Distractions

For many in the US and Europe, a cynical call for violence posturing as the wrath of the righteous will readily produce a distraction from the urgent issues of our time. Judging by the initial protests of last Friday’s Trump/May/Macron aggression against Syria, far too many have fallen for this hypocritical, dishonest maneuver.

For Theresa May, Conservative UK prime minister, an attack on Syria promises to add to her effort to claw back from the disastrous Brexit vote that wounded her party. Anti-Russia hysteria, unprincipled charges of anti-Semitism lodged against Labour opponent Jeremy Corbyn, and now a missile-administered scolding of Syria’s president, Assad, help her in the polls or, at least, that’s her calculation.

Early in March, Emmanuel Macron’s poll numbers sank to the lowest level since his election. His ongoing attack on French workers and his enthusiasm for bombing Syria are meant to bolster his “tough guy” image. Like May, Macron has little else but austerity to offer workers; hence, manufacturing threats promises to distract.

Trump’s approval rate has taken a nose dive in recent weeks as well. Battered from all sides, Trump needed some love from the war hawks populating both parties. A muscular move against Assad would also signal Trump’s defiance of Putin, the alleged “devil’s handmaiden.”

Of course that didn’t win over the MSNBC/NPR/CNN crowd, the Democrats’ über alles. Schumer and Pelosi saw the trap: the choice between praising Trump for his attack on Syria or rejecting aggression. They, along with most other elected Democrats, performed an exercise of Clintonian triangulation: ‘we want to hit Assad more than anyone, but Trump should have allowed us to call for military action.’

For MSNBC’s Trump-reviling star, Rachel Maddow, Trump bombed Syria for the wrong reasons-- a case of “wagging the dog”-- hoping to distract critics from his domestic problems. She badgers her war-hawk guests to agree that Trump’s war on Assad was not authentic. Implicit is the notion that Trump could have established more credibility by raining greater death and destruction and further baiting the Russian bear.

Easy distraction has led apparently sober, morally-grounded people to overlook the telling coincidence of an alleged outrageous gas attack with the imminent defeat of the so-called rebels in Douma. They see no suspicious connection between Trump’s surprising announcement of US troop withdrawals and a provocation to revoke that decision. And they see no distraction from the contemporaneous cross-border slaughter of unarmed Palestinians by the Israeli military.

They see no calculation in scheduling the bombardment of Syria on Friday, the day before the arrival of the investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) who might bring some light to the charges of chemical weapons’ use. And they are too distracted to be puzzled by the US military plan to destroy the facilities alleged to contain deadly gases and consequently risk harming innocent Syrian civilians.

Never mind that the US and its allies could rely upon no more than cell phone pictures and telephone interviews (so called “public source” information) to evidence the claims of a gas attack. It’s an astonishing fact that even though the “rebels” are supposedly democratically-minded allies who welcome CIA aid, no Western news service dares to actively cover their side by employing reporters on the ground. This has been the case with the US’s Islamic fundamentalist allies since CBS’s Dan Rather faked a visit to Afghanistan decades ago. The commitment of “freedom fighters” to “freedom of the press” seems to be wanting.

Oddly enough, the “authoritarian” Assad government welcomes Western journalists, though they-- excepting a CBS news reporter-- prefer the friendly confines of hotels in Beirut, Ankara, and Amman where they have easy access to press releases from the US embassy.

An affinity for distraction leads very many major media corporations to place complete, unthinking trust in UK-based reportage from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It goes unnoted that the Observatory is a one-man show performed by an Assad-hating shopkeeper in Coventry who refuses to share his methodology, but admits to relying on his friends and acquaintances in Syria. Amnesty International, with its usual smug casuistry, judges the Observatory to be reliable, though it bases its evaluation on the same indirect, patchy evidence.

Anywhere but in Syria, these claims, based on second- and third-hand reports, anecdotes, and social media, would fail any and all journalistic smell tests. Imagine NBC News basing coverage of violence in Chicago on the network of contacts of an amateur sleuth in San Francisco.

Film critic Louis Proyect interjects, in an oddly timed article on Counterpunch, that a website dubbed Bellingcat “is perhaps the only place where you can find fact-based reporting on chemical attacks in Syria.” A quick look at the website will reveal some more UK-based amateur sleuths assembling second- and third-hand accounts and social media reports.

True to his film critic credentials, he likens the Syrian “rebels” to “the Arab version of John Steinbeck’s Joad family,” a bizarre innocuousness for the Douma-based, brutal Jaysh al-Islam that former Secretary of State John Kerry once characterized as a sub-group of ISIL. Promptly, the Obama administration was forced to “correct” Kerry, who was ignorant of the head-choppers’ rehabilitation.

Proyect chose the exact moment-- when the honest left was scrambling to mount some public opposition to war on Syria-- to attack the left for its skepticism of the official account, an historically justifiable skepticism given such devastatingly consequential deceptions as the Tonkin Gulf resolution and the 2003 weapons-of-mass-destruction fiasco. The military and the security services lie. Skepticism is the only antidote to gullibility.

The one NGO that actually claims direct reportage in Syria, the opposition-based Violations Documentation Center in Syria (VDC) has had its Douma office attacked numerous times by Jaysh al-Islam, forcing its active reporters out of the area.

Unmentioned by the tunnel-vision media, strong circumstantial evidence, Red Crescent confirmation, Kurdish accusations, and a near self-confession has pointed to Jaysh al-Islam employing chlorine gas in April of 2016.

In our era of Entertainment-Tonight-style distractions, of Trump’s sex life, of twitter-duels, of anonymous sources and calculated leaks, a principled, wise statement is a rare and welcome event. Tulsi Gabbard, the Representative from Hawaii addressed Trump with the following:

The people of Syria want peace more than anything else in the world. Attacking Syria will not bring their war-torn country any closer to peace. U.S. military action against Syria will simply escalate and prolong the war, resulting in more senseless death, destruction, and suffering...

If you are truly concerned about the suffering of the Syrian people, then you must do all you can to bring about peace. A US military attack against Syria will expand and escalate this war, increasing their suffering and causing more death, more refugees, and fewer resources to invest in rebuilding our own communities right here at home…

I call upon you to resist the loud calls of war and instead wield the power of the Presidency to help bring peace to the people of Syria, their devastated country, and the region.

