Joe Kennedy, Patriotism and Transgender Rights.

"In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People." Eugene Debs

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I see Democratic hopefuls are lining up. Joe Kennedy is looking toward 2020 as well. They are such slick characters these politicians of the ruling class. He goes on about patriotism, courage and worst of all, that Trump won't defend people in uniform that are "willing to sacrifice their lives to protect our freedom".

Workers repeat this all the time, they are defending our freedoms. No they are not, workers in uniform are defending US capitalism's interests, are fighting for Wall Street and US capitalism to dominate weaker nations and rob them of their raw materials and wealth or for access to cheap labor and crush any resistance that opposes this. In that sense when Kennedy uses the pronoun "our" with regard to freedom, he is correct, he is talking about himself, his family and the capitalist class of which he is a prominent member.

Patriotism, they love patriotism and use it when it suits them.  We are all in this together, we are all Americans. US president Theodore Roosevelt came from a wealthy family like most of them. His father never went to war, he paid to send some working class person like so many of them. Patriotism is the last refuge of a fool someone once said.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't support transgender people having the right to be in the military like anybody else. We must oppose the housing and employment discrimination they face and all the other social obstacles they face because of their gender choices and fight for decent, gratifying jobs.  We must oppose and actively stand against all forms of discrimination against sexual orientation, religion, and race.

They frame this term, "Support Our Troops" vaguely because they want to associate any opposition to their murderous and criminal slaughter of workers abroad in their rapacious pursuit of profits and plunder with not caring about our youth in uniform, of abandoning them to their fate without question. It is our duty to oppose imperialist wars, to save our children's lives and the lives of millions of others in weaker nations and not fight for the likes of the Kennedy's in their struggle against the elites of other nations.

Chelsea Manning heroically revealed the savage nature of US capitalism's criminal and unprovoked invasion of Iraq. For this she was tortured, labelled unpatriotic and  a traitor and driven almost to suicide. Then she was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Yet she did a great service to us. If you haven't seen collateral Murder see it. It's what got Manning in trouble. By showing this to us she allowed us to see not only the criminal nature of this invasion but also how this war dehumanized and transformed young American men and women in to savages, laughing as they took pot shots at civilians and their children collecting the dead already killed by their hi-tech helicopter gunship. What's heroic about that? What threat were these Iraqi's and their children to you and I? Is this what we want workers in other countries to experience when they come face to face with Americans like ourselves?  Remember the drone operators appeal to Obama.

Kennedy and his class need unemployment, low wages, lack of a future for a certain percentage of working class people so that the military is the only option. Workers do not need to be bribed with access to education or so-called skills training to defend and fight for our rights and the country or state we and/or our ancestors built.To defend our communities.

We should be insulted by Kennedy's phony appeals and talk of fairness and courage and all that. He is a liar, he is looking to advance his political career and be part of the next group that will govern and plunder US society for four years.  Like all of the ruling class and their offspring they allow people to die without health care, live without shelter, languish in prison and much more.

We want jobs for all, a future for all, and we want transgender people to participate in society free of discrimination and with the rights we all enjoy, and have all their needs met and to prosper along with all working class people. We fought for what we have despite the lies and propaganda that they were given to us.

One last note. Listen to Kennedy speak. He has watched Obama I can tell it. I haven't done it but the tone, the nuance, the stressing of certain parts of sentences; he's watched Obama and has picked up some of his style. Obama is a very slick, cultured and intelligent representative of the US bourgeois. They'd love to have him back. Maybe they will in the form of Joe Kennedy.