Well, here we are, at the end of all things. Trump, moron, rapist, fascist, has returned to power. More to the point, he’s the first Republican to win the “popular” vote (a bit of a misnomer, because of course for the 47th consecutive time, the actual winner of the presidential race was “did not/can not vote” in a landslide). There’s a whole lot of stuff already written about the utter fucking catastrophe of the 2024 election, and I don’t want to be repetitive, but sufficed to say: fuck all fascists, and fuck the corporate soulless monsters of the official “opposition” who lost to one of the stupidest, vilest pieces of shit in history.

Trying to elaborate for myself what exactly Trump’s victory means helps explain it, in part. For example, Harris, VP to a president who oversaw the largest expansion in domestic hydrocarbon production in history (something her boss’s old boss, Obama, bragged about back when HE held the previous record), explicitly refused to follow through on an older promise to ban fracking, promising that oil and gas “had a place” in the “clean energy transition.” It’s hard to see how Trump could do any worse than Biden did and Harris promised to do, honestly; the only real difference between them is that Trump won’t try and hoodwink people with a greenwashing “Infrastructure Renewal Act” like the previous bosses did. Hell, Biden didn’t even lift a finger on one of Trump’s previous oil giveaway cornerstones, the ANWR drilling scheme, until literally hours AFTER Trump won reelection (guaranteeing that he’ll just reverse it after Jan).

You can go down the list and do the same with almost every position: Border Security? Well, Harris was flabbergasted at how the Republicans had the crass gall to REFUSE to vote for the Dem’s hard right anti-migrant bill, so now we get worse than that with the addition of nonstop cruelty theater alongside it. FDA is tanked, so the listeria outbreaks that happened under Biden/Harris will just accelerate and expand, plus we get vaccine denialism!

And, of course, there’s Gaza, which just sums up the whole fucking thing really. Smugly dismissing peace protestors, refusing to even appear to be considering arms reductions let alone embargos to the israelis while giving carte blanche to their well documented genocide and ethnic cleansing, and then being shocked when the good little boys and girls don’t line up to vote for them anyway. Grim, ugly stuff, and now it’ll be grimmer and uglier.

Hell, the Dem’s had a slamdunk in the immensely unpopular overturning of Roe and subsequent surge in abortion bans and resultant fatalities and misery. But, of course, Biden has a well-documented history of anti-abortion sentiments and statements, so he didn’t do shit when he could, and beyond some dolorous platitudes and solemn declarations of vague support, what, exactly, was Harris et al.’s plan? The conspiracist on my shoulder whispers stuff about “a perpetual fund-raising grift” while the grim realist, who is pretty loud these days, shouts “they’re just dumb as hell!”

The big story, of course, is the rightward shift of the “working class” electorate, at least at the national level – we get another four years of navel-gazey punditry about “the working class” and what “they” want. Now, there’re very real material concerns in this country – housing is an insane pipedream for most, rents eat up half or people’s monthly income, and the cost of food is through the roof; only an idiot or a flak would tell you differently. But the idea that the Republican trickle-down bootstrappers in general and Trump and his billionaire buddies in particular are going to do shit about it is maybe one of the darkest jokes I’ve ever heard.

Which brings us to Lenin.

I titled this one “What is to be done?” because, in addition to it being my favorite bit of ol’ Vlad’s writing, it seems pretty goddamn relevant today. If you’ve read it (which you should, it’s good and important), then it’s no surprise why I’m talking about it – the whole point of Lenin’s essay is to clarify that the workers are not going to just spontaneously achieve real class consciousness sittin’ under the Bodhi tree and worrying about wages and the cost of living and their trouble with the bosses. Unconnected, uneducated, and uncoordinated, they’re ripe for the plucking by parasites like Trump and Musk and Thiel, who have a million “explanations” for why the workers are struggling; pointy-headed profs worried about land acknowledgements, perfidious and ambiguously-gendered people that make you feel funny, scary immigrants with their weird customs, alien languages, and willingness to work for less, anyone and everyone but capitalism and the vampires empowered by it. Not even unionism helps here, according to Lenin: you might get concessions and better conditions, but ultimately trade-unionism is just more sectionalism and rank self-interest embedded in capitalist structures of exploitation.

