Republican contenders for president have remained silent as Trump spews out

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Trump daily spews out his noxious diatribes. Indeed, until quite recently, most of the corporate media rel­ ished covering Trump’s every anti-social rant, fearful perhaps that failure to do so might lose them critical media ratings.

Trump himself has repeatedly affirmed that any cov­ erage, especially free media coverage—and to date he has by far had the lion’s share of the latter—could only work to his advantage.

On Nov. 8, Trump delighted in the opportunity to appear on the popular “Saturday Night Live” televi­ sion show, where wacked-out comedian Larry David, who plays the part of an obnoxious liberal racist on his “Curb Your Enthusiasm” show, took up DeportRa­ cism.com’s offer of a $5000 prize to publicly heckle Trump and call him a racist. David, who has yet to col­ lect his winnings, did just that—with Trump’s explicit and prior, if not enthusiastic, agreement. In capitalist America today, a real live, laughing, racist billionaire is a profitable talent to broadcast!

Meanwhile, the front-running Trump has a dozen Republican challengers, including the second in the polls—retired surgeon, Christian fundamentalist, and climate and evolution denier Ben Carson. All afford Trump virtually free rein in his fear and hate-monger­ ing campaign, with a few occasionally and cautiously seizing the opportunity to one-up this racist bigot in order to better capture an ever greater portion of the Republican Party’s alienated, largely middle-class, Tea Party-enthusiast voter base.

No doubt Trump’s rants find fertile soil in a small layer of the overall electorate, but even less in the general population, some half of which increasingly does not bother to vote.

But Trump’s backwater histrionics are not new to the increasingly polarized and crisis-ridden world capitalist scene. Overtly far-right, if not neo-fascist, views are similarly expressed in France, England, and across Europe. In the former two nations such rightwing parties have, for the first time in nearly a centu­ ry, outpolled the traditional capitalist stalwart parties of the status quo.

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(continued from page 6: “The socialist alternative to ‘lesser-evil’ politics”) the wholesale shredding of civil liberties (as so ably exposed by the Snowden revela­ tions). His signature “affordable” health care legislation gifted $3 trillion over the next 10 years to the private and largely monopolized insurance, hospital, and pharmaceutical in­ dustries—as opposed to a single-payer al­ ternative that would have saved $1 trillion in government expenditures over the same period.

A Dec. 5 New York Times article entitled, “Jobs Report Seen as Strong Enough for Fed Action” [to raise interest rates on today’s nearly zero-rate “loans” to corporate Amer­ ica] nevertheless revealed some bitter truths about the Obama administration’s sevenyear record.

“At 62.5 percent,” The Times notes, “the proportion of Americans in the labor force remains near mid-decade lows. The jobless rate for African-Americans rose by 0.2 per­ centage points in November to 9.4 percent, which is more than twice the 4.3 percent for white Americans.”

“Moreover, The Times adds, “the economy is still 2.8 million jobs short of where it would have to be to match pre-recession em­ ployment levels while also absorbing new entrants into the workforce. … Even if the current trend continues, that so-called ‘jobs gap’ will not be closed until mid-2017.”

Another Dec. 5 New York Times article, “Lawmak­ ers Near Deal on Billions in Tax Cuts,” notes that the upcoming bipartisan tax-cut legislation, in almost all cases written behind the scenes and negotiated se­ cretly by the technocrat specialists of the corporate elite, amounts to nothing less than a five-year dura­ tion transfer of $840 billion from us to them—from tax-paying working people to the tax-avoiding richest portion of the one percent that really rules America. A general shift to the right Today’s political/electoral drama, almost always de­ void of the crooked corporate machinations that lead to tax cuts and other perks for the super-wealthy, can best be summarized: “The Republicans talk the talk: the Democrats walk the walk.”

The silky and “progressive”-sounding Democratic Party election-time jargon is no accident or fluke. It is consciously designed to pose this wing of the ruling class as the “civilized” representatives of an egalitar­ ian society that respects, if not cherishes, democratic and human rights and economic fairness.

Similarly, the Republicans’ election posturing as a racist nut-case party of almost deranged hate-mon­ gers, climate deniers, and war hawks is not without its own logic. The extreme verbal political diver­ gence between Democrats and Republicans lays the foundation for capitalism’s well-honed election-time lesser-evil scenario, wherein alienated voters who would more than likely abandon the two-party shell game—a 60 percent majority favor a new third party, according to a recent Gallup poll—feel compelled to once again allow themselves to partake in “choosing” capitalism’s preferred horse in the race.

The seeming Republican Party scapegoating mania combines well with a generalized disgust with “estab­ lishment” politics, and it allows Democrats to move ever further to the right. Few doubt that President Obama and his Democratic Party political, social, and economic policies are far to the right of the most “evil” Republican propositions of yesteryear.

This generalized shift to the right of ruling-class politics, and the associated feigned public disputes, never fail to reach resolution in the hidden congres­ sional and corporate corridors, where “compromise” solutions, always at the expense of the vast majority, are routinely arrived at.

The chaotic and crisis-ridden capitalist system it­ self—in a crisis virtually equal in magnitude to that of the Great Depression of 1929—best accounts for today’s public partisan discord. Different wings of the ruling elite are today at odds with regard to how much, how fast, and with what means—mass repres­ sion or “friendly” persuasion—to most effectively ad­ vance their common corporate interests. Sanders pledges to support any Democrat It is in this context, where massive disillusionment with and alienation from “traditional” capitalist par­ ties and politics has reached new heights, that one can also understand the rise of long-time registered “in­ dependent,” now “socialist,” Bernie Sanders, as well as the racist social dissident, Donald Trump.

Bernie Sanders is now an official Democrat, having pledged in advance to support whoever of his party competitors emerges from the upcoming election primary contests as the winner. In some recent polls in the early primary states, like New Hampshire and Iowa, Sanders’ ranking appears to be in the political ballpark—that is, he could win.

It was perhaps some 50-60 years ago, when I first encountered the “lesser evil” dichotomy at work— Kennedy vs. Nixon and Johnson (LBJ) vs. Barry Gold­ water—that I half seriously predicted that the time would come when the ruling-class elite, when it be­ lieved it was necessary to head off a likely working-class move toward a break with the capitalist two-party duopoly, would run a “socialist” for president, under the Democratic Party imprimatur, of course.

That day has arrived, with “Bernie” filling the bill al­ most perfectly as today’s central sheepherder of the unwary back into the Democratic Party fold.

Sanders’ service record on capitalism’s behalf falls well within the boundaries of ruling-class politics. He supported the Obama administration’s wars in Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen— although he, like most other liberals who feigned op­ position to the Iraq War, including Obama, now claim that this war was a ”mistake.” The Saddam Hussein government after all, they have been compelled to admit, never had “weapons of mass destruction.” The U.S. slaughter of 1.5 million Iraqis, we are told with a straight face, was a mistake!

“Socialist” Sanders gave his assent to countless tril­ lion-dollar military appropriations bills, including all congressional measures that supported Israel in its genocidal drive to eliminate any Palestinian presence in their historic homeland.

Thus, campaigning for and organizing mass forces to demand the immediate and unconditional withdraw­ al of all U.S. troops from every nation on earth is not within the Sanders campaign’s calculated political ter­ ritory. He knows full well that any real socialist would view U.S. imperialism’s wars everywhere as nothing less than the extension and embodiment of U.S. rul­ ing-class policies at home.

Sanders has indeed disappointed some of his lib­ eral and even “socialist” supporters today due to his perceived “weakness” on foreign-policy issues and his failure to unequivocally challenge and condemn the ever-increasing brutality and police murder of unarmed Blacks. When confronted with a Black Lives Matter representative who jumped onto the stage de­ manding to know where Sanders stood on America’s deepening racist attacks, the “political revolutionary” was speechless and quickly exited, leaving the audi­ ence stunned. When he was soon afterward advised that his well-crafted liberal image had to include a modicum of support to Black rights, he meekly as­ sented, but to the point of significantly interfering with Clinton’s prior turf “claim” to the Black vote.

Sanders has also made clear that he is not the kind of socialist that seeks the social ownership of the na­ tion’s wealth and the establishment of a revolution­ ary state that once and for all places society’s means of production and wealth in the hands of and under Lucy Nicholson / Reuters (Above) Sanders and Clinton at Oct. 13 “debate” of major Democratic Party presidential candidates.

the democratic control of those who produce it, in the framework of a government of the working class and its allies. Sanders’ “socialism,” he insists, includes re­ spect for private property—operating, perhaps, in a bit more humanely manner.

In short, Sanders, like his “socialist” counterparts in France or in the Scandinavian countries, seeks a “kind­ er gentler capitalism.” The fact that he seeks to emu­ late Europe’s historically bankrupt social-democratic capitalist model while these nations are engaged in supporting all of NATO’s wars and imposing the same, if not worse, austerity measures against their respec­ tive working masses is not unexpected.

In these troubled times “Bernie,” in fact, perfectly fills capitalism’s needs for legitimacy. His chatter about the need for a “political revolution” in the U.S. is subordinate to his quarter-century service as Ver­ mont’s leading elected official—unchallenged by the Democratic Party. His current assignment, for which he will undoubtedly be richly rewarded down the line, is to corral working-class discontent back into the capitalist framework and, when the Peter Pan fairy dust has cleared, to back Hillary Clinton. Santa is in exile!

There is no Santa Claus on Wall Street, dear friends— neither in the form of Bernie and Hillary nor charita­ ble gift-giving billionaires like Gates and Zuckerberg. Indeed, the real Santa likely abandoned his North Pole abode at the first signs of Industrial Revolution capi­ talist-caused global warming.

That once pristine ice-capped area, increasingly bar­ ren today, is the domain of happy Obama’s helpers, including the Chevron Corporation, which seeks to mine the exposed earth for the very fossil fuels whose continued use spells doom for all human kind. The real Santa likely moved his helpers to cities around the world to join the fight to restore his homeland and ours, and to return to the people of the earth the opportunity to collectively build a joyous world, free from those who would irrationally destroy it in the pursuit of profit.

Another Christmastime hero, a young Jewish rebel who lived a bit more than 2000 years ago, may have left us with some insightful words to ponder. “Drive the money changers from the temple,” he exhorted. Not a bad holiday admonition! Indeed, the socialist movement of the early 19th century did include fol­ lowers of Jesus, who believed that socialism was the modern-day expression of the teachings of the Lord.

Today’s Marxist revolutionaries base themselves on a qualitatively grounded or materialist understanding of the roots of capitalist society’s countless horrors. As the gap narrows between workers’ mounting ha­ tred of the dread consequences of capitalist exploita­ tion and oppression and their reluctance to enter the fray to challenge it in all its fundamentals, we will see countless millions of new and clear-sighted fighters break with all of capitalism’s ruling-class-based insti­ tutions of coercion and control.

That day is not far over the horizon. Today, the con­ scious organization of a deeply-rooted mass revolu­ tionary socialist party—aimed at ending capitalist rule forever and bringing forth a new world dedicated to advancing the finest yearnings for freedom, justice, and equality—is Socialist Action’s reason for being. Join us! n SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2015 7

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(Left) Ta-Nehisi Coates holds his son Samori in the summer of 2001.

murder of a young man. Coates includes the opening lines of a poem by Richard Wright and ends with the phrase “between the world and me.” Wright’s poem, originally printed in the 1930s, is included in his talk, “The Literature of the Negro in the United States,” published with three other lectures as the book, “White Man, Listen!” (1957).

Wright’s poem is a “vision of horror” about a man who comes upon the remains of a lynch­ ing and gazes at the “stony skull.” In a nightmare sequence of the poem, he becomes the victim: “The dry bones stirred, rattled, lifted, melting themselves into my bones.” The mob, too, re­ turns to life, and the lynching takes place again until, finally, the narrator’s skull becomes the skull he had seen.

The terrible merging with the victim in Wright’s poem—a powerful identification— captures the relationship between Coates and his fellow Howard graduate, Prince Jones. The fate of one could easily have been the fate of the other.

In his lecture, Wright comments, “The horrors that confront Negroes stay in peace and war, in winter and summer, night and day.” This is Coates’s conviction as well and is a major rea­

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Bernie Sanders fills the bill as the central sheepherder of the unwary back into the Democratic Party.