By Richard Mellor in California
I haven’t been watching the impeachment proceedings in the US senate. It’s all a bit of a show, no doubt. Though what is incredible when we think about it, is that we have a president here who is a pathological liar, a con man, a racist and a sexual predator. He was endorsed by the KKK and the Nazis. Yet despite all of this, he’s brought up on some charges because he allegedly tried to blackmail a foreign leader of an impoverished country, by holding up a few hundred dollars in bribery aid if the official didn’t use his influence and political position to investigate a political rival of his. We know that to be Joe Biden and son. But Trump has ripped poor people off his entire life. Where were all these politicians then?
When I saw that Reuters correspondent raise this with Trump and Trump pointed a finger at him saying that Biden and his son were “stone cold crooked and you know it and so do we”, my first thought was that he’s right. Millions of others know it, and certainly Trump’s base does. This is part of the problem, they’re all dirty and Trump just happens to be one of the more degenerate and personally unpleasant of them.
What did Biden’s son do for $50,000 a month over in the Ukraine? It was a “mistake” to take the position, they’re saying now. I wish that argument had worked for me as shop-steward when I was defending workers who were not so innocent.
Trump poses a threat to capitalist interests
Given that, I want to return to an issue myself and others around the Facts For Working People blog have raised for some time. What really irks the US ruling class about Trump, his class colleagues in the two capitalist parties and the more astute capitalists who recognize that he is a threat to profit-making, is that he is undermining the institutions of capitalism. He is a threat to the system itself.
There was a collective gasp from the more sober sections of the US capitalist class when back in 2016, in the debates with Hillary Clinton, when Trump boasted that if he lost the election he might not accept the result. This is unprecedented from a candidate for president in this holy democracy. If he can do that; why not the rest of us? Aren’t we all expected to honour the law of the land?
Capitalist democracy is touted as the apex of civilization and the US version at the top of them all. Manifest Destiny is the 19th century philosophy that asserts this. The United States was destined by God, a white Christian God no less, to expand and covet the land the colonists occupied and spread their rule throughout the Americas. It was the intellectual cover for capitalist plunder and murder. It was the philosophy that justified the genocidal war against the Native American population, the introduction of slavery and the brutal exploitation of imported labour from Europe Asia and elsewhere.
British colonialism and mass murder was justified in the same way; the occupants of their first colony, Ireland, were the “savage race”.
Justify your exploitation with a philosophy
The exploitation of the working masses of all countries has always had the blessing of the organized churches. No occupying power or colonial administration deviates from this philosophy, it has to give moral justification for its rule of others and what better than a philosophy linked to a supernatural being no one has ever met or talked to. The Catholic Church played an important role in the conquests of Africa and Latin America by British and European capitalism. All that gold in the Vatican didn’t came from Italy.
We are passing through a new phase. Not to beat a dead horse, but the era in which the two parties of capitalism governed US society for over 100 years is ending. This is happening to all the old established capitalist parties. The US working class has abandoned the capitalists’ phony electoral process in the millions, with some 100 million opting out in 2016. For decades, we have lost ground under Democratic and Republican Administrations alike. The undemocratic US Electoral College placed this sexual predator in the most powerful political seat on the planet and he’s taking advantage of it.
The most short-sighted sections of US capitalism welcome Trump’s hand-outs but in the main, the majority of them have grave concerns about his rise and trashing of all the phony trappings that help con the working class in to supporting an economic system that rips us off.
The mass media is fake. But not in the way Trump means it. It has a class bias and is an important instrument in justifying the rule of capital over labour, and US capitalism has an almost divine power.
“…behave like ladies and gentlemen”
The impeachment process reveals this further but may fail in repairing the damage already done by Trump and co. I see that the Supreme Court judge who is presiding over the impeachment has warned the players in this charade to behave like gentlemen and ladies. He is quoted in the media as telling both sides to “remember that they are addressing the world’s greatest deliberative body”. Yes, the world’s greatest body. In this great chamber the decision to kill and maim 3 million Vietnamese and pour dioxin on their food was made. The decision to massacre more than one million Iraqis was made here, like the decisions to overthrow the governments of Grenada and Cuba and Chile.
The Judge is no mere mortal; he is not just a Supreme Court judge like Brett Kavanagh and Clarence Thomas, like Trump, sexual predators by most accounts. This judge is John G. Roberts, Jr., the Chief Justice of the United States. The US Supreme Court is composed of a bunch of lawyers whose role it is to defend the capitalist mode of production and the legal system that arose from it. It’s like the capitalist equivalent of the Politburo.
And why is the US Congress the world’s greatest deliberative body? Chief Justice Robert’s makes it clear that, “One reason it has earned that title is because its members avoid speaking in a manner and using language that is not conducive to civil discourse.”
Trump makes George W Bush look intelligent
I know I have upset some of my friends who have some reverence for Barack Obama, and in the age of Trump, even the mass killer George W Bush is deemed a cuddly and intelligent fellow by comparison. That he said the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur has been forgiven. Obama is smart, cultured, well mannered but also a warmonger. He is the consummate capitalist politician; the US ruling class loved him and he was good to them.
But I am used to that, growing up in England. The British ruling class is violent and ruthless. Like Leopold of Belgium, who murdered 10 million Africans. They studied classical Greek, went to Oxford and Cambridge and didn’t use vulgar language quite so often like their “yankee” cousins. They speak proper English. I always used to say the British travelled the world and stole anything that wasn’t nailed down, but at least they did it with the right grammar.
US capitalism is in a deep political and social crisis and at some point in the not so distant future the economy will head south. The political vacuum is a chasm. The Republican Party, dominated by right wing religious fundamentalists and other extremists may well fragment and it is possible some right wing neo-fascist party could arise from the remnants, maybe with Trump at its head.
The Democratic Party also appears likely to split at some point and perhaps a left alternative coming out of that breakup. We have also discussed the possibility of various independent candidates arising: celebrities, billionaires like the present Democrat, Tom Steyer. That millions of working class people think a billionaire can defend their interests says a lot about the present consciousness. I am just thinking out loud here, but have learned that in this period it’s almost impossible to predict exactly what road lies ahead.
Organised workers will break the obstacle of leaders
One thing that I can say with certainty is that the US working class will explode onto the scene at some point and the organized sector will breach the obstacle of its own leadership and play an important role in that process. An organization with 14 million workers in it will not be left out of the future. Electorally, the 100 million who don’t vote are the elephant in the room, the elephant that neither party wants to orient towards, because they have withdrawn from the process not through apathy but disgust.
The Republican and Democratic Parties have nothing to offer them. The biggest problem here in the US is that people don’t feel they can change things.
All was not well before Trump let’s not forget that.
January 23, 2020
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