What is to be done is this: active, energetic, and aggressive education about socialism. Strident and uncompressing anti-capitalism, anti-fascism, and anti-imperialism. A clear enunciation of not only economic themes, but also the theoretical underpinnings of capitalist oppression and socialist liberation. Armchair (or, these days, Gaming Chair) Marxists aren’t enough – actual people have to be enrolled in their own liberation, have to be given the opportunity to learn and understand where their alienation and immiseration is coming from in order to fight it.

Now, I’m no vanguardist – I’m right there with El Sup and the Zapatistas in saying that I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards on this planet. The idea of a permanent vanguard is both theoretically loathsome and historically dubious. But no one can deny that americans are enormously and disastrously ignorant – their votes for Trump, a conman whose economic policies are explicitly constructed to help capitalists maximally exploit workers, proves it. The idea that the workers of america are capable of arising to some sort of actually informed understanding of political economy is just patently false, because american society, institutions, and education have been built around actively suppressing that possibility. They can’t even identify their own self interest, so successfully have they been propagandized to by capitalists, instead blaming imaginary immigrant hordes and fictionalized trans student athletes for getting lavish gov’t funding while they can’t feed their families or own a home. The only way to combat that deep-seated bullshit is to make people recognize that truth – that they’ve been lied to their whole damn lives, all in service of shoring up and securing capitalist domination. And only by making it clear how capitalists have used division, prejudice, and hate to cement their own rule and wealth can we hope for any actual liberation.

Now, what that looks like in actual practice is something I don’t know, and I’d guess no one does really, or they’d be doing it. I mean, we remember the debacles of the DSA in the shadow of the first Trump term and how that all turned out, so there’s no easy organizational checklist we can just run down. But with everybody kind of waving their hands and telling us all to “build community,” I feel like this at least offers a little more structure, you know? Like, sure, build community with your neighbors, but you gotta wear your socialism on your sleeve when you’re doing it (and socialism of whatever stripe, mind you – that’s why I keep using the lower-case “s” in socialism [I myself am an anarcho-communist, a fan of Kropotkin and Zapatismo] but, honestly, I don’t give a shit about our cute little internecine theoretical conflicts; so long as we’re all devoutly and sincerely anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, I will call you comrade).

I’d also say that, as important as building community is, sometimes destroying them is just as important. I cannot emphasize it enough – you absolutely cannot be committed to change and liberation and improvement while ALSO maintaining relationships with Trumpists, fascists, vile “respectable” right-wingers, and mealy-mouthed Liberals – if they will not change their minds and denounce their old beliefs, you must break community with those people immediately. Now, I understand that there might be safety or survival issues here, and if you cannot safely escape, then do what you must (but at least piss in their coffee or something). Otherwise, if you can, you must disengage from these people totally. No Holidays, no “can’t we just have a nice family dinner,” no “stop making things awkward,” all of that is why we’re where we’re at today. By all means, give ’em the ol’ socialist pitch, but if they remain unmoved, there has to be consequences, you know? Tell these people to go fuck themselves, loudly and in no uncertain terms, and then move on with your life. There is no other way forward, because these people have already shown that they are immoral, cruel, uncaring monsters who do not respect or love you in any way. Cut them out of your lives like they cancer they are, permanently.

Anyway, that’s about it – just doin’ my usual thing and using this blog to muse via the ol’ “writing is thinking” approach. Not much in the way of catharsis or hope, and I’m sorry about that, but if we can’t live for hope, then let’s live for revenge. And part of that is living well! Get in with your people and stand together, we’re definitely in for some dark times ahead. Oh and buy some damn dried beans and rice and stuff – very easily see the U.S. shifting into mega-ultra-hyperinflation under Secretary of the Treasury Musk very VERY quickly, so you’ll wanna be prepared.

Stay strong, Comrades!