forjusticethunders
forjusticethunders's JournalBack from DC!
Was a hell of an experience. I came early to beat the rush (believe it or not, I actually GOT on a train right away), and it paid off. It was a major logistical stretch (good luck getting a bathroom) and given my friend came down by car from NJ to march with me, we had to go a bit earlyish, but it was an amazing atmosphere, and the solidarity was amazing.
I wish I had stayed for the crowd meeting up with the Orange One's motorcade. Would have been tempted to chuck my shoe.
This was honestly my first really BIG protest and it was an adjustment, but it was amazing though. Not just marching, but chatting with organizers, talking about plans after protests, talking strategy, and all that.
Had a little fun making up creative new chants though don't think they caught on such as "Hey Hey Donald J, how many whatevers did you grab today?"
But we gotta keep in mind that this is the first step in a long, long journey of resistance. Call your reps, call your Senators, and vote for the most left candidate in every election.
For an analogy, you're gonna go into a fight against a bully.
Hand to hand, one on one. Oh right, the guy you're fighting takes roids.
Right before the fight, you take a gun and put a bullet in your left elbow and left kneecap.
What are your chances of winning? I'd say, not much, because one side of your body is more concerned about crippling the other half than about beating up the big muscly steroid guy beating your ass every day.
Why do working class whites vote for policies that actively screw them?
You have Trump voters right this minute tearing their hair out because Trump and Ryan are going to try and kill Obamacare. But they *voted* for that. Why? Because they have been trained to see everything, including economics and class relations, through a racist lens. Class solidarity is impossible when one segment of the working class sees the other as "THOSE PEOPLE" who are inferior in whatever manner.
This is what I am trying to say.
There's actually 2 bases in American society - race is the base, then class above it, then superstructure.
White progressive analysis of politics is fundamentally broken.
Bill Clinton was wrong - it was only "the economy, stupid" because he took race out of the discussion as much as possible. Sista Soulja, Ricky Ray Rector.
In reality, "it's racism, stupid", just like it has been since the founding of the Republic (also sexism, but that exists in a broader civilizational context). The racial caste system nearly destroyed America multiple times prior to the end of slavery. Racism crippled the power of the working class movement as white workers found that the psychological wage was better than the material wage. Racism engendered the right wing backlash to both economic and social progress under Democrats. Racism empowered Reagan as well.
Socialists from Marx to DuBois to King recognized racism as the LYNCHpin of American capitalist oppression. FDR realized he couldn't pass his New Deal without kowtowing to the DixieKKKrats. LBJ realized the white man will empty his pockets for the bosses as long as he gets to be above the black man. Yet modern progressives try to handwave it away as "identity politics", or to try to defend the Trump vote as "economic anxiety". Who are they trying to fool? And for what purpose? Trump voters are FAR more agitated about BLM and "SJWs" than they are about jobs going overseas (which itself is more about jobs going to THOSE people than actual job loss)
Remember the words of Atwater - Republican "free market" politics are an elaborate way to scream "n**** n****". It is the cry of "n**** n***** that keeps the system going. But instead of centering the racial struggle in the fight for progressive change (as well as the social justice movements that flow directly, both spiritually and tactically, from the racial struggle), a lot of progressives focus on "neoliberalism" without a real understanding of the term, let alone a sense of how to apply it correctly to current politics. I don't think the modern Democratic Party is propping up United Fruit or invading countries to enforce IMF payments (and even if you cite NAFTA, they then fail in drawing comparisons to the TPP, which is closer to a global union protection act like Wagner than NAFTA)
At the end of the day, people on the left need to organize based on real threats and real issues, and must adopt an objective view of political realities because by chasing shadows, it inhibits our ability to organize against creeping fascism and authoritarianism.
Thomas Frank is a hack but clueless white "progressives" cite his word as gospel.
What's the matter with Kansas? They're racist, sexist, homophobic and bigoted, and that matters much, MUCH more than pocketbook issues. Sam Brownback and Kansas Republicans win every fucking election even while turning Kansas into a Third World-level state. But nah, it's "neoliberalism" that's the problem. Never mind the fact that even the most neoliberal Democrat is more of a friend to the working class than the most "progressive" Republican (and I use that term very loosely in this context).
The last Democrat to win white males is LBJ. I wonder what could have happened between that election and the next that might have hurt our chances with that group? Gee, I'm stumped. But nah, it's neoliberalism, despite the fact that Carter and Bill ran WAY to the right of Hillary.
As long as the Democratic Party is the party of the marginalized, of the people hated and despised by bigoted whites, especially bigoted white males, we're going to struggle to win those votes until those people stop being less bigoted.
You've got to be kidding me.
No less than Marx himself said that there CAN be no victorious class struggle as long as the white worker basks in white privilege. WEB Dubois, who btw was a socialist, stated that white workers partially compensate for their exploitation with a psychological wage.The race, gender, nationality struggle IS the class struggle.
As long as white workers refuse to relinquish white privilege, they will remain vulnerable to the siren song of racism to advance the interests of the oligarchy.
The GOP has suckered White voters
They think all that small government bootstraps shit is directed at THOSE PEOPLE and they'll get herrenvolk democracy like the good old days where THOSE PEOPLE knew their place.
They're in for a rude awakening, the GOP extreme right really does want you to die quickly so their donors can make more money, whether you're black or white.
When I hear people say "drop identity politics", I reply that I'd love to
But if you're of a privileged identity, you first.
Because this is "identity politics" too.
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Unfortunately, much of the Left has made reflexive anti-Americanism a core ideological value.
For many leftists, America is the "Great Satan" every bit as much as it is for an Al Qaeda or Daesh extremist (almost a mirror image of how America would prop up any tinpot dictatorship as long as it claimed to be fighting Communism) and thus, Putin is their ally.
Russia has been playing these types like a fiddle for a long long time, to the detriment of the leftist movement.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Washington, DC
Home country: USA
Member since: Thu Jan 28, 2016, 04:01 PM
Number of posts: 1,151