Gabbard’s appeal is a stroke of sanity and maturity in a frightening rush to war lubricated by an unprecedented campaign of mass distraction, by the marketing of a Marvel-comic foreign policy.

Greg Godels 
zzsblogml@gmail.com

The Sun Setting on the Empire

“History is full of examples of politico-economic elites who equate any challenge to their privileged social order as a challenge to all social order, an invitation to chaos and perdition…” The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti
 
For Donald Trump, Parenti’s insight is emphatically and relentlessly demonstrated. The months since Trump’s inauguration have brought a ceaseless attack from his political adversaries. More significantly, a broad section of the ruling class has unleashed the barking dogs of the media and pressed the military and the security services to guide Trump back to the aptly named ‘swamp,’ the morass of mainstream politics. The rulers saw “chaos and perdition” in the Trump electoral campaign and the first period of his administration.

Trump constituted a challenge for two reasons: first, he threatened to engage a neo-isolationist foreign policy that violates a broad consensus established since the demise of the Soviet Union, a consensus that unites US triumphalism (Reagan, the Bushes) with the “humanitarian” interventionism of the New Democrats (Clinton, Obama). Differences apart, both doctrines spring from the idea that, in the absence of a counterforce like the Soviet Union, the US claims the right or the duty to construct the world in its own image. Each political doctrine may draw upon a different set of guiding principles, but both come to the same conclusion. Both embrace the notion that the US is and must be the dominant and decisive global power. When the humbuggery is sheared away, both are committed to continuing the US position as the top imperialist power -- by force, if necessary.

Trump presents a problem because he brings a businessman’s disposition to outwit an opponent with his cleverness and bluff. Lacking political experience and any abiding principles, President Trump saw foreign military entanglements and military alliances (NATO) as costly impediments to business arrangements. Capitalist Russia, for example, offers numerous business opportunities, especially in the energy sector. His Secretary of State, Tillerson, was desirous of these arrangements while leading Exxon. From a real estate developer’s perspective, the carefully constructed ideological apparatus of human rights, civil society, and US-approved democracy is simply unnecessary baggage. Instead, Trump saw every world leader, every government as a potential bargaining agent.

Of course, monopoly capital does not share the perspective of the petty bourgeois businessman, the boisterous, glad-handing developer. Corporate internationalism is the mindset of monopoly capital; isolation is the mindset of the small businessman.

Trump found himself on the wrong side of that fence.

Second, the US ruling class cares deeply for the image of the chief executive of the state. Protecting and preserving the mythology of the Presidency is a very high order of business. And tarnishing that image is not soon forgiven. Trump’s vulgarity and his utter contempt for long established patterns of acceptable behavior have brought forth a hailstorm of scorn and ridicule. Newsreaders and entertainers across the narrow political spectrum deride the haircut, the physical features, the body language, and all other conduct of President Trump. Trump, the celebrity, could be as tawdry as he liked; but Trump, the President, is, hypocritically, held to higher standards.

When Nixon went off the rails and discredited the Presidency, the same hailstorm befell him. After Gerald Ford bungled through Nixon’s post-resignation years, the ruling class found a gee-whiz peanut farmer, a born-again Southerner to whitewash the stained Presidency. Avuncular Jimmy Carter was the perfect answer to the Nixon criminality.

Similarly, the bungled wars and economic collapse plaguing the George W Bush administration required a fix. That fix was the youth, the vigor, the clean-image, and the originality of the first African American President, Barack Obama. The burnishing of the Presidential image was so successful that Barack Obama astonishingly received the Nobel Peace Prize less than ten months after his inauguration.

Trump threatens that image once again.
                                   Outfoxing Fox  

The media campaign against Trump has reached hysterical proportions. With Fox News on the ropes from the loss or damaging of prominent hosts and with their leading lights caught in a cesspool of sexual harassment, their media competitors leaped at the chance to exploit Fox’s vulnerability. As the voice of the right, Fox News was compelled to mount a reluctant defense of the Trump Administration.

Virtually every competing monopoly media corporation saw an opportunity to gain in influence from Fox’s weakness, launching virulent and relentless attacks on Trump. Moreover, the security services fed the media appetizing and suggestive leaks which the media hungrily and uncritically passed on to the public. Daily stories-- multiple stories-- recounted Trumpian flaws, from etiquette to criminal plotting with Russians. Every day brings new innuendo, new sensationalism. Given that the media and the security services are speaking nearly entirely with one voice, given that little or no real evidence has been produced in support of any but the most trivial charge, many have characterized the campaign as a witch hunt.

Thanks to the anti-Trump blitz, Fox News has been put in its place. The mainstream or “liberal” media has enjoyed a ratings surge. MSNBC and its leading witch hunter, Rachel Maddow, have leaped forward dramatically. Lest someone believe that the corporate entertainment/news monopolies are trouncing Trump out of public service, he or she should be reminded of the revealing statement that CBS CEO Leslie Moonves said during the primary campaign: "It May Not Be Good for America, but It's Damn Good for CBS." It’s still about the money.

It’s a fascinating irony that Fox News is now being hoisted by its own petard. The competitive monopoly media are now engaging in the same scurrilous innuendo, sensationalism, and abuse of truth that enabled Fox News to arrive at the top of the media ladder. It was a President-- Bill Clinton-- whose peccadilloes served as the fodder for the rise of Fox News; it is still another President-- Donald Trump-- whose vulnerabilities are bringing it down. Whitewater, Vince Foster, Kenyan birth certificates, and now Russian infamy: no boundary exists between news and entertainment.

And the security services are feeding the frenzy, from the unconvincingly self-righteous FBI director Comey to the devious ex-CIA director Brennan. Once, during the era of the infamous J. Edgar Hoover and his CIA counterparts, leaks and political meddling were selective and surreptitious in order to maintain the shiny image of agencies free of politics and dedicated to collecting facts. Today’s security agencies leak like sieves and brazenly intervene in political life. Comey’s schizophrenia-- vindicating Clinton, then accusing Clinton, and then stalking Trump-- can only be interpreted as the moves of a consummate political opportunist seeking a prosecutorial home run. But the liberal pundits have elevated him to the level of a civil rights icon.

Should anyone think that the recent rebuff of the US security agencies by the UK government was simply over leaking details of the Manchester tragedy, think again. The UK government is registering its alarm over the promiscuous intelligence leakage in the US and its future threat to all aspects of confidentiality.

