The U.S. Senate passed legislation on Wednesday to ban the import of products from China's Xinjiang region, the latest effort in Washington to punish Beijing for what U.S. officials say is an ongoing genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslim groups.
The "in practice" part doesn't mean much because, in practice, individual congresspeople have virtually zero control over the imperial machine. The immediate decisions are all made by the president, and it'd take some enormous political sea change to get enough congressional support to even cut the military's budget 10%.
Further, Bernie's views are no longer relevant. What might be relevant are views of a bunch of Bernie-friendly Americans that are variations on this same mixed bag. They definitely don't have any actual control over anything. It really doesn't serve us to simplify them down to "anticommunist," because it's not that one-dimensional, and we need to convince millions of those people to move left.
The "in practice" part doesn't mean much because, in practice, individual congresspeople have virtually zero control over the imperial machine. The immediate decisions are all made by the president, and it'd take some enormous political sea change to get enough congressional support to even cut the military's budget 10%.
Further, Bernie's views are no longer relevant. What might be relevant are views of a bunch of Bernie-friendly Americans that are variations on this same mixed bag. They definitely don't have any actual control over anything. It really doesn't serve us to simplify them down to "anticommunist," because it's not that one-dimensional, and we need to convince millions of those people to move left.