On the Tell-All Trump Book, the Electoral “Hope,” and Why Leading Democrats Say That They Are on the Same Team as Trump

January 8, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Four Thoughts on the Trump “Tell-All” Book
The Democratic Party Is Telling You to Throw Yourself Into the 2018 Elections If You Really Want to Stop Trump. Before You Do, Check Out How That Worked Out Last Time Around.
Are YOU On The “Same Team” As Trump? Do YOU Want To Find “Ways to Work Together” With Him As He Installs Fascism? This Is What The Top Democrats Say, And Here’s Why.

Four Thoughts on the Trump “Tell-All” Book

January 8, 2018

This week, the publication of excerpts from Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury painted a picture of a White House that was full of chaos and contempt for Donald Trump. A few points here on the book and the fallout:

1.“Tell-all” books—purporting to give the “real, behind-the-scenes” look at palace intrigue—generally focus on gossip and rumor and are notorious for unattributed and/or denied quotes. Those who are quoted are very often trying to maneuver and manipulate within internal power struggles, almost always shading the truth and sometimes just plain inventing. These books are generally not reliable and objective and should not be taken at face value—though they may provide clues to power struggles within an administration.

2.This book does not break anything new. It is not news that Trump is an extremely ignorant and arrogant man who surrounds himself with toadies and backstabbers. On the other hand, it could lend itself to underestimating the danger posed by Trump in particular. Trump has in fact demonstrated tactical skill in the dogfights that go on within the ruling class. He intuited that the straight-up reactionary vision and persona he projects was needed to cohere the base for fascism in this country, and ascended to power on that basis. Notions that Trump is a dummy pure and simple or that the presidency is imploding are dangerous. Fascist regimes generally have their origin in ruling class factions that have not been part of the core establishment and come to power with a necessity and a will to tear apart previous norms and arrangements of ruling. They thus tend to proceed through a certain chaos, incoherence, splits, and improvisation. This one is no different.

Are YOU On The “Same Team” As Trump?

Do YOU Want To Find “Ways to Work Together” With Him As He Installs Fascism?

This Is What The Top Democrats Say, And Here’s Why.

January 5, 2018

The day after Trump was elected president, Barack Obama said that he and Trump were members of the “same team.” He said they were running a “relay race,” and the election was an “intramural scrimmage” to see who could best represent that team. And now that Trump won “we are all rooting for his success.”

Why did Obama say this? And why do Democratic Party leaders like Schumer, Pelosi and “Saint Bernie” Sanders, as well as “flavors of the month” like Doug Jones, keep talking about how they’re willing to work with Trump?

Because they are on the same team. They’re telling the truth about this. It’s one of the rare cases when they do tell the truth. So people need to face what this means—and its implications for society.

First, what team are they talking about? It’s “Team America.” It’s the team made up of those ruling and representing America’s capitalist-imperialist system. Let’s not forget that “Team America” founded itself on the genocide of Native peoples and the enslavement of millions of Black people. Team America to this day has white supremacy, male supremacy, and American global supremacy knitted into its very core—it is a capitalist-imperialist system that cannot do without any of that.

And what kind of “work” is it that they’re talking about doing together? Making sure their “team” and its murderous, oppressive system “succeeds in today’s world.”

The top Democrats do have sharp differences with Trump and the Republicans—but they’re not over how to best serve the interests of humanity; they’re over how to best run their empire and maintain the stability and coherence of their oppressive society at home.

That means that no matter how sharply the Democrats disagree with this or that Trump policy, they are doing so from within that framework. So one of their core goals is keeping people loyal to the “team”—their system and working through its social and political channels.

This is why the only thing you can “rely” on these Democrats for is to keep the struggle within the narrowest possible bounds and to use whatever credibility you lend them to suppress those people who DO take this fascist threat seriously—people who do NOT feel as if they are on the “same team” as people trying to restore open white supremacy, people directly threatening nuclear destruction, people unapologetically bragging about sexual molestation and assault.

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The Democratic Party Is Telling You to Throw Yourself Into the 2018 Elections If You Really Want to Stop Trump.

Before You Do, Check Out How That Worked Out Last Time Around.

January 4, 2018

George W. Bush began his second term as president in 2004. In 2006, as Congressional mid-term elections loomed, millions of people rightly saw the danger presented by the administration of Bush and his partner in crime, Vice President Dick Cheney, and wanted it removed from office.

Among Bush’s crimes:

He seized upon the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to institute the PATRIOT ACT. This law gave extraordinary powers of spying and repression to government agents charged with opposing “terrorism.” It opened the floodgates for virtually unlimited monitoring of electronic communication. It allowed for indefinite detention of immigrants the government accused of terrorism.
Bush invented a new legal status of “enemy combatant,” outside the reach of the regular legal system. As one of his legal advisors put it, this allowed the U.S. to detain people not because they were criminals, but because they were said to be the “enemy.” Bush’s administration used and oversaw torture against many of the people it labeled “enemy combatants.”
Bush set up a special program, National Security Entry-Exits System (NSEERS) to fingerprint, interrogate, photograph, and register as “terrorist suspects” males over 16 from 25 countries, all but one of which have Islam as the dominant religion. About 140,000 people were placed in NSEERS, and over 13,000 of them were put in deportation proceedings. None of them was charged with a criminal offense.
Bush then moved to launch a massive and utterly unjust war against Iraq which resulted in the deaths of over a million people. This war has indirectly led to horrendous suffering throughout the Middle East, and actually further propelled the growth of Islamic fundamentalist jihadism.
Bush callously left people in New Orleans, a majority of them Black, to suffer from Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,800 men, women and children died needlessly—abandoned in a devastated, flooded city and region, left for days without food, water, or medical supplies while the world watched in horror.
Bush promoted Christian fascism and hammered at the boundaries between church and state. All that and more.

Millions of people were sickened and angry at this. They were told to vote for the Democrats as the way to stop all these horrors, and they did.

So what happened?