A Democracy of Dunces

Caligula on the Potomac?  Berlusconi on the Anacostia?  

The U.S. ruling class has lost control of the narrative.  This is quite a feat.  Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the corporate media, the leaderships of the Democrat and Republican Parties, the Washington “think” tanks, the neo-liberals and neo-cons – all failed at control.  The pundits and pollsters were all wrong.  Even the money-men were wrong.  The deep state intervened at the last minute in the form of the FBI and James Comey, a Republican supporter of Trump who was appointed by the ever so bi-partisan Obama, to give a nudge.  (And no, President Obama, we are not all on the same 'team.')  Only Michael Moore, Keith Ellison and one pollster saw what was coming.  Kudos to them.  But the solution was pathetic – a love letter to Hillary Clinton.    Sanders would have beaten Trump, but the ‘Democratic’ half of the ruling class had their nominee already appointed.

The Party Starts Now

Here is the 'silver' lining.  Trump may or may not do what he says.  The deep state will have a private conversation with him about that.  The National Security Counsel is not happy about his isolationism.  The bright side here is that the TPP is hopefully dead.  NAFTA ‘may’ get re-negotiated, but don’t bet on it.   Trump has vacillated on the issue of Social Security, but he will probably cave to both parties enthusiasm for 'debt' relief.  The ACA is now more vulnerable, as it’s costs were under the real control of Big Pharma and the health industry and that has become obvious to millions. 

War or direct confrontation with Russia in Ukraine and Syria is off the table for a short while – although elements of the state and the ruling class Parties still want that confrontation, so drones wars and interventions will continue, Trump or no Trump.   Will Saudi Arabia get more weapons?  They probably won’t need them after the enormous weapons buy under Obama.   Will millions of Latinos be deported?  Odds are the deportation schedule run by Obama will continue and increase - if that is possible.  After all, super-exploited illegal labor is the bread and butter of so many American businessmen, including Trump.  That may be the real reason mass deportations – like Japanese internment - will probably not occur.  That and massive resistance…

Trump, like a retarded ruling class figure, may get drunk in the White House, initiate toga parties, sleep with the interns, generally run roughshod over conventionality like some Roman ruler presiding over a declining empire.  For that is what we have here.  The ruling class is weak and has lost full control.  The Empire is in hollow hands, sort of like what happens when royals interbreed.  All will be televised in a reality show called “Trump House.”  But they will still take advantage of this disaster to the utmost.  Unfortunately the working-class forces arrayed against Trump and Clinton and their cronies are also weak.  The liberal/left are like Roman plebeians who married patricians, wandering the ruins after too many circuses – unable to unite, unable to get rid of an addiction to the smoking failure that is the Democratic Party, unable to form a coherent, organizational front , unable to mobilize even a section of the working class in a real way.  The leadership of the union movement is certainly a large part of that weakness, but black leaders are also behind the curve.  Will they have a ‘come to Jupiter’ moment?  I do not think so.  As to the actual Marxists, they are too small and divided to form a core to any present counter-attack.  

But that counter-attack will begin to occur now, willy nilly.  Not our President!  Revolutions are predicated on a society being unable to function normally and the future most see is anything but 'normal.'  I predict Trump will be besieged and worse. But certainly not from the 'bipartisan' majority of the spineless Democrats, who are still talking like its just another power transfer.

Another Democratic Party narrative and liberal political view has died too.  That is the ‘demographic’ argument.  I.E. we don’t care what the working class thinks – specifically in this case the ‘white’ part of the working class.   After all, all that matters is not class, just the color of your skin, your gender identity, your sexual proclivities or your age.  Let’s not talk about class!  The Democratic Party technocrats have danced around this maypole of ‘identity’ politics for years - but now the cows have come home to roost.  Some UAW staffers told me about 1/3^rd of UAW members voted for anti-union Trump because of his position on trade.  Nationally union households voted for Trump in the 40+% range. And this is because Trump’s position was actually right.  Trump even won more black people, Latinos and women than Romney!

CLASS is the key to unity and victory for everyone in the working class, of whatever ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation.  We are the majority.  Ignoring that is the intention of the upper classes, because it results in 'divide and rule.'  

The liberal professional strata (and hysterical liberal websites like Salon, Huffington Post, the Nation, the Guardian, Alternet, MSNBC and hordes of shallow millionaire political comedians on TV) couldn’t get beyond Trump’s racist and sexist comments and see he was also making class-conscious arguments much like Sanders.  They thereby assumed every Trump supporter was merely a bigot.  By doing this they actually disqualified themselves from ever building any kind of a successful movement.  Obama won the same 6 states twice that Trump won yesterday, which proves the point that there is more going on here than bigotry.   On his last day campaigning in Michigan, Trump actually said:   “Today the American working class is going to strike back, finally.”  Can you imagine the Wal-Mart lawyer in Clinton’s soul ever saying such a thing?  At least Trump had the more effective lie.  Again, this inability to think about class is INTENTIONAL. 

Black Lives Matter, the Dream Movement, the Standing Rock rebellion, Moral Mondays, Fight for 15, American Muslims, pipeline protesters, unions, anti-fascist organizers, youth, maybe even strikers  – all are now ‘under the gun,’ by an emboldened law enforcement, bigots, rightist vigilantes or militias.  But the darkest part of this is global warming.  The Republican Party and Trump do not believe it is occurring.  Coal – that inky black rock – is to be brought back from the dead, if words are to be believed.  Unfortunately at this point only a revolutionary movement can actually change the environmental situation fast enough to prevent it by overthrowing the capitalist class.  And that movement right now is too fragmented to succeed.  Am I exaggerating?  Most scientists know our time is almost up.  Do you?

As to that ‘pantsuit’ thing.  Pantsuits are normally worn by business women, not working-class women.  The first time I saw them frequently was in a stock brokerage in the 1990s, sported by female managers.  Clothing says it all and stickers on Susan B Anthony’s grave don’t change that.  The bourgeois leadership of the 'feminist' movement did itself a disfavor by backing a war-mongering, Wall-Street loving corporate manager – but then that doesn’t matter to them evidently.   They should examine the iron ceilings and drop ceilings and drywall ceilings and plaster ceilings hanging above working class women's heads instead.

Glenn Greenwald and Thomas Frank said today, especially Greenwald:  The Democratic Party will try to blame everyone else, except the reflection in its own mirror. Don't let them.

Red Frog

November 9, 2016