Trump and McConell: Rats on a Sinking Ship

It's not North Korea that's threatening our way of life. Here's two of the main culprits right at home.

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I almost vomit having to look at these two scumbags in the picture above. As a shop steward there were times when more conservative workers would ask me how I could defend a guilty worker. It was easy I would tell them, the bosses always defend their own, so must we. Like my other union activist friends in my workplace, at times we defended workers with drug problems, for lying (never lie to the boss unless you’re absolutely sure you can get away with it, unless getting fired is no big deal to you) for stealing or other infractions of their rules. But overwhelmingy we represented workers who were fighitng back against workplace injustice and prejudice. We were in a struggle for a certain amount of control in the workplace.

I always used to say to workers that you could steal for the rest of your life and not come anywhere near the real thieves. The higher up they go, the more they steal. These two above are vermin.

Trump and McConnell hate each other, but they are uniting to give their rich buddies a lot more money through tax breaks and deregulation as well no doubt. Class solidarity matters to these folks although Trump is a weak link for them on that basis. They will put their differences aside in order to strengthen their hand against working people. Plus, Weinstein, er, I mean Trump, normally the idiot, must see that time is not on his side. His sexual assaults won’t go away. Nor will that rascal Kaepernick. Damn! Even the Germans are catching on.  The predator in chief was assaulted yet again by Peggy Noonan in her latest WSJ column.  It’s clear they're making a case not so much to impeach him but to use Article 25 of the US constitution that he’s unfit to govern is in the air. Noonan is a major bourgeois commentator and it is a bit surprising Trump hasn't gone after her yet.

Noonan has had a long hot summer trying to deal with Trump but it’s clear she’s given up. He’s not capable of governing. Noonan is basically calling for others in Washington to speak out. She questions Trump’s mental competence and quotes Vanity Fair’s Gabe Sherman who spoke to numerous prominent Republicans who tell of, “…a White House in crisis as advisers struggle to contain a president who seems to be increasingly unfocused and consumed by dark moods.” (my added emphasis). Sherman spoke to senior Republicans who claimed  Chief of staff, John Kelly was miserable in his job trying to, “keep Trump from making some sort of disastrous decision.”. We have stressed on this blog that US capitalism is in a political crisis as the two parties that have governed for 150 years are fracturing as that era is coming to an end.  “It’s a shame the White House has become an adult day care center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning.”, Oklahoma’s Bob Corker tweeted after being called “gutless” and “Liddle Bob Corker.”, in one of Trump’s Tweets. 

And we shouldn’t give Corker any Kudos for speaking out as he has announced he’s not running for re-election. Were he in need of Trump’s support he’d grovel like McConell.

The picture is a reminder to us that these people have no qualms about uniting when it comes to defending their class, their institutions and their system. The Democrats are incapable of providing the working class with a way out. They rallied around Trump with most of them attending his inauguration. We saw the picture of Michelle Obama hugging George W. Bush like he was a cuddly teddy bear rather than a mass murderer and war criminal.The Democrats agree that the working class must pay for the crisis of capitalism, it's just a matter of degree and which section will bear the most burden and increase division most decisively without a social explosion.

When the next recession or slump hits, the political, social and economic crisis of US capitalism will become more acute. The movement of the working class that will be forced to its feet in response will not be smooth, rather confused, with pockets of violence, street battles and steps forward and back. We have discussed in our weekly conference calls the likelihood of a multi candidate or party election cycle in 2020.  We have had this before with the likes of Perot and Jesse Ventura for example, this will occur on the left and the right, similar to Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia and Vitautas Landisbergis in Lithuania two academics that rose to prominence after the collapse of Stalinism. A political vacuum can throw up these accidents of history, Trump is an example of it----- a tragic accident indeed.

The reason for the volatile nature of the process of the working class finding its feet in the US and indeed for the rise of the Predator in Chief himself, is the failure of the heads of organized labor to have any presence at all. They refuse to bring to the table the 14 million members of the trade union movement and use this power to draw all sections of the working class in to the struggle. Their role is not passive mind you, quiet as they are, the heads of the building trades had no problem sucking up to Trump and participating in a photo op at the White House. The lawyer Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters, also praised Trump. These conservative bureaucrats never thought for one minute how their women or black dues paying members might feel about this. The labor hierarchy will also find the resolve as they always do, to resist any movement from below that threatens the status quo and the relationship they have built with the ruling class in this country based on labor peace. They have an army of full time staff whose job it is to carry out their agenda.

No serious opposition movement can be built from the ground up within organized labor without recognizing and openly confronting the present leadership and its disastrous policies. As much as we may wish it, the leadership won’ t allow it.