OP ED » Mon Oct 10, 2016 7:14 pm wrote:Ah, but I don't believe so much in the power of the Preznit to do anything aside from whatever they're damn well told to do, so I don't have any hopes that voting for one over the other will have any significant impact on the future death tolls.
It's not that the winner is a better or worse person, or has a better or worse record in the past. It is not that the winner is more or less autonomous from the MIC planning and elite policy consensus building.
Rather, I think the nominal meaning of the results matters.
The functional exercise of power is not entirely up to the ostensible elite, and the elite is not fully centralized and scripted. There is dissension among them depending on the conditions they see operant below them, and believe it or not depending on their own views that can vary from assessment of naked class interest. Some of them may be more human than others, I hear.
The rest is up to the amount of resistance that can be mobilized from below.
Under a Trump win there is an understanding that a "majority" backs crushing domestic resistance by any and all means -- that it will be legitimate to unleash the cops on all protest and on the ostensible "chaos" in the cities.
It will also be in his purview, without need of legislation, to order "enforcement" of immigration law in the form of rounding up 11 million people. Imagine the size of that operation. Imagine the chaos that follows as police, ICE and courts are ordered to carry it out, and how many people get swept up in addition, how many fanatics within the police are unleashed, how many people end up shot whether or not they were illegal immigrants.
Under a Clinton win, the same resources will be there for repression, but it will not have the same initial legitimacy, because the nominal meaning of her winning is not the same. It is not a vote for a round-up of the 11 million, even if she might try that (she would not). It is not a vote to unleash the police on the supposed "chaos" in the cities, even if she might try that (very unlikely, though the police will simply continue operating in the same way). It is not a vote for saying that BLM and the movements are terrorist, even if she might try treating them that way (not so unlikely). There is just not initially the same leeway for domestic repression that is considered legitimate. This can change through the development of events, but that's where the struggle comes in.
That means movements of resistance -- against her administration, among other antagonists -- have more room within which to build. That includes potential antiwar movements. So when whatever script is implemented, the cost is potentially higher. That depends on whether there will be mobilization, regardless of outcome.
Trump would come in with the idea that something new has arrived and gets a chance. I do not believe that will be the case with Clinton. It doesn't matter how big her win is -- the bigger the better, in my opinion, even if I'm not voting for her. I've been saying this for 10 years on this damn forum: If you want to see the two-party system break apart, the Republican side has to decline first. They are the real lynchpin, uniting mainly the white conservatives behind an extremism, and causing all the disparate groups who are not white conservatives to band together in fear. Republican power is what keeps the Democratic coalition glued together in fear.
A Clinton victory will be seen mainly as a rejection of Trump, not primarily a legitimation of Clinton. Never mind the corporate media spin, they are also weakening. And instead of fighting this supposedly new but entire scammy phenomenon of Trump, this renewal of the face of the corporate monster, we will be fighting a now visibly united Bush-Clinton establishment that has less legitimacy than ever.
.