[D66] Trump’s State of Delusion

[A.O.]

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/02/01/pers-f01.html

Trump’s State of Delusion
1 February 2018

Amidst the nauseating spectacle of Trump’s State of the Union address on 
Tuesday night, perhaps the most remarkable feature was the inability of 
the ruling class—not only Trump, but also the Democratic opposition and 
the unending stream of media commentary—to deal seriously with any of 
the myriad crises engulfing American and world capitalism.

The State of the Union address was, as originally conceived, intended as 
an occasion for the president to outline to Congress and the American 
people the overall economic, social and geo-political situation facing 
the country. However, over the past four decades, and particularly since 
the Reagan White House, the event has become an increasingly hollow 
charade, full of bombast and empty boasting, incapable of acknowledging 
or referring to the mounting crisis of American capitalism.

This period has seen an accelerating decline in the global economic 
position of the United States. The American ruling class has sought, 
particularly since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, to 
offset its decline by military means. But more than a quarter-century of 
unending war—in the Middle East, the Balkans, Central Asia, and North 
Africa—has produced only an unending series of debacles.

The United States finds itself increasingly isolated in the Middle East, 
challenged economically by a rising China, and estranged from its 
traditional allies in Europe. Last month, the new National Defense 
Strategy suddenly announced that the official justification over the 
past 17 years for war and the buildup of police state powers at home, 
the global “war on terror,” has been supplanted by the preparation for 
“great power conflicts,” i.e., a new world war.

Within the borders of the United States, the decay of social conditions, 
combined with the consolidation of a new financial aristocracy and 
unprecedented levels of economic inequality, have brought class tensions 
to the breaking point. The entire political establishment is discredited 
in the eyes of the broad mass of the working class. Disgust with 
capitalism and interest in socialism are growing.

And amidst the general ruling class euphoria over massive tax cuts for 
the rich and an ever-rising stock market, more sober observers are 
warning of a financial crash even more traumatic than the collapse that 
occurred ten years ago.

The extreme crisis and instability of bourgeois rule in the US is 
manifested in the political warfare that continues to rock Washington, 
with sections of the ruling class and the state openly discussing 
removing Trump from office either through impeachment, invocation of the 
25th Amendment to the Constitution, or forced resignation.

None of this could be hinted at, let alone seriously addressed, in 
Trump’s speech. Instead, Trump presented a fairytale narrative of a 
resurgent America and a happy and grateful population. This was the 
backdrop for a pledge to double down on the policies of militarism, Wall 
Street plunder and repression that have brought the country to the brink 
of a social explosion.

Trump’s attempt to project at the onset of his remarks a tone of 
optimism and confidence in the American people actually pointed to the 
opposite. He praised the American “heroes” who responded to the series 
of disasters over the past year—hurricanes, wildfires, floods, mass 
shootings—all of which exposed in different forms the disastrous state 
of American capitalism. There was no mention of the fact that half a 
million people in Puerto Rico remain without power more than four months 
after Hurricane Maria.

Trump’s fictional America provided the framework for advancing the 
fascistic policies of the financial oligarchy he embodies: preparation 
for nuclear war against Iran, North Korea, Russia, China; anti-immigrant 
racism and economic nationalism; and an expansion of police powers and 
repression, symbolized by his order to keep the Guantanamo camp open and 
send more alleged terrorists there to be tortured and imprisoned 
indefinitely.

The Democratic “opposition” is no more able to address the real issues 
confronting the American people. They are constrained by the fact that 
their main social base—Wall Street—enthusiastically supports Trump’s 
economic policies. The state forces they serve, beginning with the CIA, 
oppose Trump from the standpoint that he is insufficiently aggressive in 
the confrontation with Russia.

They can offer no policies to address the social crisis and promote 
instead a combination of right-wing identity politics and anti-Russian 
war fever, recalling the demagogy of the Joe McCarthy witch-hunts of the 
1940s and 1950s. At the same time, they push anti-democratic campaigns 
such as the #MeToo sex hysteria and the crackdown on free speech on the 
Internet mounted under the fraudulent cover of combating 
Russian-inspired “fake news.”

For the past year, the Democratic Party has devoted all its efforts to 
suppressing mass opposition to Trump and diverting it along reactionary 
and militaristic channels.

As for the corporate-controlled media, its generally laudatory response 
to Trump’s speech was as delusional as the president’s remarks. The 
Washington Post editorial board gushed that Trump’s performance showed 
him to be “a consummate showman, and his stagecraft was top notch.” One 
of its articles carried a headline calling the speech “high-minded.” The 
New York Times’ Ross Douthat proclaimed Trump’s semi-fascistic tirades 
an attempt by Trump to “pitch himself as a centrist dealmaker.”

The inability of the ruling class to address the reality of the 
situation it confronts is itself one manifestation of the disease. The 
real “state of the union” is one of historic and systemic crisis. It is 
the expression in the center of world capitalism of a global crisis that 
confronts mankind with the alternatives of socialism or barbarism, i.e., 
nuclear war and fascist dictatorship. The same crisis that is driving 
the capitalist class to world war is propelling the working class into 
revolutionary struggle.

Barry Grey