Why are millions fascinated, often even seduced, by people whose behavior actually points to pathology? Perhaps we are wired to be attracted by narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths, people so focused on their own central role in whatever takes place that the rest of us are sucked into their reality.
Bernie Sanders has a plaque honoring Eugene Debs on the wall of his Senate office in Washington. It is an abiding admiration, stretching back decades.
If a psychic had predicted in the 1970s that Bernie Sanders would someday stand on the White House lawn in support of an embattled Democratic President, or become a Democrat himself, people who knew him would have considered it a poor joke. Sanders would have called it “totally outrageous.”
In September 1948, when delegates to the young United Nations met at the grand Palais de Chailot in Paris, a twenty-something American wearing the flak jacket of a bomber pilot pitched a tent on the Palais steps. Guards descended and angrily ordered him to leave, but he politely declined. I’m no longer in France, the man explained, eyes twinkling. I’m standing on “international territory.”
Emerging from the airport baggage claim late the following afternoon he crossed to the taxi stand for a lift into town. It would be only minutes to the Hilton and a comfortable room with a commanding view of the waterfront and Lake Champlain. But then he heard his last name being called and noticed a wiry-haired kid holding a cardboard sign with the word “Wolf” on it.
How a brilliant Vermont mathematician became an early target of government harassment.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019