In some circles, the growth of interventions by the security agencies in political life has suggested the existence of a “deep state.” While this makes for a catchy, popular expression for their machinations, it is somewhat misleading, suggesting a group of renegade or rogue bureaucrats operating independently of entrenched power or wealth. In fact, the security agencies work in full agreement with the historic centers of power, the ruling class. They are, as they always have been, the vital arms of the ruling class. Certainly, there are no alarms coming from corporate centers, monopoly capital, or their hired intellectuals rejecting the meddling of the security agencies. The assault on Trump is an assault on Trump’s policies fully authorized by the ruling class and aimed at bringing him back onto the reservation.

                     La Trahison des Clercs Libérals

Ninety years ago, Julien Benda wrote a book, La Trahison des Clercs, excoriating the intellectuals of his day for their hypocrisy, their venality, and their spinelessness. Today’s liberal intellectuals fall below the low bar set by Benda. Russia-baiting and Putin-hating have become a national pastime with little or no reason to justify their toxic spread. With a few notable exceptions, no public intellectual with any important influence has challenged the relentless charges and rumors piling up. With a few notable exceptions, no public intellectual has acknowledged that most of the “suspicious” interactions or political interventions alleged of Russia are common with most of the US allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, or the UK; influence is the bourgeois lubricant for diplomacy. With a few notable exceptions, no public intellectual has noted that the US has, on numerous occasions, exercised massive, decisive influence over the political processes of other countries, from the first days of the CIA (the Italian elections of 1948) to the CIA intervention in the 2012 French elections or its role in the 2014 coup in Ukraine.

The silence of liberals in the midst of unsubstantiated allegations, rumors, and leaks attacking their political adversaries shatters their self-righteous embrace of fair play. The liberal virtues of suspended judgement and deliberate procedure apparently only apply when it is convenient. By failing to challenge the rampant leaks, liberals also fail to challenge the ubiquitous surveillance that could alone serve as the source for the information passed on by unnamed officials.

Reviewing books on Bill Clinton for The New York Review of Books (6-8-17), liberal professor Christopher Lehmann recalls the regrettable time when “Whitewater and what it led to was perfectly suited to several aspects of Washington culture, including Congress’s love of showy investigations, the rise of cable news, and conservative institutions’ need for a target…” It’s a pity that he and his liberal colleagues can’t see the parallel of endless Congressional fishing expeditions, a brutal cable television war, and the Democratic Party’s need for an easy target.

As in the Cold War, the spinelessness of the liberals opens the door to a new McCarthyism that distracts most US citizens from their real and worsening problems. Finding imaginary enemies, whether they are Reds under beds or inquisitive Russian diplomats, is an old, but trustworthy tactic to deflect attention from real and ominous issues.

“They have yet to consider that republicanism might largely be a cloak for oligarchic privilege… worn grudgingly by the elites as long as it proved serviceable to their interests.” The Assassination of Julius Caesar, Michael Parenti

The Trump legitimacy crisis signals the continuing deterioration of the US political system. With every election, voter dissatisfaction expresses itself more dramatically and more desperately. Oligarchs try ardently to channel public anger and discontent toward acceptable targets. They seek to contrive diversionary issues; they manufacture fears; and they unveil fresh faces.

Obama was thrust into the breach precisely to contain the aftermath of an ineffective, inept Bush administration and dissipate the anger from endless wars and economic collapse.

In 2016, voters turned their backs on ruling class electoral machinations. They rejected the unappetizing Republican primary candidates preferred by the oligarchs and choose the renegade Trump. They also rejected the anointed Democratic Party candidate Clinton for social democrat Bernie Sanders, but the undemocratic leaders of the Democratic Party refused to accept that outcome. Nevertheless, candidate Clinton was defeated in the general election by Trump. Now the ruling class is trying to discipline Trump.

The “cloak” of US republicanism is now transparently a garment serving the interest of the ruling class. As the media and the security services scramble to legitimize the political system, more and more people are looking for new answers, answers that are outside of the usual two-party circus.

The capitalist US, like the Roman Empire chronicled by Michael Parenti, is entering its twilight phase, wracked by unwinnable wars, chronic economic crisis, and prosperity as a mere memory for many. The search for a new road has become urgent.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Tutoring Trump

After agreeing that the US attack upon a Syrian air force base constituted a violation of international law, a violation of Syrian sovereignty, an Ivy League law professor told NPR that he believes that the premeditated strike was justified nonetheless. The professor likened it to running a stop sign or a stop light in an emergency.

This is the level of tortured hypocrisy to which US intellectual elites have sunk.

Across the corporate media spectrum similar irresponsible “justifications” dominate the conversation, including from the center left. Some, like the once discredited, but still indulged, Brian Williams of MSNBC, border on the crazed, invoking songster Leonard Cohen to marvel at the “beautiful” cruise missile launches.

Within the two-party political circle, a similar consensus welcomes or approves the missile attack. The corporate Republican leadership, including Senate leader McConnell and House leader Ryan, join the corporate Democratic leaders, Senator Schumer and Senator Feinstein, in their approval. Senate hawks McCain, Graham, and Rubio, who had earlier criticisms of Trump, hail the attack. McCain saw Trump’s leadership of the aggression as “presidential.”  

This sounds eerily like the drumbeat accompanying previous US aggressions against countries that refuse to honor the imperial playbook. An equally ready consensus emerged with recent US military violations of sovereignty in the former Yugoslavia, in Iraq, and in Libya, not to mention numerous uninvited covert actions throughout the world.

The Sales Effort

Sadly, the US establishment has succeeded in selling aggression as “humanitarian intervention,” the modern equivalent of nineteenth-century “civilizing the savages.” As this selling job has gotten more sophisticated and the perpetrators have grown more successful, the need for allies has declined. The US used the UN as a cover after the demise of the Soviet Union; it contrived a “coalition of the willing” to mask aggression in the Middle East; and it hid behind the NATO shield in recent years. Today, it acts unilaterally, brazenly.

Making full use of the compliant corporate media, naive human rights organizations, and corporate and government-funded NGOs, imperialism relies upon opportune “incidents” that cry out for sympathy and prompt a call for action.

Of course, provocation is not really a new ploy. It has been part of the imperialist tool box since the dawn of empire. The US introduction to contrived provocation coincided with its entry into imperialist competition: the sinking of the battleship Maine. With the help of Hearst and Pulitzer, icons of US journalism, the incident “justified” the US military embarking on a colonial mission against Spain.

