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Just Look At What We Have Done!

May 18, 2026
civil rights, democracy, economy, elections, history, politics, strategy, unions
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If everything looks bad, it’s only because our enemies are flooding the world with lies. In truth, they are cornered rats. I’m not saying that cornered rats are not dangerous, but they can be stomped!

Take a look at what we have already accomplished in 2026:

Crowds at No Kings events have surpassed all previous American protests!

Our labor movement broke 70 years of precedent by condemning Trump’s wars

Our labor movement broke even longer precedent by promoting May 1, International Workers Day

The Alliance for Retired Americans, which has never gone beyond immediate retiree issues, unanimously passed a hot resolution against the war in Iran. It’s a very long and detailed resolution. You can read it on http://retiredamericans.org. Here’s just one paragraph:

”Whereas the price of oil has already risen dramatically and will lead to sharp increases in the prices of many products that are daily necessities for American families, and the cost of this war will fall squarely on the working people of our country, and on our military service members who are being asked to wage a war and sacrifice their well-being, perhaps their lives, with no clear reason or end plan.” 

Let me mention a few other items from today’s news:

Today, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) and 28 co-sponsors introduced the Fair Trade for Working Families Resolution, which outlines new principles for international trade that would prioritize the interests of working people over the profits of multinational corporations.… The resolution is endorsed by the United Steelworkers (USW), United Auto Workers (UAW), AFL-CIO, International Association of Machinists (IAM), Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), Rethink Trade, Public Citizen, Sierra Club, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, the National Family Farm Coalition, and BlueGreen Alliance.

This seems like a good time to note that critical alliances are being formed in the progressive movement!

Here’s more from today’s news:

NYT asked “Do you think Donald Trumps decision to go to war with Iran was the right decision or the wrong decision?” Democrats said yes by 5%, Republians by 22%. And the general population by 30%. 

Thousands rallied in Montgomery for voting rights.  Ap in Dallas newspaper. It’s important to show that the fight goes on.

The Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine says he wants to change the system.  NYT

Editors who usually choose to endorse candidates on the basis that they are probably going to win have chosen labor-endorsed Colin Allred on CD33, Venton Jones on TX100 and Nathan Johnson for Attorney General. Texas primary runoffs are May 26.

Mexican Government Reaffirms Support for Michelle Bachelet’s UN Secretary-General Candidacy  Telesur This one is important because we might get a very progressive Secretary-General, but it also matters considerably that the President of Mexico does not cringe before Trump!

Unions are winning some big victories:

United Airlines Flight Attendants have new contract: The five-year contract includes a 31% base pay rate increase this summer; boarding pay (which averages an 7% to 8% increase to compensation); $741 million in retroactive pay; expanded job security; restrictions on red-eye flying; sit pay for scheduled and rescheduled sits over 2.5 hours; per diem and 401(k) contribution increases; 10 weeks’ paid maternity and two weeks’ paid parental and adoption leaves; elimination of 24 hour on-call reserve and more.  Aflcio

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Texas workers at George R. Brown Convention Center and Houston Entertainment Center just won massive 46% raises!  TX AFL-CIO

I’m not positive how to evaluate this, but I think it’s big news:

Trump went to China, but came back empty handed. One interpretation of Trump’s war in Iran is that it was caused by the undermining of the “petrodollar” by the BRICS countries. Brazil, Russia, India, China and their 25 or so new partners have been trading for everything, including oil, in their own currencies instead of bowing to the United States and using dollars. If this is the reason for the war, and I think it is, then don’t expect it to be over soon. I’ll go so far as to say that the war in Iran will not really be over before the end of November.

–Gene Lantz. I’m on KNON radio at 9AM every Saturday. They podcast it on knon.org. They podcast my “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts on Soundcloud. I podcast them on Spotify under my own name. If you were curious about what I really think, you might look at https://lilleskole.us.

