Fuck Bernie Fucking Sanders

He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.

[NOTE: This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post contributor platform, though only for a few hours. :) #cantkeepanastywomandown]

“The election is over. Move on.” “Stop dividing the party.” “We have to unite.”

If you’re as sick of hearing this gaslighting bullshit as I am, feel free to adapt my own preferred response as needed:

“Yes, I agree. We need to do everything we can to stand together against a corrupt con man who hides his tax returns, whines about rigged elections, benefitted from the the DNC hack, panders to the gun lobby, has shadowy ties to Russia and refuses to accept the indignity of losing to a woman by millions of votes. Oh, you thought I meant Trump?”

(“Fuck off” also works pretty well.)

Let’s get something straight: Dems are not “divided.” We don’t have an “identity crisis.” What we have is an extremist fringe faction, just like the other side has. The GOP’s biggest mistake was giving their lunatic fringe a seat at their table. Now it’s taken over the asylum. At least we could pass our own health care bill.

We don’t need to welcome or embrace or fellate our own version of the Freedom Caucus. We need to kick them to the fucking curb.

A disturbing number of well-meaning progressives have fallen for the Jedi mind trick of believing it is somehow bad form to criticize the guy who’s spent the last two years ― make that the last 40 years ― tearing down the Democratic party, who did everything he could to harm Clinton and helped hand victory to Trump, who continues to make the cable network rounds to share his vision of burning the entire system to the ground and building a golden statue of himself upon the ashes.

Tom Perez appears to be among the duped. I actually like Perez on the whole, though his decision to take his groveling lickspittle “unity tour” on the road with Sanders is appalling. That’s not an ideological purity test. It’s called holding our party leaders accountable. It’s the urgent duty of every Democrat to tell Perez know that the majority of the base does not want him to kiss Bernie’s ass. We must be loud and clear about telling the senator from Vermont to get in line at the eat-a-dick buffet.

It’s our party, and Bernie and his bots can’t have it.

Here’s mine.

You know what actually hurts the party? Calling the Democrats “weak” and shit-talking them in every public forum you can find. Lying about 2016 voter turnout. Refusing to turn over your donor email list. Agreeing to work with the illegitimate Gropenführer. He’s said and done all his shit since the election. He’s doing it right now. He has every intention of continuing to do it right up through 2018 and beyond, when he plans to fuck us all over again.

I’m also pretty goddamn sick of this myth that the Dems are “out of touch,” and only St. Bernard can save us by “moving the party left.” We’re so out of touch that we won the popular vote by the numbers projected — the widest margin in U.S. history. We’re already to the left of him, and have been for a long time. Our progressive policies — if not our candidates — enjoy overwhelming support by a wide swath of the voting public:

We are the party that advocates for women’s right to control their own bodies. This is why we don’t listen to crabby old men who think we need to be “open to” running anti-choice candidates. There already IS a party with that platform, and we are not them.

We are the party that believes Black Lives Matter, that vulnerable populations deserve legal protections, and that love is love. This is why we slam the door on arguments that dismiss “identity politics” as trivial and irrelevant. Easy to say if you’re a rich straight white guy.

We are the party that wants gun rights to be proportional with gun responsibilities. This is why we condemn the guy who rode to his Senate seat on an NRA endorsement, who still defends his vote for the gun lobby’s wet-dream legislation that has shattered countless lives.

We are the party that values transparency in government. This is why we don’t grant legitimacy to any political figure — irrespective of gender or party leaning — who refuses to release their tax returns. This isn’t a “hoop” or a technicality. It matters. What’s he hiding?

We are the only party in the last 100 years to successfully push this country toward real progress. We don’t compromise our core progressive principles in the name of appeasing a four-decade failure who grifted his way to the spotlight after a long and proud career of leading the revolution to…uh, rename post offices.

There’s too much blood under the bridge to make amends. Don’t waste your time reaching out to his idiotic brainwashed bots. At this point, anyone who clings to “THE DNC CHEATED!!!” “BERNIE WOULDA WON!!!” does so with the kind of mindless religious zeal that flies planes into buildings. Destroying the only party that’s actually working to make progress happen is not how we get to socialist utopia.

But destruction is all these people understand. We’re going to have to return the favor. Because, unfortunately, Bernie isn’t irrelevant. Yet. He’s made it clear he has every intention of continuing to peddle his divisive bullshit on every cable network, on every stop of his “unity tour,” where he will explain in detail exactly how fucked up and corrupt and wrong and inept and stupid the party is. SO UNITY SUCH PROGRESSIVE WOW

90% unity is going to have to be good enough. The 1 in 10 who refused to vote for the most qualified candidate in U.S. history are a cancer on the party that needs to be cut out. THAT’S how we heal.

When the grifting old fucker finally shuts his gunsucking mouth, I will shut up about him, and not one goddamn minute before then. He wanted a revolution, he’s got it. Karma’s a bitch.

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See you on the low road.

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Val Perry Rendel has a low threshold for bullshit. “Like” her Author page on Facebook and follow her on the Twitter: @WorstPrezEver29