This should scare us: we have a chance here to begin the arduous process of dismantling the oligarchy and restoring our democracy, and we might squander it. We may not see another candidate like Bernie Sanders in our lifetimes--one who has the commitment, the political experience, and the courage to do everything within his power as President to take our country back from moneyed interests. Sanders champions countless important issues affecting ordinary Americans and our planet as a whole. But nothing else matters more than this, because it impacts everything else.

And by the way, Bernie supporters (most of us, anyway) do not believe he can come in and magically transform all this overnight. We're not idiots or starry-eyed Pollyannas. Who might be the real Pollyannas? Those who shrug with resignation because "this is just the way things work," calling those of us who believe we absolutely can and must do better unrealistic idealists, alarmists, silly children, or similar. Those who can't or won't recognize that, at best, our democracy is taking its last gasps, are the ones who really have their heads in the clouds.

Hillary Clinton is a maintainer of the status quo. That's the bottom line. Sure, she'd do a few good things inside our current box. But we'll still be in that box, and it's rotten to the core. And along with the few good things she'll do, we'll get fracking and probably war (in other words, more death and destruction), and more pandering and caving to moneyed interests to the detriment of the rest of us, because "that's just the way things work." And we're too "pragmatic" to even try to change that.

When she leaves office, the United States will still be an oligarchy. Guaranteed. And that's if she wins the general election, of course. On April 26, Bernie Sanders won easily in Rhode Island, which just happened to be the only one out of the five voting states that day in which independents can vote in the primary. In the general election, Bernie Sanders will get the independent votes that Hillary Clinton will not. That's one reason he does better than Clinton in almost every head-to-head poll with Republican candidates.

With Bernie Sanders, we have our only real chance that our country will function more like a democracy when he leaves office than when he arrived. And we will have a new generation of mobilized, empowered, and politically engaged progressive Americans to ensure the process continues via his successors and other progressive politicians.

If we don't begin the process of dismantling the oligarchy and returning to a democracy now, when will we? If not Bernie Sanders, then who? How will we ever do it if we won't elect leaders who are wholeheartedly committed to doing everything within their power to make it happen?

Yes, it will be difficult. Yes, it will take time. But we must begin. We have a rare and precious opportunity to do just that. Please, for the love of God, let's not piss it away.

We should all be very afraid of the country and world we are right on track to leave to our children. It's too late for the half measures that come from resignation and cynicism. We need to think bigger, recognize and take back our power as ordinary Americans, and return our country to a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We urgently need a President like Bernie Sanders, and here he is, right now.