Does him a disservice

S.E. Cupp is emblematic of all that is wrong with media coverage of politics: “Bernie Sanders, the insider” discusses Sanders as though his appeal were his personality or his lack of personal wealth; it isn’t. His appeal is that, unlike almost every other national politician, he speaks to the real issues facing this country: climate change, obscene disparities in wealth and income, our grotesquely gothic, inefficient, and unfair health-care system, and the divide-and-conquer culture wars instigated and relentlessly waged by the major parties. And he does so with facts, logic, and passion.

Sanders didn’t run and isn’t running as an outsider, which, by the way, is hardly a qualification for elective office (“Choose me! I don’t know what I’m doing! I have no experience, and no idea how the system works!”). He’s a veteran of the House and the Senate. What sets him apart is his career-long independence from the special interests and big money which control so many of “our” representatives.

If anything, his new status as a millionaire confounds the socialism charges against him. He’s not against millionaires, he’s against billionaires, against multigenerational wealth, against America’s new “landed gentry”—wealth divorced from individual effort and talent, wealth beyond any possible individual use or enjoyment.

Bernie’s appeal in 2016 and now is that he speaks to the realities of our lives and the lives of our children and grandchildren: We want them to have a fair chance, to have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, we want them to have equal access to health care uncorrupted by Wall Street, we don’t want them living as serfs to billionaires, we want them at peace with their fellow citizens.

S.E. Cupp’s piece was as superficial and wide of the mark as any I have seen in the Democrat-Gazette, and typical of the feckless state of journalism generally.

VINCENT ROBERTSON

Fayetteville