Donald Trump. Photo: Gage Skidmore.
Trump isn’t the real problem. He’s a diversion. The U.S. system of monopoly capital on steroids is the real issue. Trump is just the vessel that’s exposing the system’s contradictions and the facade of a “democracy” presented to the world.
If not Trump, another master manipulator would have come out of the woodwork sooner or later on the historical stage. American monopoly capital on steroids has no checks and balances to capital accumulation, and concentration of, and abuse of power.
The ongoing war of words between Trump’s GOP and the Democrats is a civil war within the ruling class. Two teams wearing different uniforms but engaged in the same game of deception. The Republicans don’t pretend about their politics. It’s every person for himself and herself. Maximum accumulation of wealth and profit is number one priority–at any and all cost. The environment be damned. Historically marginalized social classes be damned. Let the future worry about the future.
Democrats think the system can work. It just needs better managers. People who are “less corrupt,” “less greedy,” “non-racialist,” and “more compassionate.” In other words, Democrats. There is no need to tinker with the system that allows those who have inherited inter-generational wealth–Democrats and Republicans and mostly European Americans–to maintain their dominant position. There is just need to have more humane managers in power.
There is no need for massive transfer of wealth to the working underclass–African Americans, Latinos, and poor European Americans. There is no need for special wealth transfer in the form of Reparations to descendants of formerly enslaved Africans who created the wealth that allowed the United States to become an industrial power.
Everyone just needs access to “opportunities” which will spring up magically once better managers–Democrats–are in power. So the ruling class, the maximum accumulators, Democrats and Republicans, go through “election” cycles every four years.
Generally the individuals able to raise the most money and to sell their messages to the public in the form of soundbites and catchy phrases–the 21st century version of opiate to the masses–are elected to the presidency and Congress. Is this really democracy? The contestants know it’s an ugly display of money talking, pure hypocrisy, but they have to maintain the fiction. Then comes a crude contestant like Donald Trump.
Trump says: “We are all racists. We all want maximum accumulation. Europeans have always dominated this country. Let’s keep non-Europeans at bay. Let’s build a wall. Let’s keep the workers and impoverished at bay. Elect me president.”
He’s elected president and there is shock in certain circles. But why?
He escalates his crude display for four years at the helm. He loses this time but still gets more than 72 million votes, which is hardly a repudiation. Trump is no different than most of the other participants. He is just blunt and crude.
It’s not as if Democrats haven’t held power. Out of the 45 presidential terms–with some serving more than one term–Republicans have held the White House 19 times and Democrats 14 times.
So why is it that 243 years after the nation’s founding, African Americans are still at the lowest rungs of the socio-economic ladder? Why is that African Americans are still routinely murdered by police forces–enforcers of the status quo? Was George Floyd the first victim of extrajudicial execution by an officer of law enforcement? Why is that there has been no Reparations for descendants of formerly enslaved?
Under the existing system wealth and power continues to be concentrated within an ever shrinking margin within the dominant class comprising Republicans and Democrats. As the timeless saying goes, when elephants fight it’s the grass that suffers. The workers who have no power bear the brunt of the suffering. They are the ones at the lowest economic rungs.
Every four years the ruling elite disseminate their false promises and contest for votes. Yes, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are better human beings than Donald Trump and Mike Pence. Yet, it is the system that needs to be addressed, not Donald Trump. He will fade from the historical stage. Others will appear.
The charade will continue.
