Stop Hoping For Saviors, Stop Trying Not To Think Too Hard About It... and Get Involved in Actually DRIVING OUT the Trump/Pence Regime

October 30, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On November 4, thousands will take the streets, demanding that the Trump/Pence regime be driven out and vowing not to stop until they are. Those thousands need to and aim to grow into millions in order to wrench humanity off what is truly a disastrous course. That is true.

What is not true is that someone or some event “from above” will intervene without our taking action. And the past two weeks have witnessed one false hope after another evaporate.

We saw Senator Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, repeatedly reiterate his fear that due to Trump’s comments and behavior, “we could be heading toward World War III”! Yet nobody in the ruling class—Republican or Democrat, including Corker himself—has risen to call on people to drop what they were doing and unite to stop this horror. Indeed, even as Corker’s speech echoed, or was echoed by, criticisms leveled by other Republican “heavyweights and wise men,” including George W. Bush, not only did nothing happen—the net effect was that nearly everyone agreed that Trump was now stronger. In other words, the Republican Party was yet further fascisized in the image of Trump. The great irony in this was when anti-Trump Republican senator Jeff Flake raised the question of how will we answer our children when they ask us what we did to resist and reverse this—and then promptly announced that he was retiring!

We saw Trump chief of staff John Kelly—whom many were counting on as a firewall of sorts against Trumpian madness—come out full force with his own brand of Trumpian cult-of-the-military fascism, and make clear that he would defend his boss against any and all, including by resorting to unapologetic slander and lies.

We saw the New Yorker publish a devastating profile of Mike Pence, disabusing anyone of the notion that a “Pence presidency” would somehow be less devastating than Trumpian rule. The theocratic contempt for women and gays, coupled with the end-times fanaticism, literally gave people nightmares—as well it should.

We saw the New York Times put out a front-page headline that “Hopes Dwindle For 3 Inquiries on Russia Ties”—explaining that the Congressional probes into Russia were being sidetracked and were unlikely to come to much after all, at least in any kind of near term. Now, as we go to press, there are reports of indictments and rumors that special counsel Robert Mueller may be fired—but even there, absent massive demonstrations beginning on the 4th, nothing good will come of this (and in the short term could even increase the likelihood of desperate moves by the “Trump team”).

We saw a major Democratic donor say he would support Democratic candidates who called for impeachment. The near total silence in response from powerful Democrats to this offer was as deafening as their silence in response to Corker’s repeated warnings.

We saw the great god Zeus himself decline to come down and save humanity—well, no, we didn’t actually see that, but some of the hopes that people are clinging to are not much more implausible than that prospect.

The point is this: the nightmare already is very, very far along, and went further this week. Nothing will stop this but millions of people, in massive, nonviolent, sustained protests across the country, beginning November 4. If we do this, then yes—the differences and conflicts with Trump among those who rule the country can come into play and be part of driving out the regime, stopping and then reversing the consolidation of fascism.

The great need for this—as well as the roots of this fascism—is laid out in depth in Bob Avakian’s new speech. The questions on what comes next, of how to rally and unite people of very diverse viewpoints, of how to understand the need for sacrifice—these are all deeply grappled with and answered in the extensive question-and-answer session.

The opportunity to do this—to be part of radically altering and reversing what is now a truly catastrophic course by throwing in with November 4—is there. We are, in fact, accountable to those who are now suffering terribly under the Trump/Pence madness, to those who will suffer further—from North Korea to Iran to the ghettos and barrios and Native American Indian reservations of this country—from the madness, and to the future generations whose lives are even now being blighted and, still worse, put into serious question. 

Thousands can grow to millions. Every great movement starts up against inertia and disbelief, breaks through, and then grows through waves, with crests and troughs, through withstanding and coming back stronger after attacks, but always fighting to surge higher. There is no guarantee that we will win. But there IS a virtual guarantee that if we don’t act, at first in our thousands and then in our millions, the results will be catastrophic.

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