More recently, the phony Tonkin Bay incident notoriously served to gather public opinion behind a massive escalation of the war against Vietnam.

And of course, there was the “weapons of mass destruction” hoax that, thanks to the media frenzy generated by Judith Miller, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, led to war and the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

In the post-Soviet era, “humanitarian intervention” replaced imperialism’s Cold War strategy of fighting national liberation under the banner of “anti-Communism.” Today, US imperialism uses a multi-faceted approach: subversion, covert support for discontented “democrats” and surrogate “freedom fighters,” and naked intervention.

The corporate media is only too happy to fan the flames, shamelessly turning national leaders into “brutal dictators” regardless of the frequency of elections or their apparent legitimacy. That same media instantly converts religious zealots into righteous democrats and neo-Nazis into human rights activists. Any country that strengthens its military against threats of imperialist intervention becomes a threat to its neighbors or dangerous aggressors. And imperialist military maneuvers or buildups are merely responses to belligerency. All that is needed beyond the propaganda campaign is a provocation to spark a policy shift or military adventure.

Strike the Match!

Two recent events--the death of Kim Jong-nam and the alleged gas attack on a Syrian village--have disrupted processes that had promised to lower international tensions, derail the prospects of further conflict, and disrupt imperialist plans. One process held out hope that US-DPRK relations would improve, opening the door to reconciliation on the Korean peninsula. The other offered an early end to the war devastating Syria and its people.

Both processes were interrupted in a manner that should generate doubt and suspicion on the part of any reasonable person. Both processes were thwarted by “incidents” or provocations that were instantly inflated and characterized by a corporate media that follow a line uncannily identical with that crafted by imperialism.

In February, Kim Jong-nam died under suspicious circumstances in an airport in Malaysia. Kim traveled on a DPRK passport and was purportedly the half-brother of Kim Jong-il, the leader of DPRK. Immediately, a narrative circulated in the Western press that attributed the death to agents of the DPRK. Because of the haste in reporting the conspiracy, parts of the narrative had to be replaced, patched, or modified as questions arose. No independent investigation was permitted; nor was the DPRK allowed access or possession of the body of its national until much later. Questions arose over why security agencies of the ROK were engaged at the onset of the incident. And clear indications of KCIA invention loomed over the most glaring discrepancies in the story.

But most telling were the circumstances. The President of the ROK, Park Geun-hye, an anti-DPRK hardliner and US puppet, was about to be removed from office because of corruption and massive demonstrations for her impeachment in response to that corruption. Waiting in the wings was the likely new leader, an opposition politician known for his commitment to steps toward reconciliation with the DPRK. Few US citizens knew of the large southern Korean reconciliation movement because of the veritable news blackout of anything placing DPRK in a favorable light.

At the same time, a hysterical media campaign was popularizing the “North Korean military threat” and the US was rushing its sophisticated THAAD missile system to the ROK, a direct provocation of the DPRK and the PRC. The US moved quickly to take advantage of Park’s waning days and the impolitic of removing the missiles once they were there. The Kim affair conveniently added to the argument that the DPRK could not be trusted, part of a blatant effort to thwart any attempt at North/South reconciliation.

More recently, the alleged gas attack in Syria occurred in the midst of considerable hope that the war would be coming to a close. Assad and his allies had turned the war against the US, Salafist, and Turkish-sponsored opposition as well as their mercenaries. The Trump administration made noises about accepting Assad’s continued governance in Syria. Peace talks were continuing amidst renewed hopes and there was an air of optimism about forthcoming talks between the Trump administration and the Russians.

But since the first of the year, a campaign had been waging against elements of the foreign policy of the Trump administration. Charges of unsavory contacts with Russia took on a relentless public life, spread by political foes and the media, and fueled by carefully placed leaks and innuendo by the security services. Despite little evidence of anything out of the ordinary or seriously compromising, the association of Trump with Russian machinations quickly reached hysterical proportions. What began as a diversion from the exposed chicanery and electoral failure of the Democratic Party gathered momentum and transformed into a broad attack on Trump’s deviations from the ruling class playbook. The Russia-baiting was served up to discredit Trump’s renegade isolationist, America First policy. Trump had drifted off the reservation with his hands-off foreign policy, his live-and-let-live approach to Russia, Syria, and the DPRK.

To get him back on the reservation a provocation was needed. It was found or contrived with the alleged Syrian government gas attack on civilians.

The Soft Coup

Whatever really happened in the village in Syria will likely never be known. Like the death of Kim in Malaysia, any hope of an objective investigation has passed with the politically charged rush to judgement on the part of Western leaders and their media shills. Truth was a victim of opportunity. Both events, as depicted in the Western media, were better seen as carefully crafted, politically useful theater than as part of the fabric of reality.

The last glimmer of truth-based journalism disappeared from the corporate media when the work of the US’s greatest investigative journalist was exiled. Since 2015, when Seymour Hersh’s article on Syria could find no US publisher inclined to publish it, US mainstream international reporting has been universally politically motivated, tainted by bias, and, frankly, ignorant. Hersh was celebrated when he exposed the crimes of My Lai or Abu Ghraib, but he is no longer wanted when he dares to question today’s foreign policy consensus. One finds more truth in celebrity gossip reporting than in international reporting datelined from a comfortable foreign city with a media-friendly US embassy available.

The upshot of a lapdog media is the readiness of media puppies to do their master’s bidding.

Since Trump’s election, the media has once again served loyally as the instrument of the US ruling class. It should be no secret that all of the candidates but Trump were carefully vetted by that same ruling class; while they all played different hands, they recognized the same rules. Trump did not always play by those rules, he didn’t play nice, and he had some outlier ideas. And the media has set out to punish him for his audacity.

With his victory, alarms went off. Plans were hatched to force Trump back in line. The security services and the corporate media collaborated to realize those plans. With ruling class fear of a measured position on Russia, a tale of intrigue and secret plotting was created out of whole cloth. The old Russian bear-baiting strategy was brought out of retirement and the game was on!

