Vol. 81/No. 13      April 3, 2017

 
(front page)

Trump hysteria masks rulers’ growing fear of
working class

 
The Bernie Sanders wing of the broken Democratic Party, the owners and editors of the Washington Post, New York Times and other liberal organs, and the middle-class left are united in a hysterical frenzy against the presidency of Donald Trump. But there’s really nothing qualitatively new or different about his administration — he’s trying to defend the interests of the wealthy capitalist rulers, seeking to shore up their crisis-battered profit rates and their weakened position in the world. That’s what every U.S. president does.

What is different is the depth of the economic, political and moral crisis of the capitalist system he is seeking to defend. And the deep discussion and debate taking place among working people on how to combat the effects of the slow-burning capitalist economic depression and the carnage it is causing. In these conditions, the Socialist Workers Party finds openings to do politics in the working class that it hasn’t seen for decades — including among workers who voted for Trump, looking for a change from business as usual.

Workers today are less racist, less sexist and less prejudiced against their immigrant co-workers than ever before.

But most liberals and leftists are convinced Trump got elected because working people, especially workers who are Caucasian, are becoming more rightwing and bigoted. They think they’re the enemy.

The April issue of the New Republic magazine, which prides itself as a champion of “progressive ideas,” is a good example. It features a drawing of Trump as Julius Caesar on the cover with the title, “All-American Tyrant: What sets Trump Apart From History’s Worst Dictators.”

One article in particular stands out. Titled “Blueexit: A Modest Proposal for Separating Blue States from Red,” the article by Kevin Baker takes the form of a letter to workers.

“Dear Red-State Trump voter,” it begins. “For more than 80 years now, we — the residents of what some people like to call Blue America, but which I prefer to think of as the United States of We Pay Our Own Damn Way — have shelled out far more in federal tax monies than we took in. We have funded massive infrastructure projects in your rural counties, subsidized your schools and your power plants and your nursing homes, sent you entire industries, and simultaneously absorbed the most destitute, unskilled, and oppressed portions of your populations, white and black alike.

“All of which, it turns out, only left you more bitter, white, and alt-right than ever.”

The benighted editors at New Republic believe the smarter, more cultured class of people on the East and West coasts create all value, while “you people” in between — he means “white trash” — get by “sucking at the federal teat,” making up “Food Stamp Red America.”

“Cities now generate the vast majority of America’s wealth,” Baker writes, as if cities aren’t class divided, “the cities, that is, where blue folks live.”

His solution: the Blue states should secede in everything but name from the United States, writing off the working class. Good luck with that!

Against the Current, the magazine of Solidarity, which describes itself as “an independent socialist organization dedicated to forming a broad regrouping of the U.S. Left,” shares Baker’s view.

A feature article by Malik Miah, “Making Trump’s America Ungovernable” in its March/April issue takes aim at all workers who voted for Trump. Miah quotes liberal Times columnist Charles Blow, who says “Trump’s America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. … It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation.”

Miah says of these workers that “power, especially white power, is behind what they agree will ‘make America Great Again.’ African Americans, Mexicans and Muslims especially, Trump says, make America weak. Many white working people accept this dark vision of reality prompted by Trump.”

“White nativism is again on the rise and more blatant under the Trump regime,” Miah says.

What can be done? Convince the capitalists to get rid of Trump. “Trump is the bombastic figurehead for the superrich who rule this country,” he says. Overwhelm them with protests and civil disobedience targeting Trump and the workers who back him. “If the rhetoric and politics begin to hurt their interests,” the rulers themselves will do him in.

What’s the bottom line? Get the Democrats back in office.

The Nation magazine, which boasts that it is the “‘flagship’ of the political left,” made its March 27 issue a “Field Guide to the Resistance.”

The focus of most of the groups it features is to take over the Democratic Party and rebuild it in the image of Bernie Sanders.

“Swing Left”’s goal the Nation says, is to sign up “progressive activists in safe congressional districts” and “ultimately flip the House to Democratic control in 2018.”

The “Run for Something” group says they’ve signed up “almost 3,000 young candidates to run for local office.”  
 
 
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