Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Isn't it sweet. The imbecile Bush giving Michelle Obama a piece of candy at the McCain memorial. I couldn't get the code to this short clip so the pic will have to do.
I came across it after seeing a headline that lauded the "bi-partisanship" shown by these two political representatives of US imperialism. I should state right off the bat of course that the one on the left, the one receiving the candy, is different than the one on the right. "She's black" you say. No, not that. "She's a woman, surely that's what you mean?" No, not that either. She's smarter.
But this little gesture between people that actually have no time for each other personally is part of the game but there's a more accurate term to describe the behavior and that is class solidarity. They are on the same team, they have the same world view, the same aspirations for their children and their economic interests converge. They are prominent, leading bourgeois figures whose commitment is to capitalism and they will tolerate endless violence to ensure that is the case. Their class loyalty is strong.
They are at this function as are so many others like the Zionist Joe Lieberman, and many more, because the economic system they worship and propagate is in peril, not yet a revolutionary peril but a crisis nonetheless. The two capitalist parties that govern society in their name, Democrats and Republicans are in crisis with the possibility of splits in both. Perhaps the Republican party is in worse shape taken over by the American Taliban who care more about the Rapture than profits, but the main point is that the era of the domination of the two capitalist parties over US political life is ending.
They are rallying around one of their own who unlike most of them actually faced combat of sorts, not like that experienced by the millions of workers who provide the boots on the ground fighting rich folks wars, but he's at least actually killed people rather than having others do it.
McCain has been the brunt of their jokes over time given his misguided machismo and repeated gaffes, a bit like Joe Biden. He has been seen as a bit of a fool and his incompetence was confirmed as far as millions of Americans, many Republicans among them, were concerned when he picked the cretin Palin as his running partner in the 2008 elections. But in death McCain finds himself as the beacon of light as the US body politic reels day in day out from the Trump shock waves.
Workers won universal suffrage and we should defend it despite winning very little in terms of basic rights through the ballot box, but sometimes things don't always work out the way the bourgeois would like, that's the danger with elections. The same thing happened when the US promoted elections in Gaza and the Palestinians trapped there voted for what they wanted and not what the US wanted so the US labelled their choice, a terrorist group.
Trump is such a destabilizing factor for US capitalism and such an embarrassment that we have arrived at a point where someone like McCain is given the send off that only presidents would normally get. This is how desperate they are and the vacuum that exists among the leadership.
Trump is undermining the institutions of capitalism, its intelligentsia, its mass media, the important propaganda outlet and its judiciary. As one of them he's not a team player, the son of a slumlord and bigot, he's never worked and he threatens the relatively safe equilibrium that the capitalist mode of production needs; he is stoking class antagonisms and the fire of rebellion.
We can learn a lot from our enemies. George Schultz pointed out a few things we should pay attention to. He said that He who walks in the middle of the roads gets hit from both sides and we should heed that and along with that, this bourgeois strategist warns:
“Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.” So true.
Working class people, can look at those two very different people in that picture above and take note; class solidarity is crucial to power. They know it, so must we.
1 comment:
A very good piece. McCain is getting much more positive press in death than he did while alive. It's also a sign of desperation on their part having the orange haired bigot in the White House. And to stress what the author says about class solidarity. Michelle Obama is a woman and an African American, two of the primary victims of the US capitalist system. Could you imagine Malcolm X or Safiya Bukhari sitting with those people, joking, laughing? Of course not, they weren't part of that group. Michelle Obama taking candy from a US war criminal is.
Post a Comment