The war rages in the Trump administration between those who cling to the isolationist position promised in Trump’s campaign and those who urge him to return to the reservation and embrace the ruling class line of belligerence towards Russia and the stoking of aggression in the Middle East and Asia. Clearly, the purge of Flynn and the removal of Bannon from the National Security Council paved the way for the attack on Syria and the saber-rattling in and near the Korean peninsula. For the moment, the corporate, establishment faction has the upper hand. Son-in-law Jared Kushner, trusted military advisor H. R. McMaster, and reliable corporate boss, Gary Cohn, former president and COO of Goldman Sachs, appear to be steering Trump back to the ruling class mainstream and away from a sane foreign policy.

The retreat from sanity owes much to US liberal elites who shamefully stoked and continue to stoke the anti-Russia hysteria that presses Trump to attack Syria. As the PRC news service, Xinhua, noted, the attack on Syria was meant to send the message that Trump’s administration was not “pro-Russia”.

How the battle will conclude is unsure. Rumors abound that Trump will exile Bannon (and Priebus) and put Goldman Sach’s Cohn in charge at the White House. That would constitute a solid victory for the ruling class-- ironically, for the policies of Hillary Clinton. Given that businessman Trump has no principles-- only ambition-- that is not an unlikely outcome.

Through the turmoil of the last few months, a soft coup has been unleashed, a coup meant to bring Trump back in line with the ruling class foreign policy consensus, an imperialist game plan. In the waning days of his administration, Barack Obama acknowledged this game plan. He noted the intense pressures from the ”humanitarian interventionists” and their dominance among the foreign policy establishment. They don’t wear the badges “liberal” or “conservative.” Nor do they owe allegiance to “Republican” or “Democrat.” Rather they represent a ruling class consensus.

While some leeway in execution is permitted, the goals are non-negotiable. Trump threatened to modify those goals. He is being schooled in the rules.

A Sober Reflection on Trumpism?

Tracking Trump

The 2016 election taught many lessons, few of which have penetrated the talking heads of the mainstream media. Most of what we could learn has been lost in the frenzy of the most outrageous political maneuvering witnessed in decades.

One of the more notable lessons is the diminished role of campaign money in determining this Presidential election outcome. Trump spent a third less than Clinton in this election (Washington Post: $932 million versus $1.4 billion). Some have made much of this discrepancy, along with the fact that Trump largely ignored the advice of his hired consultants and advisors. Of course, Clinton’s money actually bought over 3 million more votes in the nationwide count. And the mass media enthusiastically provided Trump with uncountable dollars’ worth of free coverage (Remember CBS CEO Les Moonves’s comment on Trump’s loud mouth, Berlusconi-like antics during the primaries: “I've never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us… Man, who would have expected the ride we're all having right now? ...Who would have thought that this circus would have come to town?”)

Nonetheless, the Trump election undeniably showed that it is possible to mount an impactful campaign outside of the conventional rules of the game, especially when a substantial portion of the electorate has soured on the rules of the game.

It was this fact-- the fact that there was a new mood emerging, especially among those most devastated by the continuing economic crisis -- that was underestimated or missed by the punditry and is still largely ignored.

While the Trump election was a surprise, something new is clearly in the air. I wrote nearly a year ago:

The Sanders and Trump successes suggest that voters are not appeased by the thin gruel offered by the party elites this go-round. But something more profound is occurring—a refusal to settle for the usual charade. Moreover, party loyalty is unusually thin this time, challenging party leaders’ ability to count on a transfer from one candidate to another. What the pundits call “unpredictability” is actually the exercise of a new level of political maturity and independence. A recent Pew Research Center poll (December 8-13, 2015) bears out the mood of voter alienation: 62% of all respondents maintain that “the federal government does not do enough for middle-class people.” Thus, the notion that anti-government sentiment runs deep in the populace is a media-inspired illusion. Instead, people want better government. (A Moment Charged with Possibility 2-11-16)

We now know, thanks to Wikileaks, that the Democrats had no intention of allowing an insurgent like Sanders to address the “new mood” of the electorate. Instead, they chose to covertly ensure the nomination of the candidate of more-of-the-same-- Hillary Clinton. In undermining Sanders, Democratic Party elites guaranteed that Trump would be perceived as the only authentic “outsider” candidate.

I wrote last year, in April, that the failures of the traditional support system for the “working class and poor people-- unions, religious institutions, the Democratic Party, ethnic organizations, etc.-- explains, in no small part, the desperate turn to Trump. Tepid, aloof liberalism breeds desperate options, like the outlandish Trump, when conditions deteriorate sharply and no radical options appear available.”

Thus, a careful assessment of the Trump victory should ascribe a role to working class disaffection with business-as-usual politics, but without a simplistic blanket condemnation of the working class, without a calloused dismissal of white workers as wholly racist, misogynist, or xenophobic.

But careful assessment is not popular after the recent election. Liberal pundit and darling of the “responsible” left, Paul Krugman, penned a harsh attack on the white working class:

...the fact is that Democrats have been pursuing policies that are much better for the white working class than anything the other party has to offer. Yet this has brought no political reward… The only way to make sense of what happened is to see the vote as an expression of, well, identity politics-- some combination of white resentment at what voters see as favoritism toward non-whites (even though it isn’t) and anger on the part of the less educated at liberal elites whom they imagine look down on them. The Populist Perplex, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 11-26-2016.

Krugman is hardly out of step with mainstream liberals with his barely concealed contempt for the motives of white workers. But compare this statement with what he said eight years earlier when he was shilling for Hillary Clinton against Barack Obama in the midst of their primary competition:

[Princeton colleague Frank] Bartels cited data showing that small-town, working class Americans are actually less likely than affluent metropolitan residents to vote on the basis of religion and social values… Does it matter that Mr. Obama has embraced an incorrect theory about what motivates working-class voters? His campaign certainly hasn’t been based on Mr. Frank’s book [What’s the Matter with Kansas?], which calls for a renewed focus on economic issues as a way to win back the working class. Indeed, the book concludes with a blistering attack on Democrats who cater to “affluent, white collar professionals who are liberal on social issues” while dropping the class language that once distinguished them sharply from Republicans.”... Anyway, the important point is that working-class Americans do vote on economic issues-- and can be swayed by a politician who offers real answers to their problems. Clinging to a Stereotype, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4-19-2008.

