I included some of the context before it to make it coherent. From the Meet the Press transcript: http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meet-press-april-3-2016-n549916
Thanks for this. It makes for a more interesting post than the stuff I bring up about how Sanders was a Marxist-Leninist Trotskyite.
I think that Bernie might have a chance against Trump, because nothing is more out there than some of the stuff Trump has said. Plus, Trump is only slightly younger than Sanders.
But if Cruz is the nominee, as seems more likely daily, Bernie’s radical past – which people now being polled know nothing about – is going to catch up with him.
The actual quote begins at 8:18:
It’s a great example of how articles (“a, an, the”, not the linked article) work in our language. She doesn’t feel sorry for young people, she feels sorry for the young people. Which ones? The ones who believe this.
It may be a bit condescending, but it’s not condescending to all young people, as the article writer suggests. Ironically, the article writer is depending on a readership who believes this article without doing their own research. Frankly, thinking about that readership, I feel sorry for them.
Edit: ninjaed by jsgoddess!
I think it’s ironic that you should post this in the midst of a discussion about Clinton saying she feels sorry for young people who “don’t do their own research”. You appear to accept Ibn Warraq’s assertions without question.
For the record, here is a NY Times cite, describing the article Ibn editorialized in his post, written by Sanders for an alternative paper in Vermont in the early 70’s:
Mr. Sanders contributed only sporadically. He interviewed a “labor agitator” and an old-time farmer, and he wrote some articles about health, including one in which he cited studies claiming that cancer could be caused by psychological factors such as unresolved hostility toward one’s mother, a tendency to bury aggression beneath a “facade of pleasantness” and having too few orgasms.
“Sexual adjustment seemed to be very poor in those with cancer of the cervix,” he wrote, quoting a study in a journal called Psychosomatic Medicine.
Do you consider Ibn’s description accurate?
Possibly he learned of it from sites such as Daily Caller, Mediate, Daily Mail, etc., who sensationalized it as you would expect from them.
He argued that women needed to stop listening to their mothers when it came to sex and start “having more orgasms” and that doing so would reduce their risk of getting breast cancer and cervical cancer.
Sorry but claiming that having great sex is a way to reduce the risk of breast and cervical cancer isn’t dramatically different than claiming “the female body has ways to shut that down” as an explanation for how women who got raped didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant.
Moreover, my point wasn’t to attack him for stupid things he said when he was 28 but my point was that if he got to the general “they will have a field day with him”.
And it was Mother Jones I first heard about Sanders’ rather kooky ideas.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/07/bernie-sanders-vermont-freeman-sexual-freedom-fluoride
Now, did I use a certain amount of hyperbole to make the point as to how it will be portrayed but if you don’t think Ted Cruz or, even worse, Donald Trump won’t have a field day with this you’re in denial.
He may not be a crackpot now, but he had a lot of crackpot views then, and I’m not sure under questioning he’ll give the denials his advisors would want.
I encourage all to read the Mother Jones article.
Personally I don’t find what Sanders did or did not write when he was 28 to very meaningful, but I guess that since his cred for civil rights places actions even before that as highly germane, it is fair game. In any case more details including the whole article here.
No question it was weird out there shit including for the time. The message was that if you as a parent were less than happy that your 16 year old daughter was having sex you might be causing her to have cancer.
Sanders of that day was also down on the concept of public schools … “the basic function of the schools is [to] set up in children patterns of docility and conformity—patterns designed not to create independent and free adults, but adults who will obey orders, be ‘faithful’ uncomplaining employees, and ‘good’ citizens.”
Water fluoridation and food safety regulations were to Sanders of the day “the State is usurping the rights of free choice in many domains of life.”
Maybe not the stuff of Swiftboat campaigns, but then the reality of the Swift boat was not either … but yeah I’d be embarrassed that I was spouting off that stuff when I was 28.
On preview Ibn provides a link to the same article.
Considering the wacky pseudoscience many of GOP believe now, it might actually swing some votes his way. This would lock up the Dr Oz voters.
