What Bernie and the Donald Have in Common

What Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have in common is that neither man is entirely owned by the plutocrats who populate the oligarchy that runs the United States.  Bernie has long been an outlier, an "announced socialist" who was tolerated because he was quaint and not really in a position to affect policy from his Senate seat except through whatever moral suasion he could achieve, and in the Senate, that ain't much.  Donald Trump, on the other hand, while himself a plutocrat, is a bit like the wildcat oil drillers of 1940s Hollywood epics.  He is a capitalist, but not really a member of the club. For many New Yorkers, he is most memorable for expressing frustration with how long it was taking the city fathers to renovate the ice-skating rink in Central Park.  He was asked to take over the task, and then got it done in record time.  Here was a guy who could cut through the red tape.  He knew the cast of characters, knew how to get around them and get a job done.  His television persona, ("You're fired!"), enhanced his image as a man who could spot talent and had no patience for time-servers.  In this, he was reminiscent of Robert Moses, another man who took no prisoners and could get a project pushed through (with an occasional exception like the highway that would have run through lower Manhattan had it not been for the organizational skills of Jane Jacobs).  In the course of one interview, Moses stated that people bring him all sorts of wonderful ideas all the time.  He wasn't interested in your fancy ideas ("a dime a dozen"); he wanted to know what you could do.
       If their public personas bear any relation to who these men really are, neither man takes orders from the permanent government types, the Bilderberg crowd and their network of associates who, while they have as their first priority the preservation of their wealth and prerogatives, like to believe that they know what is best for the U.S.--and the rest of the world, too, of course.  Bill and Hillary, on the other hand, have never shown any reluctance to take orders from their betters.  Whether in Little Rock, New Haven, Oxford or Washington, Bill and Hillary have everywhere courted the bitch goddess success with a fervor that would have impressed even their fictional model, Jay Gatsby.  Had Jeb Bush snuck in as the Republican candidate, there would have been no problem at all for our rulers since, going back to Grandpa Prescott Bush, the Bush family has been part of the permanent government.
       It would be nigh impossible to count how many times the mainstream media expressed surprise that the 2016 election would be anything other than a race between the two representatives of the oligarchs, Clinton and Bush.  It is possible that they miscalculated.  Bush was quickly dispatched from the Republican roster of candidates and, in the Democratic Party, enough Americans appeared to have lost confidence in the oligarchy that they were willing to give their enthusiastic support to a Jewish Senator from Vermont who is a socialist and calls for a political revolution in the country. Not since the days of  Eugene V. Debs and Norman Thomas had the country seen a prominent socialist run for the White House.  All that right wing effort to bury socialist ideology so deep that it could never be resurrected appeared to have gone for naught.
      Most Americans anticipated that the 2016 presidential campaign would get ugly; no one anticipated just what a circus would ensue.  There is now the very real possibility that both parties will see brokered conventions, a spectacle we have not been treated to in a long time.  No doubt there will be more fun and games to follow.