Let My People Go

        Phaoronic regimes may have been slightly more powerful than the Democratic party but it’s close, and they have certain problems in common like dissatisfied cheap workers and growing populations to be housed and fed. There is the danger of social instability if resources are not fairly distributed and such conditions generate social rebellions when there is no political way forward, especially if the younger adults keep over-populating the food chain.

        All stops have been pulled by the Democratic machine to bring Senator Sanders to heel but the tens and twenty thousands pouring into his rallies make it hard to close the deal. What’s at risk is the long reign of an entrenched political machine faced with a movement created by its own policy failures.  Win or lose, their favored candidate faces a wilderness of unpopularity.

        There’s lots of instructive biblical history behind this familiar process including the uproar and exodus from Egypt and revolts in the era of Jesus.  So today with two generations of younger adults exiting the Clinton camp, its instructive to remember that rebellions without positive solutions have a bad history.

        The evidence of people gathering in large numbers—Jesus feeding the five thousand comes to mind-- suggests that beneath the lingua franca of miracles and magicalism such crowds are signs of revolution aborning over the policy failures of the Phaoronic Romans and their priestly cohorts to deliver a future that will nourish everyone.  Today’s rebellious younger generations building support for Bernie Sanders may be vulnerable to demagoging but they’re not wrong about their perceived predicament of poor jobs and high debt; which is why they’re looking for a political way forward.  Failing that, the Trump demagoguery looms.  

        Students of Abraham Heschel, the famous Rabbi and professor at Jewish Theological Seminary, reported about classes where he would say the one thing distinguishing the prophets of biblical record from all the pretenders was that the biblical prophets had became hysterical about injustice.

 

        Either the democratic machine creates a political way forward beyond its familiar status quo in highly progressive directions or the country moves deeper into the wilderness.