Mar 15, 2016 2 min read

Too much carbon getting into the atmosphere, 130 species becoming extinct every day, and toxic environments like the Republican primary debates, Wall Street, Flint, Mich., and the U.S. Congress are among the serious failures of American politics and education.

Ignorance and fear of socialism is the fundamental problem and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign addresses it. Naturally, corporate media prefer their own Donald Trump, a combination of Benito Mussolini and the Golden Calf.

Trump is the only capitalist in the race, although Hillary Clinton is vying to be super rich. “Capitalist” is not used in polite society to describe the handful of ruling class oligarchs, for most are as sensitive as racists about their identity. Instead, the poorly-educated, who Trump say he loves, are deluded into believing that they are capitalists.

What Albert Einstein wrote in “Why Socialism?” in 1949 condemning capitalist control of government is truer today than then: “…under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights.”

Despite corporate media, the socialist Sanders is scoring victories around the country, except for the solid South, where the death of Justice Antonin Scalia on a Texas quail hunt was good for the quail and fundamental change. Clinton promises only the status quo, a rerun of President Obama’s eight years her husband’s two terms in the White House. “Not good enough,” says Sanders, but the Revolution of 2016 is at a crisis point, like the one Thomas Paine described in 1776. Then as now, the antidote to ignorance and fear is public information.

Modern socialism began with the world’s first post-colonial document, the Declaration of Independence, and first People’s Republic, the secular, federal government dedicated to the public interest established by the U.S. Constitution. A related fact also not part of American education, the socialist revolution Bernie Sanders is leading has already swept Canada and most of Latin America.

Jim Greenwood

Washington