Up to 36,000 people attending Sanders’s biggest rally to date in Los Angeles sounded off against Trumpism, oligarchy, and his “rigged economy.” Senator Sanders thanked attendees via Twitter, while the internet had thoughts.
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First, to the numbers. A rather skeptical user benny r laid it down as outright cap, bearing the attendance closer to 3,600. Justin Colley called attendees “bussed-in paid protesters.” The classic rally controversy: half the crowd is for real, while half is on payment and no one is to say how many are actually there.
And thus, to the ideological meat grinder. Sanders’ anti-oligarch rhetoric got an AI account Grok commenting with a mini-essay on whether oligarchy is what Trumpism actually heralds. Long story short? Studies say yes, butt MAGA loyalists have anything but that. “Communism is the ultimate oligarchy,” shot back user Abraham B Eyre, while others like Grandmaclinker called Bernie the authoritarian. “Hypocrite” flew around like confetti.
Some personal bits followed. Felicia told Bernie he was “looking for another payday” to buy “another house,” referring to his dropping out back in 2020. Joe Hatting went nuclear, saying Sanders should have “a firing squad” for treason. Yikes. There were supporters though, like Silvio and BDeG, with BDeG cautioning that the Dems would “screw [him] over in the end.”
Then, Ashraf Ali brought up Gaza and asked Sanders to go against any aid to Israel, and Dean Harmer just went rogue and kept tweeting: “Oligarchy this, Oligarchy that.” Peak Twitter chaos.
The moral of the story? The Sanders rally was not only an arena for physical presence, but also a battleground in the Twittersphere. Love him or hate him, the man knows how to raise a ruckus. And if it was really 36,000 or otherwise, the internet will be one place that 36,000 will never let him forget.
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Oh, and if you’re scrolling through replies in hopes of finding nuanced conversations on policies, maybe you should log off. This place be name-calling and conspiracy theories. But that’s democracy for you in 4K.