By Carlito Rovira
Never before in the history of bourgeois electoral politics in the United States have we witnessed anything more bizarre than what has taken place throughout the 2016 presidential campaign. The U.S. rulers have had their share of absurd individual personalities run for the highest political office but never one who has been so recklessly open with his reactionary views as presidential candidate Donald Trump.
The revelation of a 2005 “hot-mic” tape of a recorded conversation from the NBC’s show Access Hollywood with Co-Hosts Nancy O’Neal and Billy Bush has proven to be disastrous for Trump. It involved Trump making lewd, vulgar, demeaning and degrading remarks about women and how he used his “star power” to assault them. This is the latest in Trump’s long list of self-damaging blunders.
But what is perhaps the thing that we should take notice about and examine is, how sectors of the ruling class are now making it a point to distance themselves from Donald Trump and the contents of his remarks, as if they have been pro-women all along. The Republican Party’s gradual coldness towards Donald Trump resulted once they saw that a Frankenstein was created instead of a winning candidate.
What should be most telling to progressive minded people is that the Donald Trump phenomena in this year’s race for the presidency is not isolated from the vile existence of capitalist culture, in particular, its misogynist, homophobic and white supremacist practices and perspective.
Can anyone really say that anti-Latino, anti-Black, anti-women and anti-Muslim sentiments began with Donald Trump? White supremacy and misogynism has always been fostered by both Democratic and Republican figures. These two aspects of our reality under capitalism will continue to be expressed as “norms” as long as this system exists.
What the news media will not focus on is how Donald Trump is not an isolated case but the consequence of long established traditions in this society.
The rallying call for Donald Trump to resign from the Republican presidential ticket came about once he severely embarrassed that grouping in the ruling class. A huge crack was made in the wall of pretentious morals and respectability for the Republican Party, and potentially for the credibility of all bourgeois politics as well.
It is also possible that key elements among the most powerful and influential members of the ruling class decided that Hillary Clinton was their preferred candidate for president. Using a loose cannon like Donald Trump who is unable to think strategically and abide by the discipline of politics, would clear the way for the first woman to take office in a traditionally male dominated post.
It undoubtedly appears that the capitalist owned mass media sought ways to destroy whatever respect Trump may have had even within his own feverish racist circles. And why would this possibility not be far fetched? Trump’s reckless comments have in every objective sense clashed with the desires of significant sectors of the ruling class who wish to maintain a false projection of fairness and decency, in order to preserve a “peaceful” exploitative capitalism.
What we need to ask now is, how much “better” than the Republicans will the Democrats be in the White House? Consider the increasing poverty, mass incarceration, police terror as well as attacks on women, that we have experienced while Democratic Party presidents and politicians of both parties continue to live comfortably in their own privileged world. It is an increasingly doubtful proposition.
The understandable expectation that women in the U.S. will benefit from a Hillary Clinton presidential administration in Washington is just as doubtful as Blacks and other people of color having benefited from an Obama presidential administration. Of course Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party will benefit from this latest bombshell. There is no reason to believe otherwise. In fact, the discovery of the 2005 “hot mic” recording may have very well sealed a Clinton win in November.
But as oppressed and exploited people let’s not ignore or pretend otherwise, Hillary Clinton, like Donald Trump, is herself another prominent member of the capitalist class.
carlitoboricua 