Sometimes I think about an old Chinese saying that I read about a long time ago. The first time I saw it, it was called a blessing.  The second time it was referred to as a curse.

The saying is this one: “May you live in interesting times.”

Yup. So you can see, can’t you, how it could be both a blessing and a curse?

I think that the current presidential campaign season sums up this idea very well.  We certainly do live in interesting times, don’t we?

I don’t want to go into all of the horrors and threats that are coming to us from the right. Nukes in Europe, women in jail for abortion, war with China…..you get the idea.

I just want to talk about how excited and impassioned I feel about one candidate.

I feel the Bern.

But you know what? I am a Bernie supporter because of Bernie, not because of Trump, or Cruz, or even because of Hillary.

I am a Bernie supporter for a whole bunch of reasons that I think the people in power are failing to recognize. And I am having  So. Much. Fun.

Last night I went to a gathering of Bernie folks.  I listen to mainstream media, so I expected to find a house full of hipsters and hippies. I thought I’d be the oldest person in the room.  But I was really, really wrong. Out of 18 people at the meeting, only 2 were under 30.  5 of us were retired. 10 were gray haired.

Hey, CNN? You are SO WRONG about our age!

I though that most of the people there would be in the lower middle class, worried about their own financial situations.  Ha. No.  There were three lawyers, a couple of small business owners and a few other professionals.  No one was there looking for “free stuff”.

Hey, NBC, CBS, ABC? You do NOT GET who we are!

We talked about why we were there.  About why we support this cranky old man and his crazy quixotic campaign. And we all shared certain thoughts. We are all tired of believing in a perfectly balanced two party system. We are all wondering why this country can’t seem to have an open and honest debate about anything important. We wonder why we are unable to provide healthcare coverage for our sickest citizens. We don’t understand why no matter how hard we work, our kids can’t get through college without giant mountains of debt. We wonder why more and more of the nation’s wealth is going right into the pockets of the big corporations. We are pretty pissed off about what happened in 2008, when so many of us lost our life savings, but the people who gambled it away walked off with millions.

We are not Democrats.  We don’t believe in that whole party loyalty thing. We don’t feel beholden to Debbie Wasserman Schultz. We don’t think that we should hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils.

Many of us talked about how empowered we felt when we first heard Bernie asking, “Why can’t we provide maternity leave to our new mothers? Why can’t we take care of our elderly? Why can’t this country manage to educate its brightest young people?”  We agreed that we had all been asking ourselves the same damn questions, but hand’t thought that anyone was listening.

We talked about how stifled we’ve felt over the past decade, at least, as the word “liberal” became a pejorative term. We shared out stories of feeling diminished, demeaned, ignored as progressive thinkers.

And we talked about our true and deep belief in Bernie’s kind of populist revolution. We shared stories of frustration, anger, passion, hope.

So this is why I am hosting a phone bank for Bernie Sanders. This is why I have canvassed for him. Why I wear a T Shirt with his name on it when I go out in public.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Democratic party. I don’t care about the people in power now.  I don’t feel represented or recognized or heard.

I used to teach history to fifth graders. Sometimes I think of the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.”

Call me naiive. Call me foolish. Call me an aging hippy with no sense of reality.  For the first time since Jimmy Carter came on the scene, I feel inspired by a political candidate.

I am not a millennial. I am not a Communist. I am not looking for “free stuff”.

I am a middle aged, retired professional. I believe in my country. I believe in peace. I believe that it is the purpose of government to protect and preserve the health, safety and prosperity of the people.

I believe in Bernie Sanders.  I will support him all the way to the Democratic Convention, and if necessary, beyond.