Angry Arabs Love Bernie Sanders
Angry Arabs are looking for angry rulers, and Sanders is grumpy enough for them
NOW Lebanon
February 16, 2016
Most Arabs I know support Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. While anecdotal, such survey highlights a trend that might explain a deeper problem.
On the Late Night Show with Stephen Colbert, Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly argued that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Sanders are the same guy. “They both tap into the anger of the voter,” O’Reilly said.
If anger is the issue, then the Arabs, including Arab-Americans, have lots of it, and sometimes even choose it as their epithet.
For example, second-rate academic blogs as the “Angry Arab.” When his integrity was questioned, he raised hell and promised to sue his detractors. Predictably, nothing came out of his unrealistic chest-thumping. It is no coincidence that this very angry Arab supports the unrealistic Sanders.
Ever since Napoleon showed up in Egypt in 1798, the date Arab nationalists assign as the beginning of their colonial humiliation, the Arab reaction has been a mix of populist anger and delusion.
In 1798, the rulers of Egypt vowed to “smash Napoleon’s army under the hooves of their horses.” The Egyptians were defeated. This bravado-followed-by-defeat became a template in Arab politics, from Palestine’s 1948 Nakbah (catastrophe), to its 1967 Naksah (setback), and beyond. In 1967, Egypt’s Gamal Abdul-Naser deployed his army northward to go to war with Israel, live on TV. The result was defeat.
The messy Arab Spring further illustrates how Arabs confuse anger with change and better government.
In 2011, millions of Arabs took to the streets in protests that inspired the world. But beyond anger, the Arabs had little else to offer. Their understanding of public space and government is inadequate, their expectation of change unrealistic. When reality hit, the Arabs looked around and saw that anger had toppled their hateful autocrats, but was not enough to replace their corrupt and incompetent rulers with better ones, hence started the blame game — which turned into civil war like in Libya — between the competing revolutionary factions.
The failure of the Arab Spring is not a calamity. What is bad is that — like American failure to learn from Iraq — Arabs have failed to learn their Arab Spring lessons. In fact, many Arabs still hope for a repeat, oblivious to the fact that in countries with weak political structures, change is best when it is slow and incremental.
Perhaps it is their ongoing infatuation with revolution — an act of abrupt and comprehensive change — that attracts Arabs to Sanders.
But according to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, Sanders is no revolutionary. In his 2006 campaign for the Senate, “the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) — heavily funded by Wall Street interests — helped (Sanders’) bid with about $200,000 in contributions and ads,” wrote Milbank.
In 2007, Sanders regularly hosted the DSCC’s retreats in luxurious resorts “for wealthy donors (including lobbyists).” Milbank added that while Sanders has often boasted that he doesn’t have a super PAC, “an ad hoc network working to elect Sanders is employing professional political tactics, such as the use of entities that can raise and spend unlimited sums.”
Milbank noted that the revolutionary Sanders has hired Tad Devine, “a veteran of the Kerry and Gore campaigns, as a top adviser.”
In his defense, Sanders might be employing conventional tactics to implement a non-conventional platform, except that his plan is more delusional than non-conventional.
If elected president, Sanders promises to raise around $37 trillion in the coming decade, through closing tax loopholes and raising taxes. He promises to spend the money on nine programs. Sanders supporters argue that his plan will do miracles, raising annual GDP growth to 5.3 percent and lowering unemployment from 4.9 to 3.8 percent and poverty from 13 to 6 percent.
Sanders’s economic plan is ambitious, yet also belongs to the “voodoo economics” genre. Sanders’s plan will cause inflation. His taxes will diminish America’s competitiveness.
Most importantly, Sanders’s economic plan can never be implemented because Republicans, who will maintain Congressional majority, will never let President Sanders raise an extra dime in taxes.
Amazingly, details do not seem to matter for many Arabs. Whether Sanders’s platform is realistic or not doesn’t bother them. They are angry, and they are looking for angry rulers, and Sanders is grumpy enough for them.
But Arabs should remember that like anger was not enough to govern their countries after the Arab Spring, angry people do not make good presidents in America too.
But according to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, Sanders is no revolutionary. In his 2006 campaign for the Senate, “the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) — heavily funded by Wall Street interests — helped (Sanders’) bid with about $200,000 in contributions and ads,” wrote Milbank.
In 2007, Sanders regularly hosted the DSCC’s retreats in luxurious resorts “for wealthy donors (including lobbyists).” Milbank added that while Sanders has often boasted that he doesn’t have a super PAC, “an ad hoc network working to elect Sanders is employing professional political tactics, such as the use of entities that can raise and spend unlimited sums.”
Milbank noted that the revolutionary Sanders has hired Tad Devine, “a veteran of the Kerry and Gore campaigns, as a top adviser.”
In his defense, Sanders might be employing conventional tactics to implement a non-conventional platform, except that his plan is more delusional than non-conventional.
If elected president, Sanders promises to raise around $37 trillion in the coming decade, through closing tax loopholes and raising taxes. He promises to spend the money on nine programs. Sanders supporters argue that his plan will do miracles, raising annual GDP growth to 5.3 percent and lowering unemployment from 4.9 to 3.8 percent and poverty from 13 to 6 percent.
Sanders’s economic plan is ambitious, yet also belongs to the “voodoo economics” genre. Sanders’s plan will cause inflation. His taxes will diminish America’s competitiveness.
Most importantly, Sanders’s economic plan can never be implemented because Republicans, who will maintain Congressional majority, will never let President Sanders raise an extra dime in taxes.
Amazingly, details do not seem to matter for many Arabs. Whether Sanders’s platform is realistic or not doesn’t bother them. They are angry, and they are looking for angry rulers, and Sanders is grumpy enough for them.
But Arabs should remember that like anger was not enough to govern their countries after the Arab Spring, angry people do not make good presidents in America too.
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