Seriously, I’m certainly not in denial; I’m not even expecting him to win the nomination. But if that did happen, I don’t think stories like this will be much of a problem, especially relative to a Trump or Cruz as the GOP nominee.
BTW, a lot of people back in the day were influenced by the ideas and life story of Wilhelm Reich; it’s not as if Sanders came up with these ideas on his own. I believe there is a poster here whose parents had one of Reich’s orgone accumulators.
Of course it’s different. Both might be false, but the latter is simply pernicious, while the former . . . really, really needs to become a much more widespread meme. 
Pretty much. I don’t consider Sanders to have a scientific outlook. Is that what I mostly base my vote on? No. I’d vote for Sanders over any Republican who has a chance of being nominated.
I do think that Sanders would be successfully painted, in the general election campaign, as an extremist. Same of course is true of Trump. Painting Cruz as an extremist would certainly fly here, but I’m thinking that Cruz’s pivot to the center would work in a way that Bernie’s would not. Admittedly, these are opinions, not facts, and unlikely to be put to the test.
In those excerpts, he sounds like the wooiest of the wooists. For me? That’s not okay. Is there evidence he has put that ridiculous stuff behind him?
- Assume that Donald Trump will be the Republicans’ 2016 nominee, though it’s now clear he won’t be.
- Nominate the only person who can reunite the Republican Party once Trump failing to get the nomination has fractured it beyond repair.
- Fracture the Democratic Party by broadly supporting the Clinton camp’s attempts to smear Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
… - Freeze one of the most popular Democrats nationally, Bernie Sanders, out of the picture altogether.
… - Ignore the youth vote.
That’s what I’m scared of. His campaign put out a perfunctory statement saying his views are different but when he’s questioned who knows what he’ll say.
He doesn’t react well or predictably to criticism.
Remember his statements on Nicaragua or how he flipped out when challenged on his ghetto gaffe.
I’m not sure how he’ll react. He may very well start talking about how “we rely too much on traditional medicine” and go on from there.
Sanders was advocating this nearly 15 years after Reich had died in prison after being jailed for peddling his asinine Orgone boxes.
The fact that he was so jaw droppingly stupid that he continued to believe this long after Reich had been exposed as a quack is quite disturbing.
I haven’t read the articles he wrote, and I haven’t heard Sanders speak to this issue, but I know Reich’s story, and can understand why he attracted people involved in the 60’s counterculture. You are either familiar with this part of cultural history, or can easily research it for yourself; if you want to discuss it further you should probably start a separate thread.
You are obviously predisposed to dislike Sanders, and that is your right. I do not find this part of his past disturbing, possibly because my grandfathers were socialists and my parents were leftists and involved in similar “explorations” when I was growing up (I was born in 1958).
What disturbs me much more is the likelihood of electing someone who cozies up to Henry Kissinger and various neocons, and has shown a consistent propensity for military adventures and poor judgement.
What I find jaw droppingly stupid is that so many people choose to believe in someone who has been shown to be chronically dishonest. YMMV.
Hey, Democrats, stop gloating — your party is imploding right before your eyes, too.
Very relevant, well worth a read.
I’m sure Sanders must also have been dishonest in some respects on some occasions, they’re all dishonest and they all have to be dishonest to get elected or get anything done, it doesn’t matter. What matters is where their loyalties lie – Clinton’s lie with Wall Street, Sanders’ with the public.
Both alarmist and vastly overstated.
Yeah, Sanders is no where near as charming as Larry David.
Sanders isn’t loyal to the public, he just panders to the typically middle and upper middle class white suburbanite and collegiate inumerates who think the worlds biggest problems are fluoride, mercury in vaccines, conventional medicine, GMOs, chemtrails, radiation from Fukishima, and Monsanto.
I actually kind of found the opposite: it was rather underwhelming. A major American political party has factions fighting for control! This is news? This is a surprise?
This article doesn’t predict that Clinton will lose, it doesn’t suggest that Sanders’s supporters will abandon the party in November, and it doesn’t foresee a crackup of the Democratic party. The article is actually relatively sober. The headline, on the other hand, that’s alarmist and overstated.