Published on http://www.counterpunch.org
I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office I am about to enter.
My interest in the Democratic Party since Reaganomics has been on dying embers kept alive by the now deposed Senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, and also, surprisingly, by Joe Biden and his Bidenomics. Both kept alive labor’s side in the Labor/Capital struggle. If I mention Bernie Sanders or AOC and “The Squad” it would be like referencing Christopher Hitchens at a prayer meeting. I don’t wish to be writing to the choir.
Listening to Sherrod Brown’s concession speech on You Tube is a must for those who need to be reminded of what a working class advocate stands for. Ironically, Brown has lost to a man, Bernie Moreno, who has faced a dozen wage theft law suits as well as gender and age based discrimination suits. Brown never followed his party’s path away from the economic concerns of wage earners. His replacement seems not so disposed.
Affirming that President Biden did more for the working class (getting to the middle starts here) than any Democratic President since LBJ’s “Great Society” and, of course, FDR’s New Deal is, given the terrible grade Biden has gotten on the economy, a statement against the grain. I admit that getting the right scoop on Bidenomics is both not easy and very easy. A quantum situation.
Kamala’s campaign acquiesced to the spin on Biden’s performance here. Biden’s administration did a poor job in communicating what he had done so it was not easy for Kamala to fight that current without some groundwork laid. I think she should have tried but I’m not a campaign strategist. Before she entered the race it seemed that the country felt Biden had increased prices because he gave all our money to illegal immigrants, or that lot increased demand for milk and butter and prices went up. I’m not economist but I’m trying to follow the links here, fantastical as they are.
What Biden did in his executive acts and legislation is easy to find. I recommend senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. Dean Baker’s “Should People Be Happy About the Biden Economy?” CounterPunch September 6, 2023. For the legislation without the commentary, see. White House: Legislative Archive. Being informed here is not a “we say/they say” clash but readings like on your dashboard. There’s no counter fact to 20mph or 52000 miles.
There are two audiences that weren’t happy about Biden’s economy: the first on the Capital $ side of the street didn’t like Biden’s working class revolution, and the second, uninformed as to what Biden was doing were thus set up to be spun.
The spin was over inflation, which did indeed exist, but as Biden and Elizabeth Warren pointed out, was both legit and not legit. Biden pointed to “Greedflation” at work and Warren had a plan to distinguish what was price gauging and what was legal. Note than inflation was world-wide and so Biden’s “excessive” stimulus recovery package was not the cause, say, of what was inflating in the EU. Sheer market power pushes up prices beyond real constraints at will. When a real supply chain breakdown happens which legitimately raises prices all corporations as a rule of efficient profit-making join in. What power a government has to step in this play of “free enterprise” is not in the Constitution or part of neither of our two parties, which on this issue are joined at the hip. Stay out of the play of “free enterprise” even if it destroys peoples lives.
Alongside economics, immigration was an issue that Kamala tried to duck. As I wrote a number of years ago when Trump proposed a wall to solve this issue, both Democrats and Republicans have constituencies that need immigrants, legal or illegal, as cheap labor.
Owners, Left, Right and Center, need these workers. MAGAS are not going to pick the crops, nor mow the lawns and nanny the offspring of the gentrified, nor shape up every morning for a job. How many of the Essential Workers of the pandemic were Steve Bannon’s “Americans”? From the get-go Trump set up all immigrants as illegal, degenerate and criminal and he did so to churn up age-old suspicion and dislike of the “foreign other” to fear and hatred levels. He did it to pull in supporters.
This fueling of hatred and intended policy to round up millions, corral them and then deport them will blow up in his face. Stalin managed its like as did Mao. Let’s see if Trump gets this done in that style without it becoming incendiary in the view of others here and abroad, it all becoming a cataclysmic boondoggle. Only one of many he’ll create in his first six months.
The one man rule that Trump yearns for requires, in short, a man that he is not.
He needs to do what one man cannot do alone and that is get all the obstacles to his one man rule out of the way. Those obstacles being of a 248 year tenure, they are established beyond who may hold office and may not easily collapse under attack by a deranged con man who can’t discipline his own mind. Also, a second presidency Trump intends to have only those loyal to him in all positions, those who are loyal to him and not to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, not, in short, U.S. citizens but minions who swear fealty to Donald J. Trump.
Am I talking about the best and the brightest or those who will bow to Trump’s plans and never question them? So, if you argue what this one man wants will be efficiently done by competent appointees, I say nothing will be done that is not done his way. So, we are back to a one man rule wherein this very bent one man cannot subvert anything inviolable in the democratic order.
I’ve heard the fear in the last hours since Trump and Republicans had such a sweeping victory across the board that his autocracy will establish a succession of autocrats: J.D. Vance, Matt Gaetz, Josh Hawley, Baron Trump, Kelly Anne Conway, Joe Rogan and onward until the fearfuls’ imagination runs dry. Historically speaking, ruling orders other than aristocratic dynasties do have a Hero/Savior but one who establishes a discourse from which practices emerge and institutions are shaped. Ruling orders that last, say 248 years, will have Founding Fathers or explicating idealogues, say, like St. Paul, grounding texts, say, a Constitution or a Koran, and a structure that is flexible in changing contexts. he best create imaginary community within which citizens become attached. This last Trump has done but when he passes on to a better place, what’s left?
Trump once again offers only himself, a one-off. When he goes, nothing remains but what already is to be found everywhere in the U.S., namely a self-centered guy who wants it all and doesn’t care who or what he has to burn down to get it all. It’s kind of what the American Dream really requires. Let’s say your everyday CEO or Hedge Fund Manager. What makes Trump different is that he once again has presidential power in the most powerful country in the world so he can want everything and burn down what gets in his way.
There’s no autocrat succession he’s building. Nor, once again, can such a damaged man do much damage to an order he doesn’t understand and therefore cannot defeat. He doesn’t know the enemy he’s created in his own mind. And what does Sun Tzu and Clausewitz advise? Know thy enemy.
Macbeth had ambition that far exceeded his talent to realize them. He also became more and more paranoic. I don’t expect Trump to start killing those in his way, which is what Macbeth did, but oddly Trump has made statements of revenge, so who knows. More certainly, I think is that he will implode, probably within the first year since he has promised to move very quickly. When you are dealing with an aging, deranged person of majestic self-esteem, more like Lear now, getting something done quickly most likely leads to some astounding, hold your breath crazy shit.
So, he’ll self-destruct. Like the scorpion who has to sting you, Trump has to unravel himself. And it will happen before he can shut down the “Elite” media, so they’ll broadcast that fall on page one.
“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”
One wonders what Trump would have done if faced with Dr. King.