Message to Zeeshan

January 27, 2026
democracy, economy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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To Zeeshan: Why You Matter to Me

I’m wholeheartedly advocating your campaign in Congressional District 33. My reasons may be unique.

It’s not because I dislike the other two candidates. Julie Johnson and Colin Allred have been solid for labor and for retirees. I’ve always liked them both and would have had a hard time choosing between them if you hadn’t come along.

It’s not because I think electing a new congressperson this November will significantly change the awful direction that our nation is going. I am not convinced that we will even have American elections in November.

My reasons for supporting you are strong. They include some specific parts of your program, but are more about the salutary effect you have on our fragmented progressive movement.

I admire what seems to be growing respect between you and another candidate in a different district, Reverend Doctor Frederick Haynes III. You and I are recently acquainted, but I have been listening to Haynes for decades and I have never witnessed a better spokesperson for unity between the civil rights movement and labor. Also, I have never heard him say anything that wasn’t absolutely true.

I was tremendously impressed by your call for shortening working hours without cutting paychecks. I have never heard a candidate with this program, and I don’t believe that even old-timers in the labor movement are likely to remember that “30 for 40 [hours] with no cut in pay” was once a basic demand in the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Shortening the working hours without cutting pay is the only possible solution to the threat of automation. Artificial intelligence, today’s most prominent form of automation, is being promoted fanatically by big business and the Trump Administration. It has one and only one purpose: layoffs. Even though artificial intelligence is in its first stages, America is already in a jobs crisis, and it will get worse unless we shift to your solution.

The other proposals for fighting automation and artificial intelligence are tragedies. They consist of minor attempts at legislative regulation and, most forlorn hope of all, controlling automation with union contracts. 90% of American workers don’t even have a union contract!

Ordinary progressive spokespersons are insufficient in these times, because these are not normal times. We are facing an aspiring fascist dictatorship that can only be stopped by a strong, intelligent, and well-integrated people’s movement. Judges haven’t stopped it, and neither have legislatures, nor will they.

We need spokespersons like you who understand the threat, can clarify it for others, and can point us toward solutions. Most particularly, you have the potential to help overcome the boss-invented divisions that are holding us back. Racism and chauvinism are the best known of these sociological maladies, but jingoism must also be overcome. For far too long, some of our political representatives have voted well enough on domestic issues, but they almost inevitably failed us on international ones.

Your message of unity is the same that Dr. King expressed at Riverside Church in 1967. He tried to heal the rifts dividing labor, civil rights, and the peace movement. Dr King is gone but the rifts remain, until now when we finally have an opportunity for clarity and unity.

President Trump is spending almost $1 trillion dollars on the military, and he recently called for a 50% increase! The main beneficiaries of American militarism are oil companies. He isn’t making America great, he is making rich America obscenely richer.

America is running out of time. Spokespersons like you have to explain the danger and put forward the only possible solution – unity!

That’s why I’m on board for Zeeshan Hafeez.

Buckle Seat Belts for 2026

December 26, 2025
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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By Gene Lantz

“Expect the worst and hope for the best.” – Accountant’s credo

The Worst

The world economic system will continue to tremble and quake

American manufacturing and the stock market will rise without improving the jobs situation

Artificial intelligence will gobble up jobs and tremendously worsen the jobs crisis that is already underway

Income disparity, juiced up by Trump policies, will drastically worsen

Communications, especially cell phone communications, may end healthy competition and become even more of an oligopoly

In the electoral arena, candidates will be straining to find a “middle” in an increasingly divided electorate

Mister Trump, who has already shown that he will stop at nothing to maintain and extend his power, will likely start a war and implement martial law as his continuing drive toward fascism continues

Unions will refuse to recognize the new situation and continue the exact policies that have so far lost nearly ¾ of our peak density

Millions will not be able to afford decent health care. Emergency rooms will be overrun

The Best

In the electoral arena, candidates will be forced to clarify their intentions during 2026. Where I live in Dallas, labor will pressure all candidates to reveal their stand on Gaza

Unions will be more aggressive in the electoral arena. Where I live, we are working on two union members running in the January 31 special election. Two Steelworkers have filed for statewide races in the coming primaries.

