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On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Manuel Barrera via Marxism < marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > Trump is bad and so is Clinton, it's not really a contest. To take that position you have to belittle the fact that the Trump campaign has made white supremacy central to it to an extent far beyond that of any major prez candidate in living memory. Trump is not just another GOP candidate. Open white supremacists have hi-jacked the Republican party. That's why the last 2 GOP POTUS & last 2 party leaders, the the GOP governor of the state where the RNC was weren't there. That's why 50 GOP spooks just came out very strongly against him. That why Susan Collins just said she won't vote for him. Black people regularly get beaten up and thrown out of Trump rallies. This doesn't happen at Clinton rallies. Trump is building his own white supremacist militia. Donald Trump represents something very new & dangerous in US politics and we treat this like its just another election at our peril. Clay, that large numbers of the oppressed are going to continue the > illusion that change happens--or in this case, is defended or > maintained--by electing one or the other capitalist in the capitalist > elections. I don't think they have that illusion. I think they know that won't make revolutionary change, but they do know that is one small bit of leverage that have so they are not likely to waste it in a "symbolic vote" that's a left-liberal thing. Most people who even bother to vote will vote for somebody they think can win, and they only have to think they may be a little better off if the White House isn't occupied by someone who won it with a campaign based on white supremacy. That doesn't require any illusions so the only illusions I see are the ones you have about the reasons people vote the way they do. electing the one candidate with the SUREST ability to maintain, continue, > and extend such a massacre is exactly the grand problem. > Are you thinking a Trump presidency is actually preferable from the POV of revolution? > Rather, your position is exactly as pathetic as the belief that Johnson > would have ended a war that Nixon continued--Johnson left the field > precisely because he could not be the one to continue it as he had > succeeded in becoming the point of opposition. You seem so willing to > ascribe the power and might of mass movement to a secondary player in the > politics of the Vietnam era, leaving aside the mass sentiments generated by > a great antiwar movement fueled by a worldwide youth radicalization, the > revolutionary will of the Vietnamese people, and the resulting degeneration > of the will of the imperialist troops. All of that, in many respects, > undergirded by the courage and radicalization of the "black masses" of the > 50's and 60's. Manuel, how well do you know the details of Kissinger's sabotage of the 1968 peace negotiations, carried out to put Nixon is the WH? It took Vietnam 30 years to win its liberation. We all know that now, but looking back its hard to know with your certainty that it couldn't have ended in 26. A deal was very close, essentially the same deal that was made in 1972. With the hindsight of history and the arrogance of youth, it easy to assert that anyone that thought peace was possible in 1968 was pathetic. Was this also true of the Vietnamese negotiators? So, I'd really like to know if you know the details of the peace negotiations in '68 and why they went south and have a theory about how they would have anyway without Kissinger's intervention on behave of Nixon, or are you just make a general speculation to make a political point. The rhetoric that follows about the period I lived would lead me to believe so, > the misleadership of what Black Agenda Report calls the "Black political > class" is the primary reason why Blacks (and very much so why > Chicanos/Latinos) will vote "in their best interest". I assume you put "in their best interest" in quotes because you don't think that is what they do. I disagree. I think that in every presidential election in my lifetime at least 80% black people voted for the candidate that could best serve their interest. They understood that to serve their interest at all they had to win and the available choices were restricted by white voters but given those real-world choices the majority of blacks did vote in their best interest. The same can not be said about white voters. BAR is wrong to think the so-called "Black Political class" has a lot of influence on how black people vote, just as it is wrong to think BAR represents a political leadership that black people should follow. You think the black masses are being duped? You know as well as I the historical reasons for the advent of Black (and > Brown) "leadership" ensconced within the Democratic Party. Such > misleadership is deep and, yes, it does in fact "lead" the "black masses" > to vote "disaster capitalism" because the "stakes are too high" to "vote > their conscience" Why should they "vote their conscience" and for somebody with deeply flawed politics http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/why-black-voters-dont-feel-the-bern-213707 or no chance of winning, when they could use that vote to keep a whole new level of open white supremacy from taking control of the most powerful state machinery on Earth? Just because the black masses don't do what you'd like, that doesn't make them "dupes" or "just a part of the very privileged "American" working class." All black people aren't working class but never mind, you're on a roll.... > We" (as in most and, apparently you) simply are not ready to move > decisively against our oppression. And just how would you have expected me to conduct my life to this point if I was ready to move decisively against our oppression? Not by voting for Jill Stein I hope. In Solidarity, Clay Clay Claiborne, Director Vietnam: American Holocaust <http://VietnamAmericanHolocaust.com> Linux Beach Productions Venice, CA 90291 (310) 581-1536 Read my blogs at the Linux Beach <http://claysbeach.blogspot.com/> _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
