Well, I've finally figured out just what it is that I don't like about Bernie Sanders.
Here's the thing: I'm a storyteller. When I listen, I always listen for the underlying story.
When it comes to overarching narrative, Bernie's story is just like the Buffoon-in-Chief's. For them both, the guiding narrative is the same lying, Abrahamic story that has wreaked so much ill in the world down the centuries: Us versus Them. Black vs. White. Good Guys v. Bad Guys.
All their ideas come with an enemy attached.
The enemy may be Muslims and brown people, or it may be corporations and rich people. But they're still the Bad Guys of the old, simplistic story, and they're still out to get Us.
For all its cultural omnipresence—pick a Hollywood movie, any Hollywood movie—moral dualism is not a universal story. More importantly—to me, anyway—it is not a pagan story.
It's not that pagan stories lack conflict; it's conflict that makes a story interesting, after all. Look at the great pagan epics: the Iliad, the Táin, the Mahabharata. They're all about wars. But look more closely: Who are the good guys here, who the bad? In a pagan world, conflict arises naturally because people have differing needs and obligations, not because one is good and one is evil.
Oh, in deep ways Sanders and the Troll-in-Chief are very different, of course. One is a not-very-bright, self-serving, cynical bully; the other is intelligent, capable of compassion, and actually believes what he's saying.
That's why I'll vote for Sanders if it comes to that. Of the two, he's by far the better human being. Our only real hope, this time around, is that Democrats (and democrats) are smart enough to realize that voting against is far more important than voting for.
But if I do, I won't be happy about it. At thirteenth and last, I'm a pagan. In my marrow, in my bones, I distrust stories with bad guys. As pagans, we've been the Bad Guys of the stories for the last 1500 years. We know the harm that those lying old stories can do.
Pagans, at heart, are realists. We know that antagonists are not necessarily enemies.
The night of the New Hampshire primary, just before falling asleep, I listened to Sanders' acceptance speech, railing against plutocrats and the military-industrial complex.
That night I woke up twice, each time jolting out of a nightmare.
Now, at least, I understand why.