A growing but unguided mass movement against dictatorship has exploded

More and more people are figuring out the dangers and what to do about it

Some unions are discarding old ways and implementing a larger reliance on our magnificent popularity in the general population of workers

Youth and retirees, two sectors recently encouraged by the labor movement, are growing and adding muscle

The Starbucks workers, using a combination of strike and boycott simultaneously, are showing all workers how use labor’s popularity against the bosses. On December 22 alone, 19 Starbucks stores signed up for union elections.

The Indicators

Nearly all of this analysis comes from information gathered during the past week, and especially on Christmas Day when the Washington Post published ten charts describing the current U.S. economic situation.

Gold and silver prices set new records. The usual “gold bug” speculators are buying precious metals of course, but major investors and some governments are also buying them. Precious metals pay no dividends, but they are a haven of safety for those who think a worldwide financial crisis is imminent.

Two major financial indicators, a soaring stock market and an expected increase in manufacturing, are both rooted in investment in artificial intelligence. Investors are buying into it and energy-gobbling data center building way up and projected to be gigantic. At the same time, the labor movement is “cool.” Although Trump’s anti-labor policies explain some of the labor market problems, the main problem now and in the future is job-killing artificial intelligence. The same thing lifting the stock market and manufacturing in America is driving down the jobs market.

The union response, so far, is to try to contain artificial intelligence through union contracts. Even if this were possible, it wouldn’t solve the problem because most workers, more than 90%, have no union contracts. As the bosses without unions implement artificial intelligence to lower their production costs, they will undermine all workers, including those with union contracts.

Income disparity is the illness afflicting all workers worldwide. Among the many alarming reports comes this sentence from the current week by Politico: “Bank of America says its top account holders saw take-home pay climb 4 percent over the last year, while income growth for poorer households grew just 1.4 percent.” Even though inflation held at 3% during the past year and dropped to 2.7% for November, it’s still a lot higher than income growth for poorer households.

All of the major tech companies have hitched themselves to the Trump agenda, and for good reason. They produce artificial intelligence, and they all know that artificial intelligence is Trump’s main hope to lower production costs enough to outperform China and other worldwide economic competitors. “Lower production costs” is a euphemism for  fewer jobs.

Elon Musk, in many ways the master tech investor, has practically cornered the market in communications satellites. He has already bought the software and established the partnership with T-Mobile that he needs to change all cell phone communications to satellite. Everybody who currently works in cell phone tech is in danger. The Communications Workers of America have a vital boycott against T-Mobile, but it hasn’t yet achieved nationwide participation.

Just two recent election results are sufficient to show the strain in the electoral arena. Mister Trump successfully used the power of the United States government to overcome the progressive government of Honduras. He failed to do the same in the New York Mayoral race. Candidates in 2026 will find it difficult to dodge the issues important to working people. For example, the Dallas Central Labor Council voted to pressure all candidates who apply for endorsement to reveal their positions on the genocide in Gaza.

War in Latin America is imminent. The Trump Administration has already discarded every aspect of international law and human decency in its attacks against Venezuela. So far, they have managed to resist the provocations, but Trump isn’t finished. He needs the popularity of a wartime presidency and, if it becomes necessary to maintain power, he needs an excuse to implement martial law and end democracy once and for all.

Our unions have taken hardly any positions on the coming war nor on any of the pressing international questions. Domestically, we continue to try to organize more workplaces under the rules set in the early Roosevelt Administration. We continue to try to use our diminishing membership base to affect legislative change, just as we have since around 1947 when we had 35% of the American workforce organized. Today, we have closer to 9%.

So… Why Are We Smiling?

