What The Left Needs to Accept if They Do Not Want Another Trump
So, the disastrous debate between Trump and Biden has aired. It was disastrous for Biden, that is, since his cognitive decline was made so obvious that a few years of the liberal press lying and trying to make excuses for him are no longer working. And they also stubbornly refuse to replace the prized establishment candidate despite his horrendous record of lying, broken promises, war-mongering, and shilling for his fellows in the billionaire class… not to mention their inability to lie away the grueling fact of his dementia.
Many on the Mainstream Left, along with several dissonants, are now in panic mode and scrambling to rationalize why the working class should still vote for this man, why they should do it for no other reason than to keep Trump out, blah blah blah… the usual. And part of their panic is due to the plunging polls of support among disgruntled, struggling, impoverished, and debt-ridden working class people who were helped in no way, shape, or form by four years of the capitalist Biden’s administration.
Biden’s defenders, both devout and reluctant, can no longer make a convincing argument to the wider public that he or the Dems in general are pro-working class. Nor to prevent these desperate workers from voting for Trump, abstaining from the voting process altogether — they’re getting sick of the obviously pre-selected establishment pundit game that only gives us the illusion of choice — or going Independent & third party in growing numbers.
Bizarrely, the hatred for Trump and various foreign boogeymen “enemies” of America (think: Putin) is so out of proportion to what is actually demonstrably warranted that no one cares that an elderly man with rapidly advancing dementia is supposedly running the country, with these same people opting to give him four more years! Yes, seriously! Anything just to keep Trump out, or based on the misguided notion that it’s “pragmatic” to keep the Democrats in office because they’re kinda-sorta better than the Republicans (or a teensy-weensy bit less awful, if you’d prefer to put it that way).
Then again, we all know that Biden — or any president, for that matter — is not the one actually running the country. Rather, the true decision-makers are the behind-the-scenes empire managers who control the corporations and the banks — including the Military Industrial Complex, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and wealthy special interest groups like AIPAC (to whom Biden and Trump alike are proud recipients of their checks). And this growing realization — greater now than ever before with the current clown show of a debate displaying that for everyone to see— makes it all the more troubling that anyone in the working class continues to support the duopoly.
So, oh noes, Trump is going to win! Whatever can we do?
Well, in terms of objective reality, it really doesn’t matter which of these billionaires win, because our lives are not going to change for the better no matter which of these capitalist fools makes it into the White House. Neither shares your social values, and both Dem and Repub candidates are very class-conscious friends who enjoy time on the golf course together on many weekends (at exclusive clubs we’d never be invited to, unless we were hired help). Could that possibly have been made more clear than that silly digression during the debate when The Donald and Biden-his-time were arguing about their golf game? If the info that came out over a decade ago that the Clinton and Bush families were actually friends and “practically family” wasn’t enough to convince you of this unpopular reality, then this amazing spectacle should have been.
They are friends and loyal to each other over and above us in the plebeian class who only exist to make them even more obscenely wealthy while they throw us a lesser amount of crumbs with each passing year. In fact, their class loyalty to each other is a lesson that we the working class should adopt for ourselves! But we’re still not ready for widespread class unity, even if we are gradually being forced to head inexorably in that direction through no choice of our own.
What Should We Do in the Meantime?
What we should do is get out of the duopoly and pave our own path outside of Wall Street’s control or supervision, but so many of you in the working class are clearly not ready for that yet. You haven’t yet accepted that you need to break away from the abusive, manipulative partner whose name begins with a “D” and is aptly symbolized by something closely related to an ass.
So, how do you keep out Trump, or the next Repub boogeyman who will eventually take his place in the Derangement Syndrome game?
In the next section of this essay you will find a few things you need to accept which the current situation has made obvious. This is why Trump won in 2016; why he almost won in 2020; and why he is almost certainly going to win in November of ’24. Heed these lessons.
#1: You have to hold the Democrats accountable for lies, back-tracking on promises, and all the usual excuses for them that working class people have heard far too often to believe any longer en masse.
