Of Course Donald Trump is Appealing to Working-Class Voters. He Says Things That Other Politicians Don't.
We have been betrayed by every institution, and a liar who tells the truth is more enticing than a liar who spouts therapeutic word salads.
Last week Donald Trump said that Liz Cheney, the daughter of an incredibly evil man with millions of deaths on his hands, should pick up a gun and fight if she, like most other Republicans and Democrats, is so gung-ho about sending people to fight in wars. Unsurprisingly, this statement by Trump was met with hysterics from both sides of the aisle, demonstrating yet again how fallen and dumb our political system is. Here are his words:
Donald Trump: [Cheney’s] a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. …
You know they're all war hawks when they're sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, 'Oh, gee, let's send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’
This is how the progressive Democracy Now! painted his words: “Trump suggested former Republican Congressmember Liz Cheney should face a firing squad.”
Nope. That’s plainly not what he said. Your reading comprehension could use some work there, Democracy Now. Progressive media outlets do none of us any favors by mischaracterizing statements made by Donald Trump. It just makes you look bad.
Here’s how Liz Cheney responded: “This is how dictators destroy free nations. They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant.”
Again, the reading comprehension here is abysmal. But I guess that doesn’t matter, Cheney is simply speaking to those already on her side, people who reflexively hate anything that Trump has to say, without regard for the rhetorical merits of what he says and why what he says resonates with so many people. Cheney and others like her, that is to say establishment politicians, will never deign to consider their own role in paving the way for a figure like Trump to be appealing to masses of people. It cannot be more plain. For generations, our dominant political institutions, liberal and conservative alike, have relentlessly destroyed the traditional means by which working people secured livable futures for themselves and their communities. We were all forced to suck on free trade, the lies of neoliberalism, the evils of empire, the rapaciousness of Wall Street and private equity, and the gutting of our privacy and civil liberties. Our unions were crushed. Our homes were taken away. Our safety nets were dismantled. You lied to us, sent us off to endless wars, speaking of security and patriotic duty and self-defense, using the poorest and most vulnerable of us to fight in conflicts that enriched your portfolios filled with weapons manufacturers. And when we decide to lash out, whether on the left through direct action against war profiteers, cops, polluters, and animal torturers, or on the right as in January 6th, you call us terrorists and rednecks and deplorables and extremists and lock us up in your privatized slave colonies for good.
It is because of the mendacity of people like Liz Cheney, and their betrayals of working-class interests, that the American populace is ripe for the irreverent attitude of someone like Trump. Instead of acknowledging all this and actually adjusting their politics, they simply double down, believing that Trump’s vulgarity will cost him, when really it is exactly what makes him appealing. When an established political system is as corrupt, callous, and venal as ours, all it takes is an idiot with the ability to point out the obvious to make the whole system circle the wagons against the dreaded populist hordes.
This is what Kamala Harris had to say against Trump: "This must be disqualifying. …Anyone who wants to be president of the United States who uses that kind of violent rhetoric is clearly disqualified and unqualified to be president.”
Disqualified AND unqualified! You don’t say.
This is all so fucking stupid.
It really is shocking sometimes, though it shouldn’t be, after immersing myself in clear and rigorous political thought espoused by greats such as Wendy Brown, W.E.B. Du Bois, Sheldin Wolin, Rosa Luxemburg, Noam Chomsky, Matthew T. Huber, Eduardo Galeano, China Mieville, Susan Sontag, and others, to turn to the inanities of pop-politics in the U.S., this trash-politics, this soul-sucking garbage, and find the contrast so stark. Is this really what we have to accept? These pinnacles of human mediocrity? These loathsome careerists? How did they get to these positions? And why do we let them stay there for even a moment?
I think it is worth pointing out that Trump’s comments about sending war hawks to fight their own wars is an incredibly old point, one which has an honored history in radical leftwing politics. It falls right in line with the German anarchist Ernst Friedrich, who wrote in his important War Against War:
It may then be that the nationalists and war-provokers, the kings and the generals, may wish to carry on war among themselves, on their own account and at their own risk, and that they force no man to join them against his Will! Such a war would indeed be welcomed by every pacifist and proletarian! Then all the war enthusiasts would at last of their own free will exterminate one another, and then we should have peace, eternal peace on this earth!
But unfortunately these heroes are not to be had for such a "war of liberation" (liberation from the war promoters and profiteers). They lack the courage, these war-thinkers and war-leaders, to go themselves into battle, and themselves to die a sweet "heroic death." That is why they invented such beautiful phrases as "Fatherland" and "Field of Honor," and spoke of "defense" and uttered other lies. And he who did not permit himself to be enthused to death by military music and by lying legends of the "enemy" of "the invaded," him they forced against his will into the murderer's uniform, him they ordered to murder and to rob for the interests of the money-bags.
I know of one practical way of preventing war for all time to come… let there be also a law for kings, presidents, generals and, last but not least, newspaper writers: “Whoever forces men into war or provokes them to mass murders, shall be responsible with all his property and possessions and with his own life for the safety and the sufferings of the soldiers. The king who rallies people to his standard shall himself bear the standard. And if a soldier should be reduced to beggary, the king shall go out begging with him. If huts are burnt down in wars, so also shall palaces and castles be set in flames. And always, for each human life that is sacrificed at the front, shall one king or one minister rest in peace on the ‘field of honour’ for the Fatherland. And ten newspaper writers that agitate for war, shall be detained as hostages for the life of each single warrior!”
For to the present day in all wars the object is to protect or to seize money and property and power; and there will always be wars so long as Capital rules and oppresses the people. When international capital finds itself threatened by mutual competition, and when the furnace-barons and factory owners begin to have differences, among themselves, then they rattle their sabres and spurs and they call out: “The Country is in danger!” (They mean by “country” always the money-bags!) And wonderfully enough the working slaves of all lands abandon their plough and their anvil, they hasten to arms, and protect the life and property of their masters with their own blood and life. … For it is not the state power and force alone that compels all “subjects” to protect the throne and the money-bags, and to die for them. Capital has not only economic power in its hands, it has, in equal measure and with equal power, subjected the proletariat also intellectually.
Of course, Trump does not employ such Marxist rhetoric as Friedrich does. Trump’s flourishes are vulgar, and obviously he has no real intention of reigning in the Pentagon and the broader military industrial complex (I take that as given). This dastardly military complex lines his and every other politician’s pocket. But Trump is savvy to use such a seemingly anti-war argument because it comports with his faux-populist image. It is popular with the everyman. For Democrats and progressives to decry Trump’s use of such rhetoric — tout court, for them to make it about themselves instead of about the soldiers they send off to murder and to die, is to miss the point entirely.
And who are they to say that violence has no place in politics? What is Bill Clinton bombing a medicine factory in Sudan, if not political violence? What is Dick Cheney approving globalized torture and the invasion of sovereign nations, if not political violence? What is Barack Obama vaporizing entire families in drone strikes, if not political violence? What is Joe Biden providing weapons and intelligence to facilitate the genocide of Palestinians, if not political violence? What is Kamala Harris’ pledge to back Israel’s ongoing crimes to the hilt, if not political violence? What is Harris’ pledge to maintain “the most lethal” military in the world, if not political violence?
Don’t talk to me about violence. You people have the tallest body counts the world has ever seen. It’s not that Democrats are peaceniks, it’s that they cannot stand any vulgarian such as Trump shedding daylight on their hypocrisy, their depravity, their common evil. They all deserve to lose, big time, and I will shed no tears for the Democrats or Republicans.
This is all absurd, a farce, a distraction, and the clowns in charge know this to be true. I suggest you — yes, you — say no to all of this, reject their calls for decorum and civility, elevate your standards for political and moral thought, and begin treating these vile people the same way they treat you: with violent contempt.
And yes, in case you couldn’t tell, as I had the pleasure of doing in 2016, I voted for Jill Stein again this round. It is literally the least I could do.