Clearly, the Trump Administration and the billionaires it leads are flailing around in desperation. They aren’t acting out of strength nor confidence, but like boat wreck survivors trying anything and everything to cling to life. They have very little thought of what they are doing, and they are being led by an unstable person.

Democracy has taken hits, but is a long way from disappearing in a country convinced, for 250 years, that democracy is best. The worldwide system of governance is very weak against a super power, but it has the credibility of all caring people.

Our anti-war movement may seem small, but the structures created in earlier upsurges still exist and are ours to use. Our unions may seem small and timid, but we still have the power to  shut down the major intersections of economic and social life. Organizations close to the unions, especially the youth and senior movements, are growing stronger.

Candidates in 2026 will be pressured to take our side, and more of them will

People are catching on. We have the communications ability for accelerated strategic progress. We haven’t yet agreed on a plan of coordinated mass resistance, but we are clearly headed that way.

Trump Must Start a War and End Democracy

November 15, 2025
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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In a recent discussion, I asserted that Trump will start a war soon, most likely against Venezuela. Nobody agreed.

They all said that Trump is doing everything possible to achieve a regime change in Venezuela, but won’t go as far as starting a war.

Some of them took a military view and said that he doesn’t have enough troops – estimated at “only” 15,000 – ln the Caribbean. The other 2.1 million Americans “under arms” are reserves or are deployed elsewhere.

Others took a psychological view and said that Trump is a coward who likes to create chaos but doesn’t really have the courage to start an actual war.

And Trump could never face the international condemnation that has already begun, they said. The murders already carried out on the high seas were “trial balloons” that have already brought harsh criticism from abroad.

Lastly, people said that Trump could not risk any further deterioration in his approval ratings in the U.S.. Public opinion, in other words, will restrain him.

In summary, my friends say that Trump is attempting to “create chaos” and to bluff the Venezuelans into an uprising leading to regime change. But all of the above reasons, my friends say, will prevent him from actually making war.

I replied that their logic was understandable in normal times, but we are not in normal times. No one living today knows what to do with the situation in the United States, because we have never faced it. The best path to understanding is to look at other autocracies in other countries and from other periods, inexact as that may be.

Here is the Situation

Here is my description of the current situation. It will be followed by the unassailable conclusion that Trump is going to start a war before 2027 unless the restraining force of the American people grows exponentially higher than it is today. Most of my information comes from common news sources, mostly the Washington Post.

“As of Friday (November 14), there were seven U.S. warships in the Caribbean: the guided missile cruisers USS Gettysburg and USS Lake Erie; the destroyers USS Gravely and USS Stockdale; and the amphibious ships USS Iwo Jima, USS Fort Lauderdale and USS San Antonio. The Ford was nearby in the Atlantic with the destroyers USS Mahan, USS Bainbridge and USS Winston S. Churchill.” Wapo 11/15/25

Amphibious ships carry armed personnel, usually Marines, to foreign shores. Guided missile cruisers, aircraft carriers and destroyers are just what they say they are. The United States is the greatest military power that the world has ever seen. As their world economic hegemony diminishes, and whatever goodwill they might have enjoyed is thrown away by Trump,  military power is all they have left.

The Trump Administration raised the bounty on the President of Venezuela to $50 million. “Operation Southern Spear” has blown up a number of boats and killed their passengers. Trump asserts, without any evidence, that they were all carrying drugs from Venezuela to the United States. Hardly anybody with any knowledge agrees.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation announced in October that the Venezuelans had foiled a “false flag” attempt to blow up the U.S. Embassy. Newspersons here discounted the report. The U.S. State Department suspended operations at its Caracas embassy in March 2019. If the embassy had been destroyed with any loss of American life, Trump would have had a welcome excuse for military action.

NBC News announced that the U.S. Department of State has categorized Venezuela as Level 4: Do Not Travel due to crime, civil unrest, etc. They proclaimed that Americans should not travel to Venezuela and that they should avoid the Venezuela-Colombia border.