Apart from the blatant hypocrisy exhibited by the marked reversal of Krugman’s views in only eight years, the earlier Krugman gets it right. Economic issues have been decisive in working class vote patterns, especially since the deindustrialization of the 1970s and 1980s and the economic catastrophe of 2007-8. And the earlier Krugman’s judgement that “working-class Americans… can be swayed by a politician who offers real answers to their problems” proved accurate with the campaign of Bernie Sanders. But with the Democratic Party actively burying that option, many workers misguidedly turned to the only other candidate promising to address their interests.

Contrary to the widespread impressions disseminated by media elites, the working-class vote was not overwhelmingly for Trump, nor was the working class vote the backbone of his success. The Electoral College totals swung his way thanks to narrow victories in a few key rust-belt states. Many factors contributed to the Trump victory, but two stand out, especially for a left analysis.

First, there was a discernable shift among many voters in working class strongholds previously giving majorities to Obama to turn in the direction of Trump in 2016. As Krugman noted in his 2008 alert and warning to the Democrats, addressing relevant economic issues is decisive in winning the working class vote. With the Sanders economic program strangled in the cradle, desperate voters saw nowhere to turn but to the false, demagogic hope of putting the industrial toothpaste back into the tube, of creating jobs out of Trump’s magic.

Democratic Party operatives and their media lapdogs have done their most to evade blame for the Party’s abandonment of working people’s interests. Instead, they have painted workers as pathologically bigoted and ignorant, a handy theme reinforced by elite media since the era of TV stereotype, Archie Bunker. Today’s archetypes for the socially dysfunctional (white) worker is found in the best-selling tell-all from a working class “escapee” (Hillbilly Elegy, J. D. Vance). By diverting the spotlight to working class dysfunction, the third-way, New Democrats who dominate the party can escape blame for their willful neglect of the multiracial working class’s increasingly desperate plight.

Second, Trump was a magnet for every backward, reactionary, racist element in the US. They, too, saw the arrogant, abrasive, loud-mouth as someone in whom they could place their hopes. Trump’s aggressive break with the typical politician’s syrupy civility was taken as a sign of contempt for the alien, the different, those perceived as threatening (Ironically, these same hates and fears were, in the past, invested in soft-spoken religious leaders and smooth-tongued conservative gentlemen). Trump engages in the Old South tactic of drawing attention by surpassing all others in race baiting and fear mongering, but it’s important to note that this simplistic tactic only works where an atmosphere of racial friction and fear already exists. It’s just that Trump opportunistically says it the loudest.

The contradiction between Trump’s appeal to workers and his courtship of the extreme right is unresolvable. Nevertheless, it is a common feature of right-wing populism, a political phenomenon emerging strongly in Europe and the US. It takes root where both objective and subjective conditions are ripe for radical change, but a weak or discredited left offers little hope. The extreme right reaches to fill the void with vague populism.

While it is not yet possible to entirely discern how Trump will attempt to resolve this contradiction, it is becoming increasingly clear that he is surrounded by advisors, confidents, and attendants fully committed to a pro-corporate, pro-capitalist domestic agenda, an agenda that, apart from theatrical moments, will leave little for workers.

Trump’s foreign policy is, however, a different kettle of fish. Domestic policy is crafted by many hands. Congress, which is 100% bipartisan for the interests of capitalism over any other interest, will have a big say over where Trump takes it. Moreover, there is space for debating divergent interpretations of the best interests of capital.

But foreign policy is largely crafted through the executive (even war powers have been commandeered by the executive branch). And there is little tolerance for dissidence from the policies of the foreign policy establishment. The tight reign over policy fixed by generations of rabid Cold Warriors continues to be a feature of governing. Many of Trump’s comments on prospective foreign relations challenge both the current consensus and those who police that consensus.

Trump’s deviance from that consensus on relations with Russia, NATO, and other matters explains the brazen intervention of US security services in post-election politics. A massive media campaign was mounted to distract the people from the Democratic Party fiasco and construct a reliable straw man, Russia, to take the blame for the embarrassing loss. The mainstream media shamelessly and nearly uniformly spread the speculative story that Russia had intervened profoundly in the US election. With skepticism rising, the joint US security agencies released an amateurish report, allegedly confirming Russian intervention. Many private security experts remained skeptical. Trump challenged the report.

Within days, government insiders released a second document-- an addendum-- reputedly based on a UK private investigation, alleging outrageous misconduct on Trump’s part and an extensive Russian disinformation campaign. The security agencies admitted sharing the report with Obama and Trump, denied leaking it, and refused to attest to its accuracy. In a recent interview, CIA Director Brennan was said “to give it no particular credence.” He said, instead: “I would have no interest in trying to give that dossier any additional airtime.” That, he says, “...would make no sense at all.”

So, if the report had no credence, if it made “no sense” to give it “more airtime,” why was it shared with the President and President-elect and leaked to the press in the first place?

The answer should be obvious to all but the gullible and kept corporate press: The memorandum was meant, on the part of the security agencies, as a threat to Donald Trump, a reminder that wandering off the establishment reservation is not tolerated.

The media’s failure to challenge this “memorandum,” its veracity, its timing, its source, and its leak is a new low in groveling before power. To think that the head of the CIA, the most formidable intelligence apparatus in the world, had a hand in confronting Trump with a document that Brennan claimed “he had no way to assess the allegations contained in the dossier of political opposition research…” (Wall Street Journal, 1-19-17) is outrageous (Brennan even claimed that he hadn’t read it). That the CIA held no interest or lacked the ability to confirm a dossier written by a former member of the close-knit intelligence community is preposterous. That the security agencies promoted a dossier that bore “no credence” and that they released it for any other reason than to intimidate Trump is unbelievable.

Of course, this would not be the first time that security agencies scared the hell out of politicians challenging establishment shibboleths. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover famously kept extensive files on virtually all political players and would frequently leak embarrassing information to media friends whenever he felt it was necessary to bring dissenters back into the fold. Among many other political maneuvers, the CIA notoriously overstated Soviet capabilities in order to influence US Cold War policies, elections, and funding. And beyond any dispute, the intelligence and foreign policy communities constructed an argument of lies to support the 2003 invasion of Iraq. We are asked to trust them today? And the too-often uncritical, gullible media believes them today?

In the wake of contemporary revelations of torture protocols and comprehensive spying on everyone, apparently witting opinion makers have now found the intelligence community to be wholly reliable and trustworthy. They surrender their critical faculties to the professional liars and plotters. Even George Orwell would be aghast!

We assuredly have every reason to fear the policies of President Trump and his supporters.

