Fight Oligarchy by Bernie Sanders - A Book Review
In Fight Oligarchy, Sanders overviews how oligarchy gained power in America. Trump’s victory to his second term as President amplified the rise of the oligarchy by giving corporations a more direct say in what the federal government does.
Compliments
I agree with Sanders’ assessment of how disastrous Trump could be as President. We should trial him for his role with the attempted coup on January 6, 2021. We should:
To address the problems facing the middle class in America, we should:
- Increase the minimum wage
- Illegalize the ownership of stocks by elected officials
- Expand the amount representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives to adjust for the increase in the population of the country
- Illegalize financial contributions from billionaires
- Increase corporate taxes
- Eliminate the tariffs set by Trump and return the power of setting tariffs to Congress
- Bring our military out of the Middle East and stop funding genocide in Gaza
- Expand healthcare coverage to everyone legally present in America
Criticisms
My first criticism of Sanders’ text stems from page 96 in which Sanders wrote about his speech during Coachella. He spoke out against “immoral wars like the horrific humanitarian disaster in Gaza.” Does Sanders believe there is no genocide in Gaza? If Fight Oligarchy was the only source of information you had about Sanders, then you would not know the answer to that question. I thought Sanders opposed the genocide in Gaza based on content I found online. This contradiction or missed opportunity to condemn the genocide in Gaza weakens his chance to fight the oligarchy in America. What is Senator Sanders’ stance on the genocide in Gaza?
My second criticism is his support of Abdul El-Sayed who spoke with Hasan Piker and avoided the question about Hasan’s past. El-Sayed couldn’t condemn Piker’s comment, “If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, then you should kill Rick Scott.” Piker called for the assassination of an elected U.S. Senator qualifies as domestic terrorism. A ban from Twitch for one day and a response that he said it out of jest does qualify as an apology. We should never allow someone who calls for killing anyone (Piker), or who supports that person (El-Sayed and Sanders), to have political influence.