New York Times Calls for “Going to the Mattresses” Around the Supreme Court Nomination... For a Nap!
| Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On July 6, the New York Times Editorial Board sternly declared in the headline to their lead editorial “Democrats: Do Not Surrender the Judiciary.” They even invoke the line from The Godfather on “going to the mattresses”—that is, getting into an all-out gang war—to talk about the attitude the Democrats should adopt.
In fact, what they should have titled it was “Democrats: How to Surrender the Judiciary in a Way That Sucks More People Into Believing in the System, Rather Than Causing Them to Get Disillusioned.” And as for “going to the mattresses,” they seem more in the mood for an afternoon nap than a serious struggle.
Here’s the most honest part of it (and it calls to mind BA’s point that they’re manipulating you and telling you, “Hey, by the way, we’re manipulating you”):
The trillion-dollar question is whether Democrats can also use this battle to turn out their voters. This is not a given. If progressives wind up feeling as though their team didn’t fight fiercely enough against Mr. Trump’s nominee, they could be less inspired to show up at the polls.
First of all, fuck your cynical electoral calculations while the lives of women and LGBTQ people and others are on the line! This is some truly sick shit! Same motherfuckers that made a show out of all-too-briefly shutting the government down for the Dreamers, before they sold them down the river, and opposing the various cabinet nominations before capitulating, one after the other. And now they’re getting ready to do the same thing with Trump’s Supreme Court nomination, with even higher stakes!
The New York Times editorial does reveal a strategic weakness—the fear that people may not be in a mood to accept conciliation from the Democrats on this, especially after the Republi-fascists blocked the Obama nomination. Since the whole point of the Dems’ #resistance is not to actually stop this shit, but to build faith in the system and votes for the Democrats, it won’t be that easy for them to resist in a way that seems real. Plus, they will immediately run squarely into the rabid fascist monster demanding to be fed another Supreme Court seat and easily crumble in the face of it, just like Fuck Schumer did as soon as he was accused of denying the military its funding because of the shutdown. And the same electoral logic could also be used to justify abandoning the concerns of the “progressives” in the name of the “swing voters.” On the flip side, to the degree that they do resist, even in ways that they intend to be symbolic, it could provide openings for the masses to act in ways that could be difficult for them to control.
The key thing is that we lead masses of people to act independently of these weasel politicians (exposing them and their system in the process) to actually stop this fascist nomination as part of driving out this fascist regime—or better yet, drive out this fascist regime that is the source of one horror after another, thereby stopping the nomination. And even more, that we constantly bring out that the problem resides within this capitalist-imperialist system itself, that this can only be fundamentally resolved through an actual revolution, and that we work to hasten the development of a revolutionary situation. “Where the conflicts among the ruling forces become really deep and sharp—and masses of people respond to this not by falling in behind one side or the other of the oppressive rulers, but by taking advantage of this situation to build up the forces for revolution.”
The Democrats, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, etc., are seeking to resolve the crisis with the Trump presidency on the terms of this system, and in the interests of the ruling class of this system, which they represent. We, the masses of people, must go all out, and mobilize ourselves in the millions, to resolve this in our interests, in the interests of humanity, which are fundamentally different from and opposed to those of the ruling class.
This, of course, does not mean that the struggle among the powers that be is irrelevant or unimportant; rather, the way to understand and approach this (and this is a point that must also be repeatedly driven home to people, including through necessary struggle, waged well) is in terms of how it relates to, and what openings it can provide for, “the struggle from below”—for the mobilization of masses of people around the demand that the whole regime must go, because of its fascist nature and actions and what the stakes are for humanity.
Clip: "Why is it the Democrats can only try to resolve this on the terms of the system?"
“What Kind of Leadership Do We Need?”
A clip from BA Speaks: REVOLUTION – Nothing Less! In the fall of 2012, Bob Avakian gave a series of talks in different cities. This is a film of one of those talks. Watch the whole film and other selected clips at RevolutionTalk.net
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