But based on recent events, we equally have every reason to fear the brazen power and intrusion of clandestine security agencies and the unreliability of the fawning, supine corporate media.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Obama’s Legacy

I thought it was a good idea.

In the midst of Trump-panic and electoral finger pointing, The Nation magazine offered a special issue devoted to assessing the Obama Presidency. Providing a bit of historic context to the Trump victory would, I should hope, dampen the hysteria embraced by US liberals in place of sober analysis.

The Obama Years (The Nation, January 2/9 2017) does have its moments of insight, but far too many of the contributing liberal/soft-left writers tried desperately to polish the dull finish of the Obama stewardship. Most sought to retroactively apply a glow by comparing the Obama years with a yet-to-be experienced Trump reign.

Bizarre comparisons abound: Marilynne Robinson found Lincoln in the Obama legacy, while Patricia J. Williams detected a bit of Frederick Douglass in Obama’s character. Eric Alterman announced that “Obama was the coolest guy in the room.”

Obama defined a new “progressive patriotism” for John Nichols. Katha Pollitt opined under the headline--How Good We Had It-- without a hint of irony. She offers a weak attempt at a clever epigram with “...too many Americans weren’t ready for a black president, even if they voted for him.” Didn’t they know he was Black?

Faint praise indeed from Laila Lalami: “...I’ve never doubted that Obama tried to put his country’s interest above his own.”

In a lengthy appraisal of Obama’s foreign policy, Andrew J. Bacevich charts Obama’s course from “callow rookie to seasoned veteran.” He finds the mature Obama in the carefully staged valedictory interview delivered to trusted journalist Jeffrey Goldberg (The Obama Doctrine, The Atlantic, 4-2016 [my commentary is here]). Unfortunately, the mature Obama that Balevich sees as rejecting the “foreign-policy establishment” only found himself after he had surrendered to conventional thinking for over seven years. Remember the talk of the real Obama who would be unleashed in his second, lame-duck term?

Robert Barosage agrees that the Obama epiphany came belatedly, if at all: “Although Obama grew skeptical of the Washington “playbook” on foreign policy, he failed to offer an alternative.” He questions whether Obama was “transformational,” since transformational “presidents do more than simply govern well. They challenge and change the direction of the country.” Barosage continues by recounting the disappointments and policy shortfalls that kept Obama from being “transformational.” 

Following Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, Barosage recommends envisioning Obama rather as a “pivotal” President. That is, on “his watch, the United States began to recognize its corrosive inequality, the power of big money to rig the rules, and the way the deck was stacked against the vast majority.” But surely this is a howling non sequitur. Obama didn’t bring about any of these realizations, they simply happened while he governed.

It is far better to understand Obama as a “transitional” President. He was the choice favored by a majority of the ruling class to clean up the mess left by the Bush administration, a thoroughly discredited regime both nationally and internationally. With a raging economic crisis, failed wars, and barely measureable poll numbers, a fresh face, a face that promised renewed confidence from “hope and change,” Barack Obama was the prescription. 

The Obama story was as distant from the Bush narrative as the two-party dictatorship would allow. Race, youth, and eloquence separated him from his predecessor. Never mind that, excepting race, these traits were of little serious consequence.

Like President James Carter, after the Nixon fiasco, Obama was meant as a transition back to political credibility, a purifier of a political stench.

As such, Obama was a trusted cheerleader for the existing order. Christopher Hayes, in his lead article, unwittingly admits this when he notes that the “story that Obama kept telling was the story of meritocracy and social mobility.” Of course, it was a Black man who could make this story credible at a time when both merit and social mobility were disappearing. 

Hayes relates an interview with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid in which Hayes pressed him on the message of the Democratic Party. Reid obliged: “I want everyone in America to understand, if Harry Reid can make it in America, anyone can… That’s what America is all about.”

Obama, similar to Reid and other political elites, sought to keep this mythology alive. Is it any wonder that a significant portion of the devastated US industrial working class abandoned the Democrats after the Obama era?

The thoughtful Eric Foner concludes the Nation chronicle of the Obama years with useful insights:

Obama’s 2008 campaign, which mobilized millions of people new to politics, served as an illustration of the symbiotic relationship between popular movements and political action. Unfortunately, even before Obama assumed office, it became clear that he had little interest in building upon the popular upsurge that helped to elect him.

Foner offers a counter-narrative to Obama-worship that simply ignores Obama, the figure, and focuses upon the forces erupting around him that he, opportunistically, rode to power. For Foner, the popular social forces are far more indicative of what is possible and worthwhile than the personalities that ride those social forces in and out of the Presidency. Rather than heap unwarranted praise on Obama, Foner traces the often-tortured path that the popular urge for change takes through US institutions. 

Thus, Foner sees manifestations of the urge for change that are springing up at the close of the Obama era as more worthy of discussion:

For a while after the end of the Cold War, it seemed like we were condemned to live in a world where the only alternatives to unregulated capitalism were religious fundamentalism or xenophobia and racism. Then the financial collapse of 2008 drove a stake through the heart of neo-liberalism, the dominant ideology of the past generation (although its ghost still walks the earth, including the corridors of the Obama administration). The great achievement of the Sanders campaign was to step into the vacuum and begin to offer a new vision. The election of Donald Trump, while disastrous in so many ways, is yet another illustration of the bankruptcy of neoliberalism. It is also an opportunity for the left to forge a new set of policies to promote political, social, and economic equality.

While the current political moment is indeed an opportunity to restore what Foner calls the “American Radical Tradition,” it is wishful thinking to imagine that the popular thirst for change will be satisfied with the final demise of “the dominant ideology of the past generation.” It is not the “bankruptcy of neoliberalism” (“unregulated capitalism”) alone that opened the door to Trump, but the bankruptcy of the two-party system that disallows a social democratic insurgency or a third-party opening to the left. 

Moreover, it is not the latest incarnation of capitalism (neoliberalism) that is demonstrating its bankruptcy, but it is capitalism itself that stands accused.

With his stress on social movements, Foner knows that the existing political institutions, including both major parties, have resisted the “American Radical Tradition” at every juncture. Radicalism must always be sparked and nurtured independently and outside of the two-party system. Foner’s academic work attests to the fact that real social change-- including the New Deal, the Great Society, etc-- never comes when insurgents accept the limitations imposed by capitalist political organizations. 

