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Title: Not My President! Author: Wayne Price Date: December 17, 2016 Language: en Topics: Trump, resistance Source: Retrieved on 10th August 2021 from http://utopianmag.com/archives/tag-The%20Utopian%20Vol.%2016.1%20-%202017/commentary-not-my-president/ Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 16.1.
In demonstrations across the United States, protestors have raised signs
saying, “Not My President!” Obviously they are not denying that state
machinery has given Donald J. Trump the position of head of state and
commander-in-chief of the armed forces, ruler of the mightiest and
wealthiest state in the world. What they are denying is Trump’s
legitimacy for the position, his moral right to claim the presidency.
Under the capitalist system, electoral democracy serves several
purposes. One is that it permits factions of the ruling capitalist elite
to struggle over their different programs (based on differing interests)
and to make final decisions—without civil wars or establishing a
dictatorship (both of which can be costly).
Another major purpose of capitalist democracy is that it fools the
people into thinking that they run the country. It lets them think that
they are free people, not subjects of a very rich minority. It distracts
them from the fact that the day after an election, most adults go to
work (those who have jobs) and take orders from unelected bosses. This
goal requires that they see the government as legitimately representing
the voters.
That became an issue even before the end of the campaign. Expecting to
lose, Trump insisted that the election was “rigged.” He refused to say
whether he would accept the results if he lost. Politicians and pundits,
Democrats and Republicans, were aghast! They cried that it was contrary
to the whole system to not accept the election results. It was essential
to peacefully hand over power. They reminded us how George W. Bush had
lost the popular vote to Al Gore, but that the Supreme Court majority
had given the election to Bush—and that Gore, as a loyal supporter of
the system, had not fought it. Even earlier, Richard Nixon believed that
he had lost to John F. Kennedy only because (Nixon told close friends)
the Daley machine in Chicago had fraudulently overcounted votes for
Kennedy. But Nixon did not make a fuss. That was supposedly the American
way!
The most obvious aspect of the unfairness of the 2016 election results
is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. She won almost 3 million
more votes than Trump. Due to the distribution of the votes, however,
she lost in the archaic Electoral College. In the 18^(th) century, this
was originally created to be a buffer between the voters and the
election of the president, to be a compromise between large and small
states, and to strengthen the power of the slaveholders. The distorting
influence of the Electoral College is increased by the “winner take all”
rules of almost every state, so that Democrats in Texas and Republicans
in New York might as well stay home. No other capitalist democracy has
such an indirect system; in all others, the “popular vote” is just the
“vote.” Despite its obvious injustices, the establishment has never made
an effort to alter or abolish the Electoral College.
Another major distortion of the election, was the vicious efforts of the
Republican party to suppress the votes of African-Americans, Latinos,
young people, and other sections which tended to vote Democratic. This
was the first election since the Supreme Court ended federal oversight
of electoral changes in formerly segregationist states. The Republicans
went all out in trying to suppress the votes, especially of Black
people. They limited early voting, made new requirements that voters
have state IDs, closed voting sites in Black neighborhoods, dropped
people from voting lists, and justified all this with lying claims that
there was a problem of “voter fraud.” The Democrats fought back, winning
court cases and limiting the suppression, but the suppressors did their
best to work around these rulings. This is not to mention the long-term
results of the high rate of incarceration among African-Americans and
Latinos, followed by the denial of the vote to thousands of
ex-prisoners, as well as the many legal residents who cannot vote.
Then the Republican head of the FBI, James Comey, interfered in the
election. Eleven days before the final vote, he announced that the FBI
was going to investigate a new set of emails which might have been sent
by Hillary Clinton, implying that they might include illegal material.
At the time of his announcement, he had no information whatever about
the emails, but many voters got the impression that the emails’ case was
being reopened and that Clinton had done something wrong. A week later,
he announced that nothing had been found—but the damage had been done
(considering how close the vote was and also that early voting had
already started).
Meanwhile, agencies of the Russian government had hacked the emails of
the Democratic and Republican Parties—but only published emails from the
Democrats, in order to embarrass them and to help Trump get elected.
Despite the evidence, Trump denied Russian involvement and urged the
Russians to do more hacking of Clinton’s records. Republican leaders
refused to issue a bipartisan statement with Democrats denouncing the
intervention in U.S. elections. (But U.S. outrage is hypocritical, since
the U.S. military and CIA have often intervened in foreign countries to
overthrow governments, elected or not.)
These negative effects are in the context of the generally undemocratic
and unfair political system of U.S. “representative democracy.” The
flood of big money into politics has only increased since the “Citizens
United” Supreme Court ruling. The gerrymandering of districts distorts
the House of Representatives as well as the state legislatures. The
Senate has two Senators from each state, no matter the size of its
population, elected for six years. Supreme Court justices are chosen for
life. And so on.
The distortion of the electoral process is compounded by the nature of
the new president, Donald J. Trump. Hillary Clinton is just another
establishment politician, close to Wall Street and to hawkish foreign
policy advisors. She and her husband had gotten rich while in politics.
Her only positives were that she would have been the first woman
president, and that she was not Trump. But Trump is something else,
something way out of the box. Personally he is vile and disgusting, the
type of man whom most decent people would not want to meet their
families. A sexual predator, pathological liar, bully, cheater of his
workers and contracters, corrupt, and racist.
Politically, his policies are reactionary and dangerous. He denies the
very reality of climate change, which threatens the survival of
humanity. While not personally a fascist, he has opened the door for
fascists and works with them. Even just in terms of competence, for a
politician he is uniquely ignorant of how the U.S. government works, at
home and abroad, and is unwilling to learn from others. He could set off
an international crisis just from ignorance and arrogance.
Whatever the results of the election, millions of U.S. citizens will not
accept such a person as their national leader.
Yet a little less than half the voters did vote for Trump. (Somewhat
less than half the eligible voters did not vote at all.) They had mixed
motives. Some were out and out white supremacists. Many feared Latino
immigrants and Muslim and Arab immigrants. Many hated Hillary for good
and bad reasons, because she was an establishment politician and also
because she was a woman. But also a great many reacted against the
economic stagnation of the last decades, the end of the post-World War
II prosperity, the lack of good jobs, the off-shoring of industry to
low-wage countries, the loss of the “American dream.”
Trump’s victory, such as it is, is sometimes blamed on the “working
class.” But the working class is much broader than older white male
industrial workers. It includes African-Americans and Latinos, who are
mostly working class and who hated Trump. It included young workers, who
rarely supported Trump. It included many of the “better-educated,” many
of whom are white-collar workers (such as teachers). It included a lot
of working people who did not vote for either Trump or Clinton, out of
disgust for both. Overall, it was not so much that Trump brought out new
white working class voters, but that Clinton lost many voters and voting
groups which had previously voted for Obama. The Democrats really had
very little to say to working people. Around 1970 the Democratic leaders
had deliberately decided to stop looking to the working class and the
unions, and to focus on the “professional” middle class. (See Price
2016.)
It is usually safe for the Republicans to whip up their traditional base
of small businesspeople, lower middle class people, better-off and
prejudiced white workers, and religious fanatics. Even at their most
hysterical, such forces do not threaten the capitalist system. This
time, however, these got out of control. They nominated, and then
elected, someone who was completely unsuited for the job of president.
Still, they did not threaten capitalism.
But it has always been dangerous for the Democrats to whip up their
traditional base of the working class: workers who are white and People
of Color, male and female, straight and LGBT, U.S.-born and immigrant.
The workers’ interests clash with those of big business. Their needs
require lowering the profits of the capitalist class. Their numbers make
them a majority of the population (if we count everyone who works for a
wage or salary, without being a supervisor). They have an enormous
potential power outside of the voting booth. The workers run the
machines and processes of production, transportation, communication, and
all services. Democratically organized, in unions or councils, they
could stop the society in its tracks and even start it up in a different
way. As far as the Democrats are concerned, this must not happen; the
working class must not become aware of its power.
It is for these reasons that the Republicans can be vigorous to the
point of nihilism in mobilizing their base to fight for their views, but
the Democrats have been mild and compromising in their efforts,
capitulating to the right again and again. However, the very results of
this election shows the limitations of the Democrats’ methods,
especially of channeling all opposition into elections. We cannot beat
the greater evil by relying on the lesser evil.
The limited, distorted, and corrupt system of U.S. “democracy” has
produced this abomination of a Trump presidency. Now the political
establishment is mostly trying to make its peace with Trump, if he will
let it. The “Never Trump” Republicans have lined up for jobs in the new
administration. President Obama has been making nice to Trump, saying
that we must all hope that he “succeeds, because if he succeeds then we
all succeed.” (We hope he fails.) Others are asking the public to keep
an open mind. Meanwhile Trump has been appointing ignorant, vicious,
crackpots to important posts in his government and tweeting inane and
hostile comments.
We anarchists and revolutionary anti-authoritarian socialists do not
regard any president as “legitimate,” nor any government or state.
Undoubtedly it is better to live under a capitalist limited democracy
then under fascist or Stalinist totalitarianism. But either way, the
people live under the rule of a tiny minority (the “one percent,” more
or less), which takes the lion’s share of society’s wealth. The
government is supposed to be democratic, but there is no pretense that
the economy is anything but a set of top-down corporate dictatorships. A
participatory, self-managed, radically democratic society would be
drastically different from any form of capitalism and any form of state.
But a movement has been growing—one which at least rejects the
legitimacy of this new president. Right after the election results were
known, demonstrations broke out all over the country. People are
organizing anti-Trump groups in communities across the land. People have
declared that they will resist any efforts to round up immigrants or to
put Muslims on lists. Under pressure, city governments have announced
that they will not cooperate with such measures, even if they lose
money. Working class issues continue, particularly the unionization of
fast-food workers and the fight for the $15 minimum wage. Black Lives
Matter continues. The Standing Rock anti-pipeline struggle of Native
Americans and environmentalists has won a recent victory but continues
to fight. The issue of anti-fascism has been revived in people’s
awareness.
Dark days are ahead. The people of the U.S., working class and
oppressed, are facing perhaps the greatest crisis of our history. The
failed U.S. political and economic system has produced this evil Trump
administration. Millions will not accept it. Anarchists and other
revolutionary libertarian socialists will not accept it. We will
encourage massive popular resistance in every area and in every way
possible.