Page Two: Missing the Red Queen's Rational Rule

On the off chance that the Republican presidential primary is not a depressing enough snapshot of contemporary politics, it seems many of our more liberal friends have taken not just pro-Bernie or pro-Hillary positions but are now engaged in vitriolic attack campaigns against the other candidate. Perhaps this is an unusual act of compassion, so that our right-wing brethren don't appear so strikingly alone in their obsessive stupidity with the two candidates left to choose from being Cruz and Trump. Opportunistic John Kasich as moderate is as bogus a portrait as Cruz being a healing unifier or the narcissistic Trump caring about politics at all.

In my heart I support Bernie Sanders. I love his vision of America. I think most of those fiscally castigating him as offering impossible and unaffordable dreams are actually wrong. But it doesn't matter because if elected, granted constitutionally mandated political realities, his success at achieving this vision would be, at best, severely limited. Any kind of serious comprehensive implementation by Congress of his vision is less likely than seeing a very real Batman actually patrolling Gotham's dark streets.

I'm not a fan of Hillary; she is more of the same. Except the same is better than the Dark Ages alternative being pushed by the other party. And realistically she is probably the most honest candidate in that, if she is elected, what she offers is the most likely to happen.

Currently there is a chart indicating what each candidate's proposals would cost the American people; it's seemingly being taken seriously by a lot of folks regardless of who they support. A particularly imaginative Jack Cole Plastic Man comic book story would be a more accurate reflection of the probable future. Translating campaign hyperbole into real-world economics is malevolent fiction. The Republicans are as likely to seriously cut spending as Sanders is to achieve a socialist utopia.

The Republicans' aggressive fiduciary posturing ignores their record of spending like drunken sailors during the last Bush administration while also engaging us in two destructive and obviously inextricable foreign conflicts that combined have cost more than the most fevered-dream utopian fantasy of a welfare state. Seriously considering the cost of Sanders' legislative proposals is pointless, because even if elected with a stunning mandate, Democratic congressmen would have no obligation to his leadership.

There has been a stunning lack of visionary courage on the part of our political leadership since the end of the LBJ administration – not just from progressives, but also conservatives. The latter have too long offered lazy but horribly destructive, socially reactionary legislation that panders to their base while hypocritically violating their repeated mantra of less and smaller government.

I fear both Trump and Cruz overwhelmingly as their platforms are inane science-fiction fantasies where we eject immigrants, police and oppress religious, racial, and sexual-identity minorities while strutting the world's stage with a big stick and a small mind. This to "return" to a Disney Frontierland vision of America that never existed but ironically to circumstances the country has been aggressively legislating against for more than a century.

The devastating politics of pitting neighbor against neighbor were too recently horribly illustrated in the Slavic region where close to a hundred years of enforced harmony disintegrated into genocide in a truly terrifyingly short period of time. This was driven by opportunistic politicians inciting the most base human fears in a quest for nothing greater than personal power. If anything, Trump's and Cruz's rhetoric evokes the Slavs and the Hutus and Tutsis. The Sanders/Clinton contest is actually a very reasonable primary battle between two politicians of opposing views and styles. Supporting one by demonizing the other is to aggressively abandon all hope for the future of this country by indulging in the same tribal, personality-based fear- mongering as the right. Supporting Sanders, I hope he wins, but if the candidate is Clinton, I will not just vote but actively support her. The egotistically moral posturing of those who supported Ralph Nader was to privilege their own personal views over the very real consequences of electoral politics. Nader voters took the high road, and the viability of labor, women's and minority rights, the strength of the middle class, and the lives of tens of thousands Iraqis and Afghans were not just ignored but damned.

We can't indulge in politics as a spectator sport, where it is not only important that the team you love wins but that its rivals brutally lose. The only one who benefits from any kind of Sanders vs. Clinton absolutism – where one is good so the other must be evil – is the Republican candidate. Given the actual choices, the most real results of any such inter-Democratic party squabbling is not adherence to ideological purity but a profound and base curse upon this country's future.

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This issue of the Chronicle that you are reading is unique in that for the first time in over three decades I am not listed as editor in the staff box. Nick Barbaro, who long has solely been listed as publisher, despite handling a range of editorial duties, and I, as editor though always with a publisher's responsibilities as well, have kicked ourselves upstairs.

Kimberley Jones is now listed as Editor-in-Chief. In reality she already has been the editor of this paper for a number of years. The current vitality of this publication has been achieved under her admirable leadership. This change is just to state the situation as it has long existed.

I am so proud of this paper and stand by my tenure as its editor. But decades weather away the staunchest enthusiasms. Jones brings a passion for this town, a love of good writing, and a very real understanding of this paper's role in the community. In reality nothing has changed, but now at least her editorial stewardship is overtly acknowledged. May she continue the extraordinary job she is doing with the appreciation and support of the community, Chronicle staff, and certainly Nick and me.