We have two colliding forces – “end-of-the-world fascism” (EWF) and mass civil disobedience. Clearly, one will defeat the other. Right now the odds favor EWF – the fascist home team has a superior gerrymandering game, oil industry, tech and armaments cash piled up to the peak of Mount Everest and beyond, control of the means of incarceration and a huge project of global concentration camps. The EWF also has control of the federal budget which they have resolutely employed to assemble a Gestapo like army to terrorize state enemies on a whim and shape the ethnic character of the entire nation to match the paranoid nightmares of Trump’s MAGA base.

EWF has a fetish for violence, both as a means to terrorize scapegoats and political opponents, and as the cornerstone for theatrical entertainment. The MAGA base has a craving for vicarious blood and guts.

The EWF also has the devotion of corporate CEOs, who might, in exceedingly rare instances, still possess vestigial aspects of moral conscience, but seldom at levels capable of altering predatory habits. Some corporations might object to the mass arrest of their exploited, “undocumented” workforce, but not with the passionate joy they express toward federal subsidies and tax breaks. There may also be a huge corporate windfall coming as mass detention creates a growing pool of slave laborers.

The EWF also has a deep, perhaps mystical connection to the US psyche – the beaten masses of America contribute a limitless market of dislocated, broken people with a huge appetite for bread and circus distractions. Some people can be overworked, underpaid and barely sustained on “free market” crumbs, yet howl with delight at the spectacle of those even less fortunate being ground beneath fascist jackboots. The EWF has secret access to the neural undercurrents of our shared circuitry.

The forces of US resistance have historically ebbed and flowed? Movements have been coopted by seductive schemes. US resistance now drags the half dead corpse of The Democratic Party on our backs. Protestors have a collective mindset burdened with the habits of denial, and a lingering delusion that we live in a nation with a noble history of justice and progress. The protesters also suffer from a nearly unbreakable condition of self -imposed isolation that makes us unaware of the key to victory. The EWF fascist support base is comparatively small compared with the alienated, impoverished masses. 35% of eligible US voters don’t vote, and this includes most poor people who inhabit section eight and public housing, or who double up with family or peers in overcrowded apartments with the omnipresent likelihood of harassment from public bureaucracies and landlords that enforce lease violations. Most protesters have little sense that an ocean of allies exists just beyond the horizon of social stratification. A connection between the educated Democratic Party base and the poorest US citizens would create a cosmic political shift, but we have long been blind to that possibility.

Marx saw the class structure as being comprised of three distinct categories: the bourgeoisie (owners of the means of production), the proletariat (wage slaves whose labor creates profits