With Less Than A Week To Go In The American Election Circus- Where Is Leon Trotsky When You Need Him

By Frank Jackman

 

"Speak the truth no matter how bitter,” was a mantra that the great Russian evolutionary and civil war military leader Leon Trotsky was fond of quoting when there was nothing but dust being blown in the faces of the masses, of the working stiffs from the factories who were the backbone of the Bolshevik cause when the deal when down in October, 1917, when to not speak the truth would have turned the whole damn thing on its head. Now it is probably is sacrilege, no, it is sacrilege to mention the name Leon Trotsky in the same breathe, no, the same sentence, no, on the same page and so on as the two reprobates running for the office of official warmonger-in-chief of the United States, hereafter call the President, one Hillary Clinton and one Donald Trump but these are harsh times for revolutionaries. Hard times for any truth-tellers but unfortunately we don’t always get to choose what we are up against, what we need to comment on. 

Now several years ago, maybe late 2007, early 2008 when one Barack Obama made his presence felt on the American national political stage and sought to slay the dragon, to slay what we would come to find out was the dragon lady but who just then was in the first blush of her endless drive to win the Oval Office I noted that the Hillary-Obama race for the Democratic Party nomination looked like a breath of fresh air and although I would not have voted for either for love nor money I decided to try to chronicle the beginning storms of the campaign that year. (In the interest of full disclosure I voted for Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party that year a natural choice as a black and woman with a political past which she need not be ashamed of and who had at least a passing acquaintance with the truth-a big plus that year after all the bullshit was cleared away)   

Early on though somewhere around the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary (which Hillary won and kept her campaign alive) in 2008 I gave up the enterprise as so much blather and as so much hot air and realized that the “promise” of 2007 had turned to ashes as neither candidate could give the approximate location of the truth in a time when all hell was breaking loose in the economy and working people, the working poor were being beaten down mercilessly by what would be called the Great Recession of 2008. And as we witness in 2016 working people, hard-working working people of all ethnic, racial and gender identifications have been taking it on the chin lo these many years. Taken it on the chin so they have in some cases fervently listened as one Dump the Trump (sorry I could not resist that slam, not the worst thing that will ever happen to that ill-bred bastard) lulls them to sleep with his balderdash, with his contempt for those who have so fervently supported him despite any good sense. We will find no truth coming from anywhere in that precinct. Worse this year milady Hillary has lost all her slight girlish charms from 2008 and is frothing at the mouth in anticipation of next week’s coronation as war-monger-in-chief.      

Here is the hard truth, the truth neither billionaire Donald nor Wall Street Hillary have a clue about. For working people, for the hard-working people of this country who have been put up against the wall and blindfolded for a while now there is no salvation this side of capitalism, this side of that  defunct system that has had its day and had long ago lost any progressive content that it had in its golden age. “Speak the truth no matter how bitter” and that is the bitter truth as we will, once again learn over the next dreary four years. Yeah, Leon Trotsky was right, would have said it himself if he was not beyond the pale. You heard it here-think about it okay.