 And where right-wing populism threatens-- like the Trump candidacy-- it draws its oxygen from the failure of the left to offer authentic options that address the popular yearning for change.

Those who uncritically thought the Obama Presidency would satisfy that yearning helped pave the way to the Trump victory.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Searching for the “White Working Class”

The Wall Street Journal calls them the “forgotten Americans.” Others see them as racist and xenophobic. Then aspiring-President Obama characterized them in 2008 in the following way: "And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Whether they are forgotten, dismissed, or demonized, the “white working class” has been discovered this election season.

As with any new species, researchers are scrambling to probe, dissect, and analyze white workers; pundits are spinning theories about their habits and dispositions; and politicians are searching for keys to unlock their votes.

Arguably, no social segment has been under the sociological microscope this intensely since US elites and their intellectual courtiers “discovered” African Americans some sixty years ago. Class, like race, must force itself on to the stage before notice is taken.

In the case of the “white working class,” the surprising success of Bernie Sanders on the left flank and Donald Trump on the right flank-- successes that, in part, are believed to owe something to white workers-- sparked the new interest.

Even a decade ago, it was widely believed that there was no working class in the US-- only a vast middle class and the poor. Fostered by social scientists, mainstream politicians, and union functionaries, the fiction prevailed that, apart from the very rich, everyone was either middle class or poor. Of course this illusion began to shatter in the wake of the 2008 crash and the ensuing economic stagnation. Likewise, the rebellion against corporate, cookie-cutter candidates in the 2016 primary fights exposed a class division that poorly fit the harmonious picture of one big class with insignificant extremes at the margin.

Whatever else the 2016 electoral campaigns have revealed, they surely have shattered the illusion that the US is largely a classless society.

But US elites and their opinion-making toadies struggle to find the “white working class.” Some accounts refer to them as “white males without a college degree,” still others, “middle-aged white males.” The Brookings Institute takes a small, but confused step closer to insight, by adding “the additional qualification of being paid by the hour or by the job rather than receiving a salary.”

Vulgar, crude characterizations reach heights of stereotypicality and ignorant simplicity: “Moreover, the political stuff they like – bombastic attacks on Mexicans, Muslims, and Megyn Kelly – can turn off minorities and college-educated whites, particularly women.”

Just as the mass media has fostered caricatures of African-Americans, the media and cultural/entertainment corporations craft an unflattering image of white, working class citizens. Where Black people are saddled with imagery of violence, idleness, promiscuity, and criminality, white workers are portrayed as bigoted, socially, culturally and intellectually backward, superstitious, and conservative.

One would never know from “hood” movies, talk radio hysteria, and the crime-obsessed news readers, that most African Americans are a significant part of the working class, maintain stable households, and work diligently for a better life.

Similarly, most white workers are neither gun fanatics nor Bible-thumpers. Most white workers do not attack gays, abuse their spouses and children, raze mosques or lynch Black People. 

Nonetheless, both caricatures are part of the baggage borne by elites, including liberal elites.

The common perception dished by the mass media is that white workers constitute the electoral base for Donald Trump, when the truth is that the median household income for Trump’s primary voters was $72,000. In truth, the nativist, anti-immigrant sentiments associated with Trump are more typical of the white petty-bourgeoisie than the white working class.

Certainly media elites, pundits, and politicians do not want to talk about the latent rebelliousness of the white working class-- a large majority of white workers believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, an opinion that should not surprise anyone given the fact that the median household income in the US has declined by 7% since 2000. Unfortunately, the current crisis of political credibility shows that they, like most of the rest of the population, have yet to find a way out.

Social scientists have begun to acknowledge the toll that corporate pillage has taken on the working class, very dramatically of recent in the case of the white working class. Death rates, especially from alcoholism, drug use, and suicide have risen sharply among white workers. The institutions that formerly traded a measure of privilege to white workers for their compliance and docility have now abandoned them. The Democratic Party, for example, is so thoroughly corrupted by corporate money that there is little more than gestures for the causes of workers of every ethnicity.

Yes, there is an element of lost privilege that fuels white working class anger and despair. At the same time, the economic advantages that separated white from Black workers in the past are diminishing in many sectors and afford a rare opportunity to unite workers against their common foe. Until the left and workers’ organizations undertake that task, working class rebellion may well succumb to false friends and bombastic demagogues.

Nothing reveals the distance of the upper classes from the realities of working class life like the current media fascination with the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. Writing as one of their own, J.D. Vance-- a principal at an investment firm-- relates his unhappy working class childhood to book club liberals and country club conservatives. 

Feeding the stereotypes, Vance exposes a dysfunctional childhood spared from ruin by an enlistment in the Marine Corps, a stint at Ohio State University, and a climb to the summit, Yale Law School. Looking down from the rarified air of Yale, he feels qualified to speak of “the anger and frustration of the white working class” and the hunger to “have someone tell their story.” The thirty-one-year-old investment executive’s rags-to-riches tale urges “people to hold themselves responsible for their own conduct and choices. ‘Those of us who weren’t given every advantage can make better choices, and those choices do have the power to affect our lives…”

There are echoes in Vance’s biography of the many “hood” oracles that depict Black life as, without exception, dysfunctional and unbearably ugly. But in this case, it is white, working class life that is soaked in alcoholism and threatened by senseless violence.

This profile, like the book title’s derogation of white workers as “hillbillies,” is deeply offensive to anyone growing up in a working class family or community. Vance’s addicted mother and sometimes absent father are neither exceptional nor common in white working class families anymore than they are unique to or absent from families of different ethnicities or socio-economic classes. To believe otherwise is to feed the ugly monsters of racism and class arrogance, the twin beasts nurtured by every ruling class.

Growing up in working class communities, we see the ravages of exploitation, the divisiveness of racism, and the despair of joblessness and poverty. Of course, these occasion harmful, counterproductive behavior. They wreck the lives of many. But they are not remedied by self-help bromides the likes of which Vance advances. 

Capitalism produces and reproduces wholesale misery that may no longer fall as unevenly as it has in the past. While African American workers are continually and relentlessly victimized by racist practices and denied access by exclusionary craft unions, capital today offers white workers little reward for supporting or tolerating racist policies. The twenty-first century global economic turmoil has devastated workers’ standards of living regardless of race or “choices.”

The future lies in the hands of those who reject divisive, elite-fashioned stereotypes and unite to face their common enemy.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com