Trump enjoying an evening with friends |
Afscme Local 444, retied
In the weekly conference calls we have at the Facts For Working People blog we have, like most Americans, had a wild ride. Let’s face it, very few expected Trump to get the Republican nomination for president never mind take the presidency itself.
In the weekly conference calls we have at the Facts For Working People blog we have, like most Americans, had a wild ride. Let’s face it, very few expected Trump to get the Republican nomination for president never mind take the presidency itself.
When I saw Trump ridicule the disabled, I thought he was
toast. When he talked of grabbing women by the pussy I was convinced that was
it. When I saw Nazi’s and the KKK at his rallies and they endorsed him I was
sure that he would never win. Not only is Trump still here despite his lies,
racism, misogyny, visiting prostitutes right after his child is born then lying
about it then getting caught then paying them off but he’s becoming more
popular among some circles it seems. Oh man!
I was talking with a co-worker on a hike the other day and
also with comrades around our blog Facts For Working People that I am not
confident at all that the Democrats will make much headway in the mid-terms
which are only a couple of weeks away.
Part of the reason for this is that the Democrats are so
worthless. They are not an opposition party at all of course as we do not have
an opposition party in the US. Both parties receive money from Wall Street and
are capitalist parties. Some 100 million people never voted and Trump remember
didn’t win the popular vote, he was actually elected by the undemocratic
Electoral College. There is a strong desire among the US population to abolish
this body but the Democrats won’t make an issue out of it as they know they too
might need it someday.
The Democrats cannot mobilize the disenfranchised or those
millions that have completely lost faith in the US electoral process altogether
as they fear the US working class, a conscious working class mobilizing and
becoming involved in politics. The Democrats too wage war on the US working
class and poor but a little less aggressively not so willing to provoke a
backlash and the civil unrest that will be sure to come. The major blame for
this mood and the absence of an alternative is the criminal role played by the
labor leadership atop an organization of 14 million members. Wedded as they are to
the Democratic Party and as staunch defenders of the market, profits and
capitalism they offer US workers nothing but further declines in living
standards albeit at a slightly slower pace. They are a major factor in the rise
of Trump.
A number of other factors play in to my concern. One is the
xenophobia and anti-immigrant mood that trump is fomenting. He has threatened
to bring troops to our southern border to halt a caravan of Guatemalans and
other Central Americans heading to the US border to escape the poverty and
violence of the Central American countries caused by decades of US imperialist
meddling and plunder. He has also threatened sanctions on the countries that
have allowed them to cross their borders heading north. He reminded his supporters of this immigrant
invasion today calling on them to “remember
the mid-terms”. It’s almost as if this caravan could have been organized by
Trump himself. In the absence of an independent working class party and the
deafening silence of the labor officialdom, a US working class savaged by
decades of attacks is vulnerable to anti-immigrant rhetoric. I have been there
myself for a brief moment in time.
Along with this, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll finds
that more and more Republicans are accepting him and even some of his
staunchest opponents during the debates, many of whom he savagely insulted, are
back in the fold. The more sober
conservative old guard has been sidelined. Gerald Seib correctly points this
out in his column in today’s
Wall Street Journal, “The battle for
the soul of the Republican Party is over, and President Trump has won.” Seib
goes on, “For better or for worse, it’s
Mr. Trump’s more-populist party now.” Popular with racists, narrow thinking
petit bourgeois, billionaires, fascists and the most backward or desperate
sections of the working class.
The poll finds that Trump has an 87% approval rating among
conservative voters and eight out of ten conservative voters have “positive
feelings” towards the president. For many of his less lunatic minded supporters
who are the ones that matter, they find his demeanor offensive but approve of
most of his polices..
In our weekly discussions we always make a point of raising
the economic situation as it cannot be ruled out that Trump and the Republicans
will do fairly well in the mid-terms as the economy is doing well. The big
bourgeois is raking in millions and many are supporting his trade policies and
this is particularly so of steel that has had almost half the sanctions
removed that would affect that industry. William Ross we should recall is very
connected to that industry. Tech and the restaurant and retailers have not
fared so well. The steel bosses would also have the support of the misguided union leaders of the USWA no doubt.
So I am feeling less confident about the possibility of
Trump being taken to the cleaners in two weeks and I figure the rhetoric about
the mass migration north in the form of this caravan will heat up. There is of
course the Saudi affair and I see Turkey’s Erdogan is demanding extraditions on
that but Trump won’t give a damn about that and to be honest neither will most
of the US population. Our tax money props up and maintains numerous brutal
regimes like the Saudi’s the Zionists and the other Gulf States, family
businesses basically.
Something else that could derail this Trump train is
Mueller’s investigation and Trumps’ friend Putin releasing some dirt on him but
that seems unlikely at this point as
Trump has managed to keep the Russian affair at bay.
What we do stress and all workers should not lose track of
is the economic situation. The US housing market is in a bit of a slump as far
as I can gather from the media (not the fake media) and that is not a good sign
as so much economic activity is connected to home purchases, large purchases
like furniture, appliances and so on.
We are at the tail end of the weak economic upswing, (or
long depression as the Marxist economist Michael Roberts puts it) since the
2008 crash and it cannot go on indefinitely. The coming slump or outright crash
will change the mood entirely and have sever consequences socially as the US
ruling class will not have an easy time of it suggesting any bail outs particularly the banks, speculators
and capitalism itself once again. The system was dragged from the abyss by taxpayers funds last time.
Outside of this we have seen very positive developments in
the form of the huge teacher/educators struggles that not only overcame their
own established union leadership's opposition to strikes in order to make some major
gains for education, but struck in states where striking was illegal This
movement has not gone unnoticed by bosses, the labor hierarchy and class
conscious workers alike. It has changed the game and there will be many forces
attempting to halt its forward motion, direct it in to that black hole we know
as the Democratic Party and render it harmless. It may well have reached its
nexus for now, but in all movements, they may be temporarily halted but lessons
are learned and they never completely retreat.
The main points we have to absorb I think is that the
domination of the two parties of capitalism, Republicans and Democrats over US
political life is over. Splits are likely in both the parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Things are not going backwards any more than the rise
of women in response to sexual harassment and trump’s misogyny is going
backwards. The black lives matter movement, also heavily influenced by the middle
class is also just the beginning of another black revolt against the horrors of
capitalism. When working class women enter this movement in their millions and
workers in general are forced to enter the fray and fight back against the
capitalist offensive, the entire mood and nature of the movement will be transformed
and the Hollywood celebrities and liberal millionaires will fade in to the background. Some will reveal that they are actually enemies not our friends.
We are living in interesting times
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