi before a coalition of countries launched air strikes against Qaddafi tanks and artillery.

Here reply was; "I frankly don't care if you think I know what I am talking about."

My response was,

Here you step into very dangerous ground. You can't defend your position and yet insist it's valid. That's the exact same position Donald Trump supporters have. If you can't prove you know what you're talking about, you don't. Calling Hillary right-wing is so ignorant i won't dignify it. READ A FUCKING BOOK you social media gangster! If you'd have started this conversation with that declaration I won't have wasted a minute on you. I thought I was talking with someone who was reasonable.

Again! If you were around. or knew google from a hole in the ground you know how people were duped on Iraq. She, and we, deserve credit for admitting the mistake, not scorn. You.. are.. not.. above .. reproach.

I figure you to have been in Jr high or early high school when the Iraq invasion happened. When did you protest? Then, or 5 years or more down the road? I'm done giving you history lessons. I ask your repeatedly to look into what was happening around Benghazi the week or 2 before the airstrikes. You're to lazy do do it, too immature to think facts might enlighten your opinion  about what happens. You've gone over the line from opinion grounded in reason to a religious belief and Bernie is nothing more than your pope.

You don't want to get into a pissing contest over war protesting with someone who turned eighteen five months after the Tet offensive in Vietnam. Oh, you don't have a clue do you. The 4 months before I registered for the draft (a reality no young person today has to face) 5,000 Americans were KIA. That's more in 3 months than the entire Iraq war. In 68 20,000 US solders were killed. Between 68 and 72 (a far longer period than you protested) I was in a dozen protests from Chicago to DC. On Nixon's Januaray 1973 inauguration day I was one of 300,000 people that marched behind  the Vietnam veterans against the war in protest. There, I heard the founder of the Vietnam Veterans against the war speak. His name was John Kerry. He would have made a great president and, like Hillary did years of maintaining the balancing act of being Secretary of State in dangerous times, without putting American boots on the ground. I heard another veteran speak who became known around the world when his life was portrayed in "Born on the 4th of July". His name is Ron Kovich. He's still alive and yes, he was born on the 4th of July 1946. In many of these protests I and others were housed by upper middle class couples who had lost a son, or had one in the fight in Vietnam. I couple in DC opened there great apartment to a dozen of us.

I was at the five year memorial of the Kent State massacur. Yes, protestors got killed in those days. Four had been killed in Jackson Miss. the day before the Kent State murders. One of the speakers was Daniel Ellsburg who leaked information about Vietnam war truth to the New York Times in what became known as "The Pentagon Papers".  He came bounding across the stage waving over his head his fresh off the presses copy of the transcripts of the tape recordings of Nixon's White House conversations. His first words were "This dooms Richard Nixon".  It did indeed.

In fact, in those years Hillary Clinton was a 27 year old staff attorney for the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate investigation while the burkenstock hippy leftist intellectual Bernie Sanders, who was one of thousands of left of the left hippies moved with the expressed goal of taking over the underpoplulated Vermont State government ran for State Senate. He got 4% of the vote as a fringe 3rd party candidate. Yea, I knew about Bernie.

 Nothing about Hillary has changed since then and likewise nothing has changed about Bernie. He was always an opportunist just as he was when he recently joined the Democratic party that he'd never been a part of his whole life. Bernie is a socialist. All complaint, no solutions that  pass muster vs Hillary that loves to get down to the nitty gritty of how ideas become policy. Bernie is what Texans call "All hat, no cattle".

My generation brought down a President. Yours invented Facebook and Instagram so you could avoid talking face to face with people and so you post selfies of you playing war protester. Protesters got beaten to a pulp and sometime shot and killed those days. Protests nationwide counted in the millions.

After the Cambodian invasion in the Vietnam war every major campus in the western world had protests and/or riots. There were riots in 100 major cites in the US. The same year I registered for the draft 30 percent of a 500,000 strong force in Vietnam were draftees. What have you ever risked? That year King was murdered, Kennedy war murdered. The other side was ultra-violent. Go watch the tapes of the Chicago police descending by the thousands in riot gear and nightsticks into peaceful demonstrations at the 68 Democratic convention and comeback and tell me of your experience being in a protest against an unpopular war that has cost your generation roughly the same number of dead as the single 4 month period  in 1968 Vietnam. I know you're not capable of imagining what it was to have the draft breathing down my neck and watching on TV, 310 dead this week, 360 another, 323 this one, week after week from January until coming back into the 100's per week in May and June.

In fact, it is those years of my life that taught me public policy is to be taken seriously. It ain't running for high school president putting up posters about crap you can never actually pull off and winning a popularity contest and the lives and well being of countless people can hang on whether you are a Jeffersonian citizen or just a Trump crank in a different hat. Your views are immature and shallow and the more your write the more you sound like a brat. you'd do the county a favor by stopping lies about your opponents and battle out the ideas in an evidence based reality.

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