Obama on Trump: “We’re All on THE Same Team” (!)

November 14, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us


Barack Obama did two things at his press conference with Donald Trump on Thursday morning after the election. First, he lent all the power and prestige of his office to legitimize a confessed sexual predator, an open racist, a man who has vowed to use his power to torture and murder people whom he deems to be threats, and all the rest. He went all out to smooth the way for this FASCIST to come to power. This is a shameful and low crime, for which people are already paying, and everyone who has supported or even made excuses for Obama up to now needs to confront this.

But Obama also revealed a profound truth. Obama said that he and Trump were members of the “same team,” running a “relay race,” and that the election was an “intramural scrimmage” to see who could best represent that team.

But what is that relay race? A “relay race” for empire and a “relay race” to dominate and plunder the world, a “relay race” driven by the laws of capitalism-imperialism: expand or die. A race that puts billions in a living hell every day. A “relay race” destroying the planet—a destruction that Trump promises to immeasurably accelerate.

And what is that “team”? The team of military assault and domination; the team of the new Jim Crow of mass incarceration, police murder and genocidal persecution of Black and Brown people; the team of the subjugation of women; the team hounding and deporting immigrants and breaking up their families.

So when Obama said, “We're Americans first. We're patriots first,” he told an important truth: both he and Trump put the interests of U.S. imperialism above the interests of humanity. So even if there are real differences—and there are, sometimes quite sharp—at crunch-time moments like now, when those who thought Obama 'stood for' them are roiling with anger, the “team” closes ranks.

The question this poses to you is whether you are an American first. Do you hope, as Obama told you to hope, that Trump’s much more openly vicious and brutal squad of thugs should succeed in maintaining that “team’s” domination? Or do you hope that this whole fascist takeover fails, and are willing to keep fighting to make that happen? Is this your team? And what do we all do in the face of this?


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