“He tried! But the Republicans obstructed him!”
“We can’t worry about these things right now! We have to join the entire Left together to keep the greatest threat to Democracy since Hitler from getting into office!”
Yadda, yadda… yadda.
If the Dems fail to deliver on their promises; if they fail to make the lives of working class people better from a demonstrable material standpoint — including the enactment (or re-establishment) of the many social democratic policies workers desperately need and totally deserve given their collective hard work & sacrifices to make a few people obscenely wealthy — they deserve to lose. And as you can now no longer deny, they will lose.
Workers will grow sick of all of the above, they will grow increasingly desperate for anything claiming to represent change. And in that desperation, those who are likewise not yet ready to break from the system itself will vote for whichever Republican fake populist rises forth to claim he/she is the one capitalist who cares about the suffering masses; or drop out of the political process itself & cease giving a shit who wins.
It has to make a difference who wins in terms of material benefits for the working class, because workers are in too much of a bad way financially speaking at this point to give two shits about tribalistic, emotion-based loyalty to “the team” anymore. Politics is no longer a game to them, just as it never should have been in the first place.
Hence, the Dems are no longer fooling large enough segments of us, so you should stop fooling yourselves while attempting to get us to fall for their bullhockey yet again. It’s happened too many times, and larger numbers of us are growing wise to the fact that the Dems are beholden to the same capitalist class interests as the Repubs. Pulling the emotional heartstrings only goes so far for so long when it slams face first into objective, provable reality.
#2: Stop with the identity politics!
Identity politics are divisive rather than unifying, and they only piss various demographics of the working class off at each other. They do not build, but only tear apart. They do not end problems, but flame lingering resentments and re-fuel the flames of resentment in others who had largely gotten over their bigotry in recent decades.
Yes, they are very emotionally gratifying, but they appeal to a dark side of our psyches; the part that rests on revenge, bitter resentment, and guilt/self-flagellation. Very unhealthy from the standpoint of both ethics and psychology.
This is why uber-capitalist firms like BlackRock, State Street, and JP Morgan are pushing them so heavily from above. These attitudes & the policies based on them do not originate from the working class itself! They are corporate policies that build on specious ideologies, such as post-modernism, that were spawned in elitist academic settings. They do not build on Classical Marxism promoting class consciousness despite both conservatives and liberals alike trying to make that connection.
Please re-read that above paragraph again and let it sink in!
This identity politics nonsense, from either wing of the duopoly, plays on the Zero-Sum Game and inherently competitive nature of capitalism. Putting a few more PoC, women, and LGBTs in power, who then proceed to act no differently than the old white male capitalists who have made a mess out of the world, is not helping the working class as a whole — including working class women, PoC, and LGBTs. The much-hated Kamala Harris and Hillary Clinton are proof positive of that. And constantly lamenting the number of old white heterosexual men in positions of power while insisting that we all vote for the oldest one of them all, and embracing (to varying degrees) a political ideology pushed by the likes of another (Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock), only makes you come off as raging hypocrites.
Putting Gay Pride or BLM banners on drones or painting them on the Pentagon or various corporate headquarters buildings, or promoting the fact that notorious intel agencies like the CIA is recruiting more people from these demographics, is not helping us financially… any of us who are not wealthy already. True equality will not and cannot exist as long as any type of economic disparities and unequal distribution of the resources continue. Fighting over a bigger share of the crumbs when there is more than enough to go around for everyone is only playing a counterproductive resentment game that is good for letting people with issues vent at others, but horrible at building unity and improving the lives of everyone.
Need more evidence of this? Then just look at how well Biden’s campaign proclamation to “combat white supremacy” in the complete absence of any type of economic policy has done for his polls this time around.
That’s because people of every color & ethnicity in the working class of the 2020s do not see white supremacy as the main problem afflicting their lives. What they see as the biggest mounting problem facing them is their inability to…
… pay their bills;
… to afford their taxes;
… to afford their rents or mortgages;
… of having any hope to afford buying & maintaining a house;
… to afford their groceries;
… to afford their medical bills should they get sick;
… finding a job guaranteed to pay them enough to live a decent life;
… get out of crushing debt;
… and all of the stresses related to the above that have exacerbated cases of mental illness & anxiety to unprecedented levels as their main problem.
They also fear a looming world war that could annihilate everyone and everything, which brings us to my next point…
#3: Stop supporting all these horrendous wars!
Tell the Democrats to stop sending billions and billions to feed the war machine instead of feeding the people. Not to mention moving us one step closer to a literally world-destroying nuclear exchange while claiming they have no money to give the working class!
Stop justifying any war a Democrat starts by shouting all the usual tripe: “… but America has to crush its enemies!” or “America has to fight for Democracy!” when it’s pretty clear that money and conquest of foreign markets is the real reason the corporate-controlled government fights wars and needs an endless slew of “enemies” for that purpose.
The people aren’t buying it any longer. The working class are getting sick of the Dems claiming that the Repubs obstruct all their alleged pro-working class policies when numerous complaints by powerful Republicans in Congress couldn’t obstruct Biden from sending several billion-dollar packages to the war machine in Ukraine. And let us not forget the horrifying war in Gaza that the Dems are funding in lockstep with the Republicans, and which “progressive” Dems continue to vote for no matter their rhetoric in support of the Palestinian plight.
War is a hugely lucrative money-laundering operation that very rarely makes the world a safer place. Most often by far it makes a few psychopaths wealthy at the expense of millions of innocent people across the world. And it has provoked numerous nations to form alignments against the United States… and never more so than over the past 25 years. Whenever it may be argued that war is absolutely necessary, this is never the case if it goes on in a prolonged fashion as a form of routine policy.
Also, never are our democratic rights more in jeopardy than during wartime. How well is our Democracy going to do during a state of perpetual warfare?
When you defend the war-profiteering machine due to getting emotionally caught up with the Dems’ empty rhetoric about “preserving Democracy” you only beg the question as to why none of this enormous amount of money ever “trickles down” to help the working class economically. And also why the government never, ever seems to seek out a better way to resolve issues.
We’re now past the point that the working class is starting to see shills for the Democrats who shout the “We have to preserve Democracy!” mantra to be anything but major hypocrites and tribal loyalists who put party over actual principles. People do not respect those who are only about empty talk.
#4: Cease and desist with supporting horrible, capitalist politicians!
The idea that it “shouldn’t matter” if a candidate is a billionaire surrounded by fellow capitalists is now beginning to come apart at the seams. The idea that these people somehow share social values with us based only on their talk but whose lives are utterly different and infinitely more secure than our own no longer holds the traction it once did.
These people often have emotional appeal at the start of their game by telling us what we want to hear, but they invariably let us down due to their actual class loyalty and who is pulling the strings from behind the scenes with massive donation checks and the support of the shadow intel agencies. Yes, Trump will let us down if he wins, but so will Biden and for the exact same reasons.
Ignoring this blatant fact is only putting the people in a desperation frenzy, going back and forth between one wing of the duopoly and the other as both inevitably let them down; or leaving politics altogether; or trying to get behind another capitalist shill third party like the Forward Party.
If the politician is a perpetual fuck-up, then people are soon not going to care that they are Democrats, or what their talk happens to be. And the more both wings of the duopoly go out of their way to keep third party candidates out of the debates and off the state ballots, the more suspect they will be.
A Few More Important Things You Need to Think About
Okay, so you’re continuing to tell us that we need to vote for the Democrats. And proclaiming that you’re still going to vote for them. It’s just pragmatic, you say. We’ve gotta keep Trump out at any cost, you insist.
This means that you are necessarily arguing that the following things do not matter:
Biden and his Dem cohorts have lied about numerous things, and broken numerous promises. They have blatantly lied about Biden’s cognitive decline for the past few years. They are still pushing him as the primary nominee, and in fact the DNC officially pre-selected him as the nominee by announcing they aren’t even holding a primary this year, thus proving beyond the slightest possibility of doubt that the Dem primaries are just a sham & they do not take Democracy seriously.
What does this tell the public about their credibility? About their commitment to these alleged principles? To the claim that they are ethically better than the Republicans?
By the same token, what does this say about your own credibility and alleged commitment to principle for saying you’re going to support them anyway just to keep out Trump? Or when you go on a pejorative tirade against Trump while giving Biden and Harris a free pass?
They and you are also telling us to do this despite the wars now being pushed in Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, and Lebanon, and the ones being actively provoked against China and Iran. And this despite the billions of dollars being thrown into these wars with none being poured into the working class’s pockets. One of these wars has even been plausibly declared a genocide by the International Court of Justice, and the other has utterly devastated a nation with no end in sight. One of these wars has been plausibly declared a genocide by the International Court of Justice, and other has utterly devastated a nation and its people with no end in sight. Numerous American people are horrified at the U.S. government sabre-rattling with nuclear-armed nations like Russia & China, and enraged at its backing of a lunatic head of state leading an aggressively ethnocentric nation like Israel.
Our lives did not get better under Biden, and in many ways got worse. We are far more terrified of poverty, debt, losing our homes, having to pick & choose between paying the rent & paying for groceries, escalating prices, the commodification of pretty much everything, and our labor’s increasing obsolescence in the face of advancing automation and A.I. than the possibility of the dreaded Trump getting re-elected.
Biden has made it clear that he will do nothing to alleviate this if the gets the oval throne again. So, what the hell is the point of hating Trump so damn much when Biden won’t do a damn thing for us either? You’re making it clear this is all based on emotion and not for any reason connected to demonstrable material reality.
Your claims that the Dems are “better for Democracy” now falls flat since social media makes crystal clear the heavy involvement of the duopoly’s donkey wing in Cancel Culture, unconstitutional DEI initiatives, de-platforming, and the recent legislation attempting to ban TikTok in the USA unless the owning company sells to an America-based corporation that will be easier for AIPAC to control. Not to mention what the Obama and Biden administrations did to Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning for exposing war crimes, and how the Democrat-supporting legacy media fully supported this.
Biden, like Trump, uttered numerous lies during the debate that even the mainstream CBS fact-checked after the fact, since the moderators at the debate didn’t during the event. Which puts paid to the liberal claim that the Orange Guy is the sole serial liar in the pair.
And now there is the matter of running a senile old man for the primary with no opposition from within the party, with not even the facade of a democratic ritual this time around. Just to keep out Trump!
And… you’re telling us that you’re fine with all of the above. That all of the above doesn’t matter. That we should still favor the donkey wing over the elephant wing. That we should not hold the former accountable for this never-ending legion of lies & broken promises, and for never doing a damn thing for us and endangering the entire fucking planet by starting war after war. And, most of all, that we need to stick with the duopoly in general.
Now you know why so many people who are not liberals and dissonants are bowing out of supporting the Dems, and even the system itself.
They know it’s all a game that’s rigged against them even if they have not yet reached the point of accepting that we need a revolution. And the old manipulation tactics are no longer working due to the dire combination of worsening economic conditions; increasing wars alongside nothing beneficial being given to us by the Dems whenever they hold office; and the long reach of social media that prevents only establishment-approved voices from being heard despite their attempts to censor dissident voices.
I am not arguing that the Dems can be “reformed” or pretending that it’s pro-working class, or at least marginally more so than the Republicans blah blah blah. But I do think ya’ll need to heed the above advice of what the Dems would need to do, and what you would need to do, to return a good measure of support for them.
Otherwise, we’re going to get nothing but more worsening conditions for the working class; more destructive wars; more tearing away at what’s left of our Democracy; and more Republican boogeymen waiting in the wings to warm that seat in the Oval Office & to trigger emotional meltdowns in you. And each time that happens, things are going to get more bleak for Democrat support.
I can't say I agree 100% with everything you say, but you do make some good points, especially about identity politics being a toxic zero-sum game, and how war is a racket, as Major General Smedley Butler said nearly 90 years ago.