Racist lies from warmonger in chief

Politicians lie. That’s no secret. They lie to get elected. Then if they get elected they lie after they take office.

Up until now, they have mixed in some truth to boost their credibility. Not so with the current occupant of the White House. His Feb. 24 State of the Union speech — at almost two hours the longest recorded by any U.S. president — was pretty much all lies.

Trump lied about inflation and the price of gasoline. He lied about jobs. He lied about taxes, Medicaid and so-called crime. And he repeated the false, tired lies about the “stolen” 2020 election. Etc., ad nauseam.

Trump lied about an alleged nuclear threat from Iran, without hinting at his war plans, carried out just four days later.

Perhaps the most despicable parts of a totally disgusting and bigoted speech were the oft-repeated racist, xenophobic lies about superoppressed migrant workers. And the blatant attack on the trans community.

But the challenge for working-class revolutionaries is not how to debunk the bulls—t Big Lies of the warmonger in chief. The liberal bourgeois media is doing an adequate job of that. 

Our challenge is how to mount the resistance to Trump’s fascist agenda — a resistance that both capitalist parties want to keep in check. 

We can’t rely on  the Democratic Party or focus on the November elections. That was made crystal clear in the “Democratic response” to the State of the Union speech, given by recently elected Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger. Her talk was steeped in national chauvinism, referring to the “long and storied history of the United States of America being a force for good” and the “spirit of our forefathers.” 

These comments hid the true history – that the leading forefathers carried out genocide against Indigenous people and were enslavers of African Americans. Spanberger attacked China and Russia and ended her talk with the same conclusion as Trump’s: “God Bless America.” (pbs.org, Feb. 24)

Why didn’t any Democratic members of Congress walk out when Black Rep. Al Green of Texas was escorted out of the Capitol for holding up a sign protesting Trump’s white supremacist video attacking Black people? Or when immigrant guests Aliya Rahman and Marcelo Gomes da Silva were removed and Rahman was arrested and needed to be hospitalized?  

It was really the “No work, no school, no shopping” actions in Minneapolis and beyond that laid a foundation for an independent, united, classwide movement of workers and oppressed people. That movement has to build on the general strikes that shut down Minneapolis on Jan. 23 and Jan. 30 and organize around all of the issues our class camp faces — from Immigration and Customs Enforcement attacks to wars against Venezuela and Iran to the genocide in Palestine to mass layoffs and union busting. 

Growing that movement in the streets, workplaces, schools and communities and tying all of the struggles together is the only way forward.