It looks like Bernie Sanders is back in the ring to run for president in 2020. But the timing couldn’t be better to shine a light on his previous statements about rape — a topic everyone cares so much about these days. #MeToo! But don’t hold your breath waiting for Alyssa Milano or Meryl Streep to toss Bernie under the bus. He has the right letter after his name and everyone knows that socialists can get away with rape in Hollywood. They’ll even get a standing ovation — like child rapist Roman Polanski did — from the same women decrying sexual harassment.

Back in 1972, Sanders wrote an article for an “alternative” (read: Commie) Vermont newspaper titled “Man—and Woman,” where he opined:

A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused. A woman enjoys intercourse with her man–as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.

He wrote that. Not even Snopes could find a way to deny it. I can’t say I understand what he was trying to convey, other than he has some very sick personal fantasies and was probably smoking something funny. Maybe you have to have an Ivy League degree to understand it, but to me, it just sounded like libertine brain-vomit. Is the man in this scenario Sanders? Writers write from experience, so is he telling us that his fantasy is an abused woman on her knees, tied up and violated? It sure seems like it.

But is anyone upset about Sanders’ ancient ruminations about violent rape? No, they’re too busy being angry at John Wayne for an interview he gave to Playboy a million years ago.

John Wayne was a real piece of trash. pic.twitter.com/zKpH5IXOMb — Anonymous Crow 161 ↙️↙️↙️🖤❤️🏴🦇🦇 (@CrowTheArkn) February 20, 2019

Reminder: John Wayne has been dead for thirty years. He’s not running for president or anything — that’s Bernie Sanders, the gang-rape candidate. But don’t expect anyone to care. This information is not new. It’s been out there for a long time and unless the cable news channels decide to pick it up and run with it 24/7 like he’s an actor in Chicago getting beat up by some Nigerians outside a Subway, no one (but us) is ever going to know or care.

Maybe this is a good time to remind everyone that people do grow and change. Holding someone born in a different era to 2019 standards is absurd. Sanders’ remarks are weird and gross for sure, but it seems he stopped insisting that men and women secretly fantasize about rape after the swinging ’70s were over. Perhaps we can extend the benefit of the doubt that he doesn’t believe the same drug-induced psychosis he did then. It’s possible he doesn’t even remember it.

While we’re extending an olive branch to Sanders, maybe we can do the same for John Wayne and everyone else who said things many years ago that no one would dare say today. Tearing down icons for unfiltered moments is getting old and if we’re not careful, it will end up biting us all down the road. Who knows what one won’t be allowed to say in 2025 that we readily throw out there today. Shouldn’t we agree now to stop digging through the past to define someone’s present? We should define Bernie Sanders based on his stupid economic ideas and outright socialist plans for America. Those are the things that should disqualify him for president of the United States.

But as long as the left keeps searching through history to destroy American icons, can we really afford to offer forgiveness for these types of transgressions when it will not be offered to us? How do we win if we aren’t even playing the same game? And as long as we don’t have the same reach and microphone as the mainstream media and cable news, can we even get on the field?