(NOTE: Because Dispatches from Dystopia
is as much work of art as journalistic fulfillment of the core
socialist ethos – “from each in accordance with ability/to each in
accordance with need” – it is sometimes more subject to spontaneity,
i.e., visitations by the Muse, than to schedules and deadlines. Thus it
was this morning. I began the day's work with what I imagined would be
no more than maybe 10 minutes of memory-confirming research on how the
USian Homeland became the primary sanctuary for Nazi war criminals; I'd
assumed I'd be posting the finished text by mid-afternoon. But one
Internet topic led inexorably to another, and 12 hours later I had
learned our species' obscene history of genocidal medical experiments
began not in the German death camps but on USian slave plantations
nearly a century earlier. No wonder our Capitalist overlords want to replace net neutrality with Nazi-style censorship.)
*
INNUMERABLE
PEOPLE CLAIM to be part of the anti-Trump “resistance,” and the number
grows as Trump's Nazism becomes ever more undeniable. But how might we
as revolutionary socialists distinguish between the reformers, who will
inevitably betray us (precisely as history proves they have always
done), and those who are at least potentially our comrades.?
An
immediate answer to this question is provided by whether the individual
in question has reasoned and/or been emotionally thrust beyond the
slogan “no justice, no peace” to the invariably painful realization
there can be neither justice nor peace – nor long-term human survival –
without the total and permanent elimination of Capitalism.
The
fact Capitalism cannot be reformed – and the corollary fact all
reformers are ultimately betrayers – is proven unequivocally by the fate
of the New Deal. The USian Working Class – the We-the-People 99 Percent
– returned from World War II whole-heartedly believing we and our
allies had at long last fulfilled the World War I goal of making the
planet “safe for democracy” – that we had defended the four freedoms
abroad even as we had forced the New Deal on our Capitalist overlords
at home to guarantee those freedoms for ourselves and our descendants.
(Read the rest here.)
