Originally published via Armageddon Prose:
If you’ll indulge me a digression from the start, I generally lost all regard for Bernie Sanders after Hillary Clinton stole the primary election from him and all of his voters in broad daylight in 2016 and, in response, he fully capitulated like a total bitch.
All that grassroots energy, with no pay in brutal weather conditions, poured into the first real opportunity to put a dent in the neoliberal deathgrip on the Democrat Party in generations — only to have Bernie sell out his own movement and tell his supporters to shut their Deplorable mouths and vote for the Hillary construct.
Profiles in courage, huh?
Despite Bernie’s best performative cuckoldry, Hillary, on account of being a demonic orc from the pit of hell, managed to lose the election anyway, so all of his brutal betrayal of his followers turned out to be for naught in the end anyway.
Still, credit where credit is due. Occasionally he shows some testicular fortitude in actually using his office to take on the power structure — which is otherwise totally lacking in Congress on either side of the aisle.
Via U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (emphasis added):
“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) today introduced the End Prescription Drug Ads Now Act, legislation that would ban prescription drug advertising on television, radio, print, digital platforms and social media. The bill would also answer Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s repeated calls to end prescription drug advertising, a position he promoted while campaigning for President Trump in 2024.”
Kennedy, indeed, has repeatedly pledged a ban on pharma advertising on television, the main mechanism by which the industry ensures compliance from the news actors posing as journalists on the nation’s legacy media.
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Unfortunately, as with a lot of rhetoric from the campaign trail that fell off, I haven’t heard much from Kennedy on that score since he took office. (It’s possible he’s broached the issue in passing since January, but if he has I haven’t seen it and it certainly hasn’t been the well-publicized priority that it should be.)
This is where the rubber hits the road.
Will MAHA cede the moral and political high ground to Sanders and whatever wing of the Democrat party — an admittedly tiny one — and allow them to take the lead on vanquishing the cancer that is the pharma-media industrial complex, or will he lead?
We’re watching, Bobby.
Do the right thing — no politicking, no bullshit.
Throw your weight behind banning the ads and claim the moral and political W, either through the proposed legislation or executive means — and pull the mRNA shots off the market once and for all while you’re at it.
Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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