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A comment on this from the always interesting Pete Glosser:
The analogy of Mueller and the Democrats--while less striking if we are
not in a panic over fascism in the U.S.--is very telling. The whole
analysis of German mainstream "give-back" politics toward the end of the
Weimar Republic strikes me as new and immensely thought-provoking.
Certainly Ronald Rump, both as a personality and an intellect, appears
far too chaotic and self-centered to qualify as the leader of a fascist
movement, which not only requires an ideology of pure,
self-contradictory bullshit compounded with lies (which he does have,
sort of, though far more incoherent and fragmentary even than the
various Nazi party lines), but also (and more importantly) great clarity
and organization around action on a national and international scale.
Rump utterly lacks this.
I think Rump in power would be an anarch, constantly firing his enablers
and in the long run retreating from the presidency and leaving his
surviving sycophants to slug it out over the chunks of power they could
claw out for themselves. Could we expect a Teapot Dome? I fear Rump
lacks the decency, in such an event, to die on some golf course, so we
would be stuck with him at least for the full term of a presidency--a
very long Rump indeed. But perhaps this would be better than the reign
of whatever grisly sidekick would be waiting to succeed him.
Would this be worse than eight years of the neoliberal Clinton grinding
inexorably toward the Freedom of the Creative Entrepreneur while
promoting national security and waging war on terrorism?
Both prospects are appalling, even though pace Counterpunch and the
paranoid pseudo-left in general, HC is no more immoral, corrupt, or
murderous than any other petty-bourgeois politician, and is not IMHO
conspiring to start a war with Russia any more than she Bombed Libya
Back Into the Stone Age. (As far as I can see, Libya was not in fact BBISA.)
Rump, on the other hand, would be distinguished less for the awful
things he would actually do than for those he would passively allow to
happen--and this would, I believe, lead to a great increase in the
per-square-inch suffering of ordinary people over the duration of the
Rumpian calamity. The suffering under Clinton--at least early on--would
almost certainly be less.
To me, the whole mess underlines the international character of the
capitalist impasse. In that sense, until there is some spark that leaps
across national boundaries to ignite socialist movements worldwide,
evils of one or another magnitude may be all we will get. This in turn
raises the inevitable point that presidential elections should not be
the primary focus of action for the left--they are at best a tactical
exercise.
The worst mistake of all would be to get so wrapped up in the phony
horse-race that there is no energy left when the race is over.
That said, I do think a strong showing for Jill Stein would have more
political effect than a mere protest vote. This is particularly
important if, as may be the case, a defeat for Trump is more or less in
the cards anyway.
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