Why so angry?
How about a smile now and then? You’d be surprised how easily you could win us over if only you’d give it a try.
Too late, however, for Bernie Sanders, whose image is already fixed as a grumpy old man; not quite the father-figure we’d expect from an American president.
Rather, he’s the nasty uncle who comes for family gatherings only to gripe about everything – and at Tuesday night’s Democrat Debate – it was Israel. Ordinarily we’d pay no attention to a crazy relative like this. But he is the frontrunner for their nomination. Go figure. So now we know exactly where he stands on Israel, which spells danger ahead.
Asked directly if he would remove the American Embassy from Jerusalem, he said, “Yes, I would take it under consideration.”
Plain enough. Then, without prompting, he called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “racist.”
Terrific. We needed to hear this from “a proud Jew.”
Yes, he began by telling the audience, America, and the world, that he is “a proud Jew,” thereby immunizing himself from charges of anti-Semitism.
Back in my neighborhood in Montreal, no one would play with a sneak like that.
Using the “Jewish Card” like this is plain disgusting. There is nothing Jewish about Bernie Sanders. He is a Bolshevik, period…and not a nice man.
Let us not mince words. He is a terrible man, a man who finds the bright side in regimes headed by Stalin and Castro, but finds only the dark side upon the United States and Israel.
How did it come to this?
Then the permanent scowl…the telling feature of a man prepared to undo everything that is great about the USA and Israel.
I’ve already written about Benjamin Netanyahu, and how I would gladly vote for him, if only because he comes across so pleasant…let alone his reinvigorating the country along the free market system…ditto as per Trump for the USA.
It used to be called the “likability favor,” which Bibi has got in spades, and so does Trump. Zero Sanders. If you say, no, likeability has nothing to do with it, that it is only the politics that counts, consider, please, the Clintons. Bill, rascally as he was, won his people through rakish charm. Hillary, same politics as her husband, simply repelled.
This year’s grouch is a 17-year-old, Greta Thunberg, who has come to lecture us on global warming, and being so nasty and petulant about it, she’s become a Liberal darling…groomed, no doubt, at the Bernie Sanders School of Public Behavior and Social Etiquette.
Might be an idea to remind those people, as they pile on the blame, that whatever the conditions, we inherited them, too.
Up at the tobacco shop, a customer asked me why I so disliked Bernie Sanders. This was before the Debate.
Well, I could name a hundred reasons, but only named one, his doting on Linda Sarsour and those other anti-Semites, plus, he is always so angry.
I checked my watch, and counted, and sure enough, it only took two seconds for him to call me a “racist.” Reflex.
After the man left, Vishal, the proprietor, and a friend, smiled and said, “So many of them come in like this. It wasn’t always this way. I don’t know when it started.”
I don’t, either. Back when Ben had the shop, people used to come in for the tobacco, and the Racing Form, and the banter, which was usually about sports. Only once in a while was is it politics, and for that, nobody got angry. Maybe that’s because these were horseplayers and a difference of opinion only meant my horse over your horse. No harm done.
Gambling degenerates? Okay. But I’ll take those disreputable bums any day over today’s crowd that wants to make it a better world, so stand back, or they are ready to steamroll you.
The bad vibes are beginning to typify who we are…who we’ve become…as a people. 
Take Bernie, as a picture, right here, of what typifies his Party, fury and rage, and, so downright Soviet, as if he arrived with Vladimir Lenin at the Finland Station. It would be the face of America should Bernie (G-d forbid) beat Trump. Trump has charm, the New York variety, which means the timely putdown and the ability to punch and counterpunch, yet always with a touch of humor – if there is anyone left who remembers Don Rickles.
Or if there is anyone left who remembers humor.
These days there is no grumpier bunch than the news media, so it is no wonder they will never figure out Trump, or Bibi, nor anyone who’s got the gift of brightness.
For a portrait of today’s mainstream journalism, check out crazed maniacal MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.
The light touch is a rare talent, and not a single Democrat contender has it, and I wonder if the country is getting tired of being blamed, bullied and scolded.
Student debt, transgender rights, crumbling bridges, global warming, the minimum wage, reparations…go ahead fix it, but drop the militancy. It’s beginning to spread.
The bad vibes are beginning to typify who we are…who we’ve become…as a people.
Suburban women, they say, will determine the outcome of the national election.
Well, let us hope that this ideal is something like Golda Meir, for both the United States and Israel – the mothering sort (with an iron will).
If these suburban women are in any way enamored by resentful sorts like Nancy Pelosi or Elizabeth Warren, America becomes Bernie’s world.
That’s no place for decent people.
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.
He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” and the authoritative newsroom epic, “The Bathsheba Deadline,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah,” for which contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com
