A Radical Bourgeois Plan – – Or 10 Easy Steps To Trump’s Fascist Program
Bill Wolfe, 47, who made his way from Ringoes, N.J., to protest the inauguration, took one hour to go 50 feet in line, and when he got through expressed his anger with the entry procedures. […]
“It’s overkill to the extreme,” he said. “I think it was designed specifically to suppress dissent and keep out protesters. They want to control the visual image, it’s part of a coordinated effort to mislead the American people about the level of opposition to this administration. They’re trying to make it a coronation and it’s not.” (NY Times, page 1, January 21, 2005: Heightened Security Turns Washington Into Quiet Scene
Protesters lamented the restrictions.
“They got us compartmentalized like rats in a cage,” said Bill Wolfe, 47, who came from Ringoes, N.J., carrying a “War Mongers” sign. Mr. Wolfe looked at the shoulder-to-shoulder wall of police officers, blocking his way as he inched along. “You don’t need a ticket for democracy, folks,” he hollered, to no one in particular. ~~~ Love Him or Hate Him, All Vie for a Good Perch – NY Times, page 1, January 21, 2005
I had planned to go to DC on Inaugural Day and even rented a car, but got burned and had to pay a $53 penalty for cancelling the reservation. That seemed like insult upon injury. They get you coming and going.
As an alternative, yesterday morning, I walked 2 miles to City Hall in Philadelphia to join “The People’s March” against Trump. I was disappointed but not surprised by the tiny crowd, maybe 200 people. The speakers were talking about electing local Democrats and spouting Kamala Harris campaign slogans.
I didn’t stay very long, got into somewhat of a ranting conversation with an elderly couple on bicycles, and walked home in disgust bordering on despair.
The contrast with the repression and resistant mood of the first Trump Inaugural protest 8 years ago could not have been more stark, see:
I’ve also been disgusted by some political essays by “The Resistance” I’ve read that sure seem to be a strategic retreat, parading under a banner of “going local” and “building local power”.
When an outright self revealed Fascist like Trump assumes Presidential power, consolidates fascist power in Congress and the federal Courts (with little push back by Democrats and the media), nominates a clown show Cabinet of incompetent, corporate right wing ideologues and loyalists who get fast tracked rubber stamped Senate confirmation hearings, and espouses an explicitly fascist program (which includes:
1) concentration camps for migrants who are “poisoning the blood of America”, homeless people, mentally ill, and the “socialist scum” and leftist “internal enemies”;
2) mass deportations (including illegally revoking legal refugee status and Constitutionally guaranteed 14th Amendment birthright citizenship and due process);
3) use of the military to crush domestic protest (and insane Imperial adventures to seize the Panama Canal, annex Greenland, make Canada the 51st State, invade Mexico to crush drug cartels, and maybe even seize Venezuelan and Iranian oil like Bush (Iraq) and Obama (Syria and Libya) oilfield projects);
4) closing down critical media, banning books, and defunding Universities;
5) wreaking “retribution and vengeance” on and even jailing political opponents;
6) forming open alliances with violent and heavily armed militias and right wing groups, including County Sheriffs and police who could easily be organized to comprise Trump’s Brownshirts;
7) rescinding all climate policies and seeking fossil “energy dominance”;
8) making public lands mere “assets” on the nation’s “balance sheet” that should be deregulated, extracted, privatized, and sold;
9) BEFORE the election, issuing a 1,000 page plan to ‘dismantle the administrative state” that he can now claim a “mandate” to impose;
10) and promising to implement this fascist program via a flood of executive Orders issued on his first day in office, including likely declaration of a National Emergency and invocation of Insurrection Act, the National Emergencies Act, and the Alien Enemies Act) –
when all this is happening, it is NOT THE TIME TO GO LOCAL!!!!!!!
There should be national strikes (starting with ports, railroads, airports, trucking, food processing, and all other “strategic” industrial sectors) and mass mobilizations with millions of people in the streets to shut the economy down (similar to how the “Resistance” flocked to airports when Trump announced the Muslim ban, but much larger in magnitude, geography, and scope.).
It will be very difficult to keep from becoming obsessed with this fascist attack on everything I value and have worked and lived my life for.
I really hate all the individualism and self help bullshit that undermines collective political action and resistance, but there will need to be strategies to keep from going insane and burning out.
Yesterday I read an interesting radical response to that challenge, see:
Let’s just say that I’m not that radical or insane (yet), so in a bourgeois vein, I just read a NY Times lifestyle piece on “35 Simple Health Tips Experts Swear By”.
As is usual at the gray lady, most of their “experts” were largely full of crap and most of the “tips” were silly and likely ineffective.
So I submitted the following reader comment with some of my own “tips”:
Get outside, walk, enjoy nature and creative little things people design and make. Find quiet places to sit. Look at water and small birds. Get rid of the phone. Love your dog. Go to bed early and get up and outside before sunrise. Express your emotions, including anger and even rage. If you’re not angry or enraged, you are not paying attention. Always take the stairs. Work on your muscles. Drink good beer. Stay out of your kids’ adult lives, let your younger ones explore and experience on their own. Read books. Listen to gentle music, not the crap that’s popular today. Try photography. Ride your bicycle every day. I am not an expert, but these are all wise moves!
And then you can be more empowered to educate, agitate, organize and mobilize against the fascist Trump regime!
[End Note: And listen to Leadbelly’s “Bourgeois Blues” (1937)
Home of the brave, land of the freeI don’t wanna be mistreated by no bourgeoisieLord, in a bourgeois townUhm, the bourgeois townI got the bourgeois blues, I’mGonna spread the news all around