The Trump Administration has already sent armed troops into several cities. He told a meeting of top military leaders that they might be practicing on the U.S. citizenry. Partly because of Trump’s disdain for morality and law, his approval ratings have been falling.

Even though newspersons focused on Trump’s disappointment at not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, it actually went to a certain Maria Corina Machado. Machado has been a long-time advocate of U.S. intervention in Venezuela. On November 14, an article ran in the Washington Post describing how she is lining up corporate leaders with promises of privatization and protection of American corporations as they raid Venezuelan wealth, especially oil.

In November, in spite of gerrymandering and myriad schemes to undermine the election process, Republicans were humiliated at the polls. Democrats and pundits began predicting a Blue Wave of victory against Trump in 2026.

How Do I Know Trump Will Create a War?

There are several good arguments and one unassailable one. Begin with American presidents in history. Most of us can’t name them all, but we can name the “important” ones like Washington, Jackson, TR Roosevelt,  Franklin Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. All of them were warriors. More recently, Bush the First tried to portray himself as tough by invading Iraq, but was criticized for pulling back without achieving regime change. His son learned the lesson, re-invaded oil-rich Iraq, and enjoyed two relatively strong terms of office. Iraq and Venezuela, by the way, are famous for their oil reserves.

But no one can understand today’s situation in the U.S. simply with domestic examples. Our present situation is entirely new. Look, instead, at other countries and other times. Trump is a fascist and all fascists are military leaders. Fascism doesn’t just define its relationship to the populace. It also defines its economic policies and its relationship to the rest of the world. Trump, so far, has followed in the footsteps of such notable fascists as Franco, Pinochet, Mussolini and Hitler – except that he has not yet claimed the title of military leader.

For those who are unconvinced, I ask them to look at posts on social media. Many posts are already calling for criminal proceedings against Trump and the Trumpsters. Their disdain for morality and law has clearly put them into the criminal class. They know it. They see the same social media posts that you do.

If the Trumpsters were to lose power, they would be subject to criminal charges and would risk spending the rest of their lives in prison. Furthermore, they know it. They must, therefore, stay in power.

In order to stay in office and out of jail, they need a war to give them special powers, including the power to declare martial law and use the military against the populace. That’s why they have to do it.

No one has a chance of stopping them except us.

The Billionaires Must Be Removed from Power

April 23, 2025
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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The for-profit economic system must be ended. Today’s unprecedented political activity must be turned toward ending this system and birthing a new system of cooperation and democracy. The opportunity is now and may soon pass by, just as two great opportunities were missed in 20th century history.

Great hordes of protesters are springing up like grass on the Earth. They are fearless and strong, but not united in purpose. In America, many of them believe that they need only to replace Musk and Trump with Democrats. They are mistaken, and, if they don’t achieve a better understanding, will probably fail even in their modest hopes. Even if they succeed, they will have solved nothing except, perhaps, a delay in fascism.

Look behind the Musk/Trump fascist spokespersons at the underlying economic situation and our place in material history.

Musk and Trump are powerful figureheads, but figureheads still. The other politicians, newspersons, judges, and law firms kneeling before Musk/Trump give a clue to the breadth of the fascist trend. The power behind it all is the billionaire class.

The billionaire class would not have chosen comic madmen and unpopular ideology if they weren’t desperate. In fact, the capitalists are aware that they are drowning in a thrashing sea. Musk/Trump and fascism, they hope, will at least keep them afloat until they can find a way to restore the profit streams that keep them alive as a class. In their desperation, and because they have no conscience, they are willing to bring about a third world war – this time against China.

Armchair socialists who believe that world war is impossible and that capitalism will die of self-inflicted wounds, aren’t helping.

 Capitalism will not die of its own internal contradictions, as some bookish “Marxists” choose to believe. Like flatworms cut in half, capitalism can regenerate its missing parts.

This was demonstrated after World War I and again after World War II. In those wars, hundreds of millions died, many more suffered lifelong debilitations, and the wealth of ages was destroyed or converted into military equipment that was either blown to smithereens or discarded as useless later on. Afterward, the capitalists who had won picked up and went on to create a new phase of prosperity for themselves.

In 1914 and again in 1939, capitalism’s internal contradictions brought the system to the precipice of extinction just as Marx and Engels had predicted. But nineteenth century Marx and Engels had no experience with mechanized world war. The twentieth century bosses didn’t step aside in acknowledgement of the fact that history had already outlived them and they had nothing progressive to offer the human race. Instead, they set themselves at each other like cannibals and came close to destroying everything.

After the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were evaporated, it was commonly thought that a third world war was impossible, since the existence of the planet was at stake. Bookish “Marxists” took comfort in believing that world war had become simply impossible and that the internal contradictions explained by Marx, usually described as the tendency of the profit rate to decline, was still operating to bring the bosses to their eventual knees.

Past bosses had no qualms about ordering millions of automated deaths nor of destroying civilization’s wealth. In fact, a lot of them did quite well in the wartime economy. The bosses on the winning side also reaped a bonanza in post-war prosperity.

Even though the corporate-owned newspersons describe the Musk/Trump regime as chaotic and senseless shenanigans, they have a clear purpose that is completely in line with the wishes of the billionaire class that sponsors them. They intend to bring everyone possible under their control and to direct them, like a collective battering ram of nations, corporations and individuals, against their economic adversary — China. A trade war is hardly the beginning, because only the mighty U.S. military might be able to overcome China’s commercial advantages.

If the billionaires are not stopped and removed from power, they will sooner or later carry out a third world war at immeasurable cost to the people and the planet. That’s how they handled their inevitable internal crises before; that’s how they will handle them again, unless they are stopped.

Why Raise Birth Rates?

April 23, 2025
civil rights, democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy, women
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My friend Charlotte recently asked, “In an overpopulated world, why are Trump and other national leaders trying to raise birth rates?” I thought it was a profound question and one that deserves careful examination.

Birth rates in various countries get published every now and then. Like record high gold prices, though, they aren’t considered very fundamental to what’s going on. Or maybe, like gold prices, birth rate statistics reveal a lot more than the oligarchs want us to know.

Charlotte’s insightful question generates some other interesting questions:

  • “Why are reactionaries, especially religious reactionaries, opposed to birth control?”
  • “If reactionaries want more children, why don’t they want to take care of them?”
  • ”If they had higher birth rates, wouldn’t they get more unemployment, especially as automation eats our jobs away? Doesn’t rising automation, especially artificial intelligence, argue for our needing fewer workers?”
  • “Trump says he wants more population, so why is he against immigration?”

I got this from a web site:

Pronatalism in the US: The Trump administration’s push for more births

“Right-wing governments and figures with nationalistic tendencies (including Trump) also want to increase birth rates to maintain a strong military and to counter ethnic, racial, and cultural diversification from immigration. These types of leaders often embrace the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory which states that white people are being “replaced” with foreign non-white populations that have higher birth rates. As well as opposing immigration, these governments are hostile to reproductive health and rights, especially abortion care.

‘Probably the most influential pronatalist in the Trump administration is the richest man on Earth and father-of-14 Elon Musk, who bought his new position as Trump’s right-hand man with a $288 million campaign donation. Musk has been trying to sow panic over declining birth rates for years, claiming that the human population is on the verge of collapse due to people having small families, and that low birth rates present a “much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”

Birth rates weren’t much of an issue before hard-fighting women were able to win some control over what happens to their own bodies. Check out the tough life of Margaret Sanger to see more about that long and terrible fight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger

In the mid-1960s, it looked like women and progress had finally won in America and some other countries. More recently, the oligarchs have pushed women’s rights way backwards. Again, Charlotte might ask, “Why?”

The answer lies in the economic nature of world capitalism. Each nation is pitted against the others, and the chief way they compete is with cheap labor. Whoever drives down the cost of labor lowest, beats the other competitors. Nations that have more workers, naturally, get lower labor costs.

What we call a “nation” and what more scientific people call a “state” is actually a political subdivision run by its ruling class. For the major nations, that ruling class is the capitalist class, which might also be called the owning class, or the billionaire class, or, in our case, the oligarchs. They compete with each other economically until they’ve vacuumed up every bit of profit possible. Then they go to war against each other.

They need higher birth rates for their wars, too.

‘Tis the Final Conflict

March 3, 2025
democracy, economy, history, politics, strategy
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“Tis the final conflict / Let each stand in their place…”

“Agrupemos todos, en la lucha final…”

The words to “l’Internacional” are ringing in my ears. The first 100 days of the Musk/Trump administration are only chaos to most people, but I think I have figured out a correct analysis, characterization, and prescription. I’ve been asking people individually if they agreed or disagreed over the past week or so. Nobody has outright agreed with me, but nobody has contradicted me, either. More importantly, nobody else has any kind of description other than “chaos.”

Here’s what I think: capitalism is in its death throes.

The ruling class, the owning class, the billionaire class, or the boss class as I like to call them, is thrashing about. Although the fascists achieved a majority in the Republican Party, they haven’t completely taken over all the bosses in both boss parties. And they are a long way from having convinced the majority of the American people. The bosses are clutching at fascism the way a drowning man clings to anything that he thinks will float.

Fascism, by the way, doesn’t float. It isn’t a viable way to run an economy. Slaves don’t make good employees. They tend to let the machines break and spit in the bosses’ food. If they try to run the American economy under fascism, they won’t last long. The only reason Hitler was able to hang on for 12 years was his early success in war.

So even if they manage to impose fascism, as they are clearly trying to do, they won’t have solved their problem. Their problem is world competition. Musk and Trump are offering to solve the problem by bringing all their so-called allies to heel (thus the crazy tariffs) and getting everybody to focus on defeating China (thus the effort to change Russia into an ally). Defeating China will require a nuclear war, and they know that. At the same time and for the same reason, they are offering to continue destroying the planet ecologically. To carry all this out, they need the absolute cooperation of all the boss class (thus the tax giveaway) and the total subservience of the working class (thus the moves to starve us into giving up). The result, if it worked, would be a temporary period of unstable fascism.

Long term, there are two possible outcomes: 1) America’s working class unites and puts an end to boss rule, which would effectively end capitalism worldwide 2) Not an alternative.

Either way, the system just doesn’t work any more. It is up to us to work for understanding, for unity, and for action to bring a bright new dawn for humanity. We need to hurry!

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org and 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9. My personal web site has been bothered by adware but seems to be working OK at last: https://lilleskole.us.

What Did You Expect?

February 9, 2025
democracy, economy, education, elections, environment, history, politics, strategy
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I think I like “what did you expect?” better than all the political phrases being bandied around today.

Let me point out why these times we are in have promise that is far more important than the misery that is being put onto working families. The promise won’t be seen by any but those who are genuine change agents who are in it for the long haul, but that’s including more and more people as the veils fall from everybody’s eyes.

The thing that is wrong with the world, you probably have figured out, is the profit system. A small group of legal “owners” profits while everybody else is exploited more and more. When you realize the truth, you should see, almost immediately, that it can’t go on forever. Sooner or later capitalism must capsize just because of its own internal workings.

Long ago, capitalism was a good thing. It freed the slaves and the serfs. It lowered the price of commodities. It provided education to the masses so that they could work its machines. It did good things, but the price was high.

One of the main prices was world war. In 1914, by my own estimation, capitalism started to produce more misery than good. I think a lot of people caught on then, and that’s why we began to see a serious socialist movement worldwide. Another really good example is the degradation of our planet. Capitalism is making it unlivable and more and more people are realizing it.

Capitalism could kill or intimidate many socialists, but they could never extinguish its flame.

People continue to catch on, and new capitalist technology, especially personal smart phones, helped us tremendously. Here in the United States, we began to see the system, including the two-capitalist-party electoral system, for what it is. That caused us to cast about for some other approach, or some other system, or for some other leadership. Predictably, we tend to opt for what seems the easiest route. But what we want is a better world for ourselves and our offspring, and none of the easy ways will provide it.

So here we are. Fires and floods threaten everybody. More war is on the agenda. The entire world monetary system is being rocked. The American dollar, secure and reliable since the destruction of World War II, is being abandoned piecemeal. The owning class, now largely billionaires, is desperately trying to maintain their rule by turning to fascism. In other words, capitalist rule is shuddering toward its death agony.

It might be the end of the world, but it might be only the end of the profit system. Did you think it would be pretty? What did you expect?

–genelantz19@gmail.com

It’s not Biden, it’s the System!

December 17, 2023
democracy, economy, elections, history, politics, strategy
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Last week’s Pew Poll revealed that President Biden’s approval rating has continued to fall and has reached a dismal 33%! If we put some perspective around that figure, we can discover something really worth knowing. Think about it, how could Biden’s approval ratings keep falling while the economy keeps improving?

Compare Biden to Other World Leaders

The Los Angeles Times checked approval ratings of other world leaders of industrialized nations.

Canada’s Justin Trudeau 31%

Britain’s Rishi Sunak 21%

Germany’s Olaf Sholz 17%

Japan’s Fumio Kishida 17%

They added in several more observations. Donald Trump’s approval is harder to measure but they give him a measly 42%. While President Biden started his term with well over 50%, Trump never had over 49%.

Compare Approval Ratings over Time

The Los Angeles newspaper also checked back a few decades and concluded that President Eisenhower (1952-1960) was the last one to keep decent approval ratings all the way. That was in the days of the “American Century” when unions demanded and received 3% raises every year, plus cost-of-living raises, plus pensions, plus free health care. After Eisenhower, every American president started out with over 50% and then fell steadily to the end of their term.

The evidence shows clearly that declining approval ratings can’t be blamed on any of the simple things. It’s not the person’s age, not the state of the economy, not war, not peace, not scandal, not any of the issues of any particular period. It has to be something big, something powerful, and something consistent.

Once You See It, Things Make Sense

People in America and other industrialized countries do not like the system they live under. It’s that simple.

Want to know why Trump won in 2016 in spite of every possible prediction? Voters thought he represented some kind of new system. What they got was tax cuts for the rich and an intensification of everything that was wrong with the old system, but many of them are still desperate for some kind of positive change, and many of them, incredible as it may seem, will continue to hang those hopes on Donald Trump.

The system we live under produces the worst kind of inequality. We could call it the “rich get richer and poor get poorer” system. Just last week, in the same newspapers, we read that the stock market had peaked and, that same week, homelessness in American also reached an all-time historical high! If you read carefully, you would also have seen that the number of young Americans who expect to vote in the 2024 Presidential race is tanking!

It isn’t just Biden, Trump, Trudeau and the rest of them that can’t get high approval ratings. It wouldn’t help much to substitute other Democrats for Biden or other Republicans for Trump. We would still have the same system and approval ratings would continue falling!

Change Will Come, Because It Must

My recent blogs and podcasts have been about the outlook for fascism, for a general strike, and a viable workers’ party. Those are the trends underway, and we’d better be working hard for one of the last two.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON’s “Workers Beat” radio talk show every Saturday at 9AM Central Time. On Wednesdays, they post my “Workers Beat Extra” podcasts on Soundcloud.com. If you are curious about what I really think, try my personal web site at http://lilleskole.us.