Reap the Whirlwind

Ross Wolfe on the left delusions in USA

Left-lib­er­al “pro­gress­ives” did this to them­selves. This is ex­actly what re­treat­ing in­to cul­tur­al (i.e., iden­tity) polit­ics, while abandon­ing class as the basis for a so­cially trans­form­at­ive co­ali­tion, gets you. If you make no at­tempt to ap­peal to work­ers qua work­ers, the Right will in­ev­it­ably make in­roads with­in that group. [perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]If you make no at­tempt to ap­peal to work­ers qua work­ers, the Right will in­ev­it­ably make in­roads with­in that group.[/perfectpullquote]

As they in­deed have. So I don’t pity any­one who is ser­i­ously dis­traught by these res­ults. Blame for Trump can­not be laid solely at the door­step of “crack­ers” and hicks; he did sig­ni­fic­antly bet­ter among blacks and Lati­nos than Rom­ney, his Re­pub­lic­an pre­de­cessor.

Most anti-af­firm­at­ive ac­tion shit is totally right-wing, so I will be­gin by say­ing that I in no way share the polit­ics of most people who look to cri­ti­cize it. But it’s ul­ti­mately a cos­met­ic meas­ure, which cre­ates a black and minor­ity bour­geois­ie and polit­ic­al elite (“black faces in high places,” etc.). When coupled with gen­er­al eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion and wage de­pres­sion, grow­ing in­come in­equal­ity and job loss, it’s a re­cipe for ‘re­vanchist’ ma­jor­it­ari­an back­lash. Edu­cated lib­er­al elites ex­pressed noth­ing but con­tempt for the work­ing poor in “fly­-over” coun­try, whom they vil­i­fied as “one re­ac­tion­ary mass” — i.e., a “bas­ket of de­plor­ables” — of ig­nor­ant ra­cists.

In such an at­mo­sphere, even the slight­est over­ture to the work­ing class was bound to res­on­ate enorm­ously. Here, of course, the ap­peal was made us­ing xeno­phobic and hate­ful rhet­or­ic, ex­ploit­ing long­stand­ing ra­cial di­vi­sions and cap­it­al­iz­ing on deeply-felt anxi­et­ies. Plus, the lack of any ap­peal to the work­ing class by the Demo­crats also meant that poor minor­it­ies were not en­er­gized to vote for them. Smug, latte-sip­ping lib­er­als just res­ted on their laurels, se­cure in their be­lief that vic­tory was as­sured by simple demo­graph­ic shifts. All this while of­fer­ing noth­ing to work­ing blacks or Lati­nos, and prom­ising con­tin­ued war on those parts of the globe from which the refugee crisis first arose.

Feel­ing bad for my all my com­rades in Flor­ida, Michigan, Ohio, Ari­zona, and North Car­o­lina right now, who will in­ev­it­ably be blamed for God-Em­per­or Trump. This dra­mat­ic de­feat really can’t be chalked up to swing state voters, however. Her fate was sealed the mo­ment she was nom­in­ated in Au­gust. Clin­ton’s cam­paign had the air of a coron­a­tion from the start, des­pite al­most los­ing her pre­destined status as party nom­in­ee to a ram­bling old man (and self-pro­claimed so­cial­ist) who no one even heard of be­fore sum­mer 2015. Now it was #Her­Turn; the DNC saw to that.

Not gonna lie: the Schaden­freude of watch­ing all the Hil­lary sup­port­ers cry­ing at her planned cel­eb­ra­tion party was pretty ex­hil­ar­at­ing. It al­most ap­proached the Kan­tian dy­nam­ic sub­lime, in the strict sense of the term — tfw there are forces swirling all around you that could crush you like a bug, but you’re sus­pen­ded in it, and can feel its awe­some majesty. See­ing her long-held pres­id­en­tial am­bi­tions crushed by a blither­ing buf­foon who re­sembles a Chee­to felt like a mor­bid, dizzying, asymp­tot­ic as­cent. Fuck­ing hil­ari­ous. Peals of laughter be­fore the void.

Won­der if we will see any buy­er’s re­morse from the mem­bers of the In­ter­na­tion­al So­cial­ist Or­gan­iz­a­tion who voted in fa­vor of Jill Stein’s mys­tic heal­ing crys­tals. Such Wed­nes­day-morn­ing elec­tion­eer­ing is mis­placed, however, as she wasn’t even a round­ing er­ror in many of the places that Trump won. And John­son siphoned off more Re­pub­lic­an votes from Trump than Stein took Demo­crat­ic voters away from Clin­ton, any­how. Demo­crats still haven’t ex­or­cised the ghost of Nader from 2000, and are still try­ing find any ex­cuse not to look them­selves in the mir­ror.

Van Jones even continued to whip up Mc­Carthy­ite para­noia late last night with his sug­ges­tion that Putin some­how rigged the elec­tion. Trump is just a Rus­si­an pup­pet or stooge, Van Jones in­sisted, a Man­churi­an can­did­ate. He was the op­pon­ent the Demo­crats wanted from the start, though. They used all their me­dia con­tacts to cyn­ic­ally pro­mote Trump’s “Pied Piper” can­did­acy, fan­ning the flames of hate, so that Amer­ic­ans could wake up the next morn­ing the day after the elec­tion con­grat­u­lat­ing them­selves that as aw­ful as Hil­lary was, at least that guy wasn’t go­ing to be pres­id­ent.

Well guess what… You reap what you sow.

Re­gard­less, any ef­fort to or­gan­ize mov­ing for­ward will have to res­ist the tempta­tion to re­build from with­in the Demo­crat­ic Party, which for more than fifty years has been called, with some justice, “the grave­yard of all so­cial move­ments.” The biggest obstacle to real polit­ic­al or­gan­iz­a­tion in the United States since the De­pres­sion has al­ways been the Demo­crats.

I close with these im­mor­tal lines from Marx and En­gels:

Even where there is no pro­spect of achiev­ing their elec­tion the work­ers must put up their own can­did­ates to pre­serve their in­de­pend­ence, to gauge their own strength and to bring their re­volu­tion­ary po­s­i­tion and party stand­point to pub­lic at­ten­tion. They must not be led astray by the empty phrases of the demo­crats, who will main­tain that the work­ers’ can­did­ates will split the demo­crat­ic party and of­fer the forces of re­ac­tion the chance of vic­tory. All such talk means, in the fi­nal ana­lys­is, that the pro­let­ari­at is to be swindled. The pro­gress which the pro­let­ari­an party will make by op­er­at­ing in­de­pend­ently in this way is in­fin­itely more im­port­ant than the dis­ad­vant­ages res­ult­ing from the pres­ence of a few re­ac­tion­ar­ies in the rep­res­ent­at­ive body.