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printer-friendly version www.NewDemocracyWorld.org Eighty-six percent of Trump supporters want to remove the rich from power, have real--not fake--democracy, with no rich and no poor. They are, in other words, in favor of an egalitarian revolution, just like huge numbers of people who did not vote for Trump. Eight percent of Trump supporters, on the other hand, are adamantly opposed to egalitarianism and are quite possibly as racist and selfish as the fiercest critics of Trump supporters asserts all of them are. How, you may ask, can I possibly claim that 86% of Trump supporters want an egalitarian revolution? Because I did an experiment. I went to a rally of Trump supporters--as hard core Trump supporters as one could imagine: all white, wearing the red Trump caps, etc. I politely approached fifty of them at random and asked if they thought the message on my button, pictured below, was a good idea or a bad idea. Not only did 43 of the 50 (86%) say the button's message was a good idea, but all forty-three gladly accepted the button when I offered it to them, and many pinned the button on their shirt right on the spot; one woman even offered me a cold bottle of water (it was a very hot day) in appreciation of my giving out the buttons. Only four of the fifty (8%) were hostile (only verbally, but very hostile!). Three said they didn't know what they thought. I posted a more detailed report of this experiment on Facebook July 23, 2016, the day I did it, and that report is copied in full below for your convenience. The reason 86% of Trump supporters voted for Trump was to send a giant "Fuck You" to the establishment that Clinton obviously represented. Trump won the election. So what now? Should we demand that members of the electoral college who are pledged to Trump vote instead for Clinton, the establishment candidate, as many people are doing? Trump supporters interpret these demands as nothing but liberal/Leftists yelling "Fuck You" to them for having rejected the establishment. Or should we figure out how to build an egalitarian revolutionary movement that a) welcomes the 86% of Trump supporters who want an egalitarian revolution and b) persuades them to view the 8% of Trump supporters for what they really are: people who, despite agreeing with the 86% about things such as the right to bear arms, nonetheless have fundamentally anti-egalitarian racist values and goals that are the opposite of the 86%'s goals. Isn't it a no-brainer? For some people, apparently not. Some people think the most important thing is to demonstrate against Trump, declare all Trump supporters as "haters" and try to get the electoral college to install Clinton as president. Unfortunately this only increases the division of ordinary Americans just as Big Money has done with its divide-and-rule schemes for a very long time. Trump and Clinton each expressed views in phony debates--about race and Muslim refugees and illegal Hispanic immigrants: views that Big Money has carefully orchestrated to divide-and-rule Americans. In fact Trump and Clinton are a team on the side of Big Money, but I admit--it's not obvious. It is explained here. Building Unity Among Ordinary Americans is FAR More Important than Who Sits in the Oval Office Whoever is innaugurated January 20, the billionaires who run the country will remain billionaires who run the country. They were never elected and cannot be un-elected. Any sitting president will know the CIA killed JFK when he went against the billionaires by trying to end the Cold War.* That's why American presidents behave so much like each other despite being from different parties and making different campaign promises: they all fear and obey the same billionaire class. The person in the Oval Office is the CEO of America, Inc. Like any other CEO the president will be allowed to make important decisions as long as the Board of Directors are confident the decisions are at least not seriously threatening to their interests. The billionaire "board of directors" of America, Inc. have, as their #1 interest, remaining in power. This requires keeping ordinary Americans sufficiently divided against each other that they never are able to take over and make the United States a genuine democracy that the vast majority want it to be. The only sensible answer to the question, "What Now?," is to forget about who is sitting in the Oval Office and start talking to our fellow Americans about what they REALLY want. We'll discover that the vast majority want to remove the rich from power, have real--not fake--democracy with no rich and no poor. Here are sixty-eight random people on the streets of Boston in this video replying to the same question about the button that I asked the Trump supporters. Ninety-one percent said the button's message was a good (or even great!) idea. It is very possible to build an egalitarian revolutionary movement. But we won't do it unless we are confident that it's what most ordinary Americans --no matter who they voted for--REALLY want. Big Money wants us to remain hopelessly divided against each other. This is the very reason why the plutocracy holds elections in the first place. It's a trap. We cannot win a damn thing if we don't break out of this trap. Go here to see how you can break out of the trap, starting by finding out what the ordinary Americans in your neck of the woods really want. What now? Take this first step towards building an egalitarian revolutionary movement. My visit to a rally of Trump supporters on July 23, 2016 Today I went buttoning at the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL, at goal.org, is a Massachusetts chapter of the NRA) rally at the State House in Boston. The rally was focused on opposing the Massachusetts Attorney General's decision to eliminate a loophole that allowed people to purchase so-called "assault" weapons, and to defend the 2nd Amendment more generally. I arrived at 10 am, which is when the Boston Globe said the rally would start, but when I got there it was already well underway, with about three hundred or so people listening intently to the speeches. Everybody was crowded tightly together because of the layout of the place (people were on the "Common" side of the street that is between the State House and the Common), and facing the speakers, so when I arrived from Park St. station I could only see people's backs, and had to somehow get their attention so they would turn around and look at the PDR button and answer my "Good idea or bad idea?" question. It wasn't too hard though. The rally only lasted 45 minutes after my arrival and then dispersed. During that time I "buttoned" people, many of whom were holding American flags or flags supporting the right to bear arms, or NRA caps or shirts. A fair number of people wore Trump "Make America Great Again" hats. Unlike the GOAL rally on the Boston Common a few years ago, which I attended, this crowd seemed all white, and (like the crowd from a few years ago) was mostly from out of town--Western (and rural) Massachusetts mainly I believe. Buttoning Results When I asked people if the message on the button (or my PDR T-shirt with the button image on its front) was a good idea or a bad idea here's what happened. Forty-three people agreed with the button and took one and also took the flyer, many very enthusiastically, and at least three that I recall pinned the button on themselves immediately, one of whom offered me a cold bottle of water from the three that she had with her. I told these forty-three people that they would enjoy the article on the PDR website titled "Guns and the Working Class" near the top. Some thoughts about the significance of this. Be honest! When you were reading this report, before you got to the part about 43 people agreeing with the button, what were you guessing that number was going to be? The numbers above mean that 86% of these people at the GOAL rally agreed with the PDR button, some very enthusiastically so. Only 8% of these people said the PDR button was a bad idea, which means that 92% of them did NOT think it was a bad idea. Clearly GOAL's focus, very narrowly defending the right to bear arms, attracts both people who agree with and people who disagree with egalitarianism, and this extremely narrow focus obscures the fact that within the GOAL membership there is a FUNDAMENTAL conflict of values: pro- versus anti-egalitarian, with the pro-egalitarian side vastly outnumbering the anti-egalitarian side. (Think about it: those of you reading this report are probably the ONLY people in the world who know that the vast majority of GOAL members are pro-egalitarians!) GOAL is typical of organizations in the United States. Virtually all of them avoid any explicit advocacy of egalitarianism and instead focus narrowly on some issue that obscures the fact that most people want an egalitarian revolution. This is obviously true of the Republican and Democratic parties, of trade unions, of churches, and even of progressive organizations. The Republican and Democratic parties have in this election cycle worked it so that blacks and Hispanics are attracted virtually 100% to the Democratic Party while a very large percentage of whites are attracted to the Republican Party. And yet, the overwhelming majority of people attracted to either party almost certainly would LOVE an egalitarian revolution, something neither party will even hint at. I could have gone to the GOAL rally and hurled insults at them. I could have called them fascists and racists. Some people who supported Hillary Clinton and some Leftists would think that would have been a perfectly appropriate thing for me to have done. But they're obviously wrong. Doing that would only have provoked a hostile reaction from these folks and thereby have seemed to confirm what the Left wrongly believes: that most people--especially whites who support the 2nd Amendment and wear Trump hats and wave the American flag--are opposed to egalitarian revolution because their heads are filled with capitalist values and racism and homophobia and transphobic bigotry and selfishness and complicity in the crimes of the ruling class demonstrated by the fact that they pay their taxes. Instead I engaged with these GOAL folks respectfully. (I agree with their support of the 2nd Amendment as I discuss at http://newdemocracyworld.org/culture/guns2.html .) In doing so I discovered that the vast majority of them, 86%, are in favor of egalitarian revolution. Does this mean none of these folks believe racist lies? No. But they are not the ones _inventing_ those lies and _manipulating society_ to reinforce those lies, and they are just as desirous of knowing the truth as we are. We CAN build a massive egalitarian revolutionary movement. But we can only do it if we reach out to ALL the people who have egalitarian values, no matter where they may be presently and no matter whose bad leadership they are presently following. ----------------- * John F. Kennedy was, as we know, made president of the United States by the electoral process, and he was at first perfectly willing to go along with the agenda of the plutocracy. But after the Cuban Missile Crisis Kennedy feared that the Cold War could result in a thermonuclear war unless it was ended. Kennedy started to end the Cold War--against the will of the plutocracy--with acts such as initiating the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (to which the plutocracy was totally opposed) and, just before his death, ordering the Pentagon to make plans to withdraw troops from Vietnam (to which the plutocracy was also totally opposed). Kennedy knew the CIA and its director, Allen Dulles especially, opposed him and so he fired Allen Dulles as Director. But the plutocracy viewed Kennedy as, literally, a traitor to his (upper) class. Because Dulles, and not Kennedy, was acting at the behest of the plutocracy, Dulles, despite being fired as Director of the CIA, continued to direct it from his personal residence and the new official director, John McCone, was a mere figurehead. The plutocracy gave Dulles a green light to orchestrate the assassination of Kennedy, which he did. (Read about this here and here and here and here.) This article may be copied and posted on other websites. 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