The Greatest Danger of Trumpism
He and his followers are a danger, but not in the way the Democrats would like you to think.
Hello Rowdy Ones,
I am sorry for my absence lately! I have been going back to school for carpentry and moving from LA to Long Beach, planning actions, and just generally swamped with life.
With the election upcoming, I had thoughts and feels, and wanted to share them here.
It’s not a secret that I am no fan of nation states. Concentrating power in the hands of a few people so that they can make governing decisions for the many inevitably leads to oppression. This is regardless of whether you have a totalitarian dictatorship, a monarchy, or a “liberal democracy.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the thinkers most responsible for reviving the idea of democracy in Europe in the 18th century (I said Europe specifically because many peoples around the globe had forms of democracy at this time, they just weren’t known to Europeans) believed democracy will be direct or will not be at all. He did not think representative institutions like ours or Parliaments were Democracies.
This is why the United States is not now, nor has it ever been a Democracy. And the people who wrote and shaped the constitution wanted it that way. They made slavery legal, and only allowed white male property owners the right to vote. Benjamin Franklin said the purpose of a government is to protect property from the majority. The Institutions that grew from their decisions were founded on this racist, classist, sexist worldview and while the ways these ideas have manifested have taken on new forms, they have never truly been reformed.
This is why it is so disappointing to see many people who consider themselves on “the left” or “progressive” get so caught up in the idea that Trump is an evil that must be stopped at the ballot box. The ballot box, after all, is the place that initially brought us Trump.
Trump did not invent hatred of the newcomer, the undesirables, the “basket of deplorables,” racism, classism, or anything really. He doesn’t even have an original take on it: Make America Great Again was Ronald Reagan’s slogan. His primary skills have been the ability to deny his way through every scandal while looking like the victim, and marketing himself. Those two may even be the same skill.
What’s more, Trump lost by the largest margin in American history, and is less popular now than he was 4 years ago, and still Trumpism or MAGAism or whatever you want to call it is still threatening our society. He doesn’t need to be in office to have the power to shape our country. But, it’s because elected office exists at all that he is able to be a threat.
This is not to say that the impact of Trump’s rhetoric is fake. It’s not. The last 8 years have seen targeting of poor folks, immigrants, trans folks, queer folks, radicals, the list goes on. My point here, is that it isn’t just Trump doing it, it isn’t even limited to the Republican Party, or the South, it is the entire nation. If anything, what Trump did is reveal to many people whose eyes had been closed for a long time, what America has always been.
Liberals will tell you we must be concerned about the “rise of Fascism.” And there is a truth to that, but it isn’t the one they want you to focus on. The real danger of Trumpism is that it has allowed Democrats to get away with the same things Trump did, while maintaining a semblance of being the lesser evil.
There are many many pieces of evidence to show this is true. For instance, Dick Cheney- a lifelong Republican, and the embodiment of evil- endorsed Kamala Harris. Harris herself said she was going to be harsher on the border than Trump. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order outlining how cities should target homeless shelters. Ron Desantis aka “Trump light,” signed a law with essentially the same purpose. The only difference is in Florida citizens have the right to sue their cities if they don’t sweep encampments, and in California participation is still voluntary. Is that the lesser evil liberals mean?
This is also not to say that there aren’t bright spots. Minnesota has enacted many progressive reforms in the past 4 years, but it took the murder of a black man and the burning of a police precinct to do it.
This only highlights the point: when power is concentrated in the hands of a few people, and that power is enforced through violence or the threat of violence, the only thing that can bring real benefits for the people is the equal threat of violence. It is simple physics: force has to be met with equal or greater force to be stopped. What further evidence do liberals need that this system is not a Democracy?
The fact that there are bright spots like this doesn’t show that “Democracy can work,” because when your example of Democracy isn’t a Democracy, your evidence isn’t showing you that a Democracy can work. What it is showing you is that in order for the so-called United States’ ruling class to maintain a semblance of legitimacy they have to throw the people a bone or else risk all-out violent rebellion.
While the New Deal helped many people, it was passed because the rich and powerful were terrified of a Bolshevik-style revolution on this continent. But the everyday people of this land deserved so much more and better than the New Deal.
So long as we keep framing the concept of what this society can be in terms of Democrats and Republicans, we will keep getting the same bullshit we’ve always gotten.
A true Democracy involves people coming together and making decisions, face to face, about how they want to live. It requires a lot of direct participation from everyday people. In the instance in which there are delegates to a larger body, those delegates have no decision making power, they are simply there to voice the opinions and beliefs of the people who sent them there.
People hear this and think, my idiot neighbor can’t even pick his trash up properly, how do you expect him to run a democracy? That’s the thing, many people in the so-called United States aren’t prepared to fully function in a democracy, and that is by design. The wealthy and their representatives say to us every day, “don’t worry, we’ve got your interests at heart, we are the truly special ones with the clarity and insight to run things, we went to Harvard, you’re not competent, you got C’s in math, go back to doing what you’re best at- watching sports, cleaning our toilets, and drinking beer.”
Democracy is something people have to practice at. It is not something that happens every two to four years at a ballot box. It is voluntary association, solidarity, and freedom. It is a guarantee that all of the necessary means of life are collectively owned and available for everyone, not privately owned by a few. It means that education is free, that knowledge and research are shared freely. It is: I have the ability to build a house, you know how to grow food, so I build houses you grow food, everybody has what they need, nobody goes without. It’s also not a utopia, it is how people have lived for the vast majority of human existence. Land was not privately held 60,000 years ago. People grew and shared food together. The idea that we need money and property in order to maintain the standard of living some people on Earth currently enjoy is a lie. In fact, money and property are the primary motivations behind the destruction of the ecosystem which will make it impossible for anyone or anything to live.
The electoral process in America and the global destruction of the planet are deeply intertwined and inextricable. In order to stop global destruction, the so-called United States must cease to exist in anything remotely close to its current form.
The longer liberals and progressives perpetuate the lie that the way things change is through voting, the deeper their already extremely deep complicity is with US Imperialism and destruction. It may be hard to hear that, but sometimes the truth hurts.
Yes, it can be scary, but it’s nowhere near as scary what will happen if we don’t wake up.
Stay Rowdy, y’all and fuck shit up for the revolution,
Neil