Saturday, April 8, 2017

Trump's Concern For "Children Of God." How Touching.

Trump didn't know about this? US Taxpayer money at work in Fallujah
by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

It is hard to have to read the words that come out of Predator in Chief Trump's mouth never mind looking at him.  Trump said yesterday with regard to the children of Syria and the suspected sarin gas attack: "No child of God should suffer such horror"

Trump is a degenerate, that is clear, but the entire ruling class is degenerate. Their whole system is degenerate.  Capitalism has maintained its rule through war and violence. It, as someone once wrote, came to being "dripping with blood".

What we call news, just like history, is written by the victor, by the class that rules. The dominant ideas in society, as Marx explained, are the ideas of the class that governs. In bourgeois society, we have freedom of the media, if you own the media your views of the world dominate, reach the masses, through their institutions, the pulpit, the universities, the think tanks and through that layer of society we call the middle class or petite bourgeois.

Through this structure we learn early on dogma like, "8 hours pay for 8 hours work". How can that be so, there'd be nothing in it for the capitalist, the folks paying the wages. Or we learn that "If you work hard you can be anything you want." More nonsense. In our world, those that work get little and those that don't get everything they want.

Under feudalism the dominant ideology was based on the Divine Right of Kings, that the king was king by "god's will" was god's representative on earth. Not bad. Who do we think thought that one up? The serf?  Of course not. Fortunately, one day a few people decided to cut off the king's head against religious authority and see how angry god would be at losing his main man down here.  Progress of sorts was made.  We must learn something from this.

All media represents a class point of view. All ideas have a "material" base, in other words, they are not simply our own as we are taught to believe, we are products, as is our consciousness, of society.  Why in most surveys about issues of justice or crime or social conditions in US society (the OJ Simpson trial for example) do black and white people have very different views? Part of it is the way questions are asked by representatives of the ruling class but the main point is that they have had different social experiences. They are treated differently by society. It's not simply caused by the color of a person's skin or their religious affiliation as in Northern Ireland for example.  These differences are consciously used to divide the working class in order for this minority to maintain their class rule. Being a certain color or religion or ethnic group is what we are taught to believe is at the bottom of this, but it's not. British colonialism didn't go in to Africa because the ruling  class didn't like darker skinned people. Before Africa, they went in to Ireland, the Irish are white skinned. British capitalism sent 8 year old's down mines so there's more to this than meets the eye.

It's a social question why women and men have different views about a singular issue. And it is why workers and capitalists think differently.

A ruling class is a numerical minority despite its political and economic power. It exploits the majority and has to divide those it exploits as we are always after a greater share of the pie we create. There are all sorts of complexities within this but we must be grounded in this understanding.

Our social system propagates the view that the only way society can be organized is along capitalist, free market lines.  While we are taught that slave owners and feudal lords were undemocratic greedy bastards, capitalists like Warren Buffet are hard working risk taking solid individuals who are also very, very smart.  As I commented the other day, I remember during the PATCO strike that stranded passengers at airports and a reporter walked up to a passenger and asked him what it was like to be "held hostage" by the Air Traffic Controllers. No class bias there is there?

But back to Trump and Syria.  As I wrote yesterday, workers cannot support Assad or the proxy war in Syria between the US and Russian imperialism. Sometimes, we curse both their houses. The capitalist media reports Trump's statement though as if it has any credibility. That's their job. But it is our responsibility to delve deeper in to these issues. The truth is out there but they aren't going to help us find it.

It would be nice if Trump's phony concerns were true but children "of God" have been suffering such things of this nature since the beginnings of class society and in particular since the birth and  ascendancy of the capitalist class and their system in to the global system of economic organization that it now is. And how can a guy who grabs women's crotches whether they like it or not talk about God. Any serious and honest Christian has to openly and virulently condemn this man.

Has Trump never seen the pictures of starving children in places like India and Africa? These children starve not because capitalism can't produce enough food to feed them, but because they don't have the money to buy it, because the capital necessary to develop the productive forces of their society is being withheld.  In short, it's not profitable to feed them so they die.

Is Trump not aware that babies in South East Asia are still being born deformed or diseased due to the chemicals the US dropped on them and their food supply. It was a conscious strategy by the way to poison their food supply, not an accident.

Half a million Iraqi women and children died because of US sanctions on Iraq as they were upset with their old friend Saddam Hussein. Former US Ambassador Madeline Albright  told ABC news that this was "worth it."

Other children in Iraq are born with deformities due to the use of depleted uranium by the US military. US troops also are affected by it. Remember some military wives complaining that their husband's sperm "burned" them?

And what about Fallujah. Fallujah will be embedded in the collective memory of Iraqi's Muslims and the Arab masses as a shrine, a tribute to the heroism of resistance by a town in a small Middle East Country devastated by an enemy with the most powerful military that has ever existed an invader that it never threatened or harmed.  Fallujah was laid siege to because three US mercenaries were caught by Iraqi's and their bodies mutilated.

We never hear the details of Falluja and if we do it will be to praise our "liberation" of this city from "terrorists" "insurgents" "fanatics" any label but freedom fighters or defenders. The US used white phosphorous in Fallujah and the cancer rate and toxic affects of the US violence there has been described as "worse than Hiroshima"

"Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents." Independent UK July 2010

It is US weapons and financial support that allows the Zionist regime to slaughter Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, those that aren't in Israeli prisons that is. Go check the body count for child deaths in the last Gaza invasion, it's not hard to find. The Zionists used white phosphorous there also.

It is one thing to feel helpless, to feel that there's nothing you can do. That can be understood given the absence of any major social force in the US speaking out against the violence and state terror inflicted on peoples of the world by our own government. But the first step in situations like these can be overcoming denial. Do some research. Always question as they say, always find out more. Seek other sources including those who are said to be our enemies. Talk to other workers and challenge the mass media's narrative, the propaganda of the 1%. Change the climate among your close circle of friends, if they don't like it they're not your friends.

And most of all learn the truth about the history of our own country, the class struggles, the persecution of ethnic, religious and other minorities. Most American workers have no clue of the violence committed against the US working class, our ancestors,  by those we are are supposed to look up to as great individuals as a generous class of egalitarians. If we don't understand history from a class point of view, don't see the social forces at play and why events took place. We can't change it.

1 comment:

Sean said...

A brilliant article Richard. Thank you. I particularly agree with your call to US workers and workers in all countries, but especially the imperialist countries such as the US to get off their a.... and think and act. The US trade union leaders are not going to act against the atrocities of US capitalism which are carried out in the names of the US people. At least they will never act until we build a fighting opposition which threatens their privileged positions with their high pay and secure jobs and their pro capitalist ideology. We cannot let US capitalism caary out its atrocities in our name. nor can we let other capitalist forces such as Russian imperialism and the Assad regime carry out their atrocities unchallenged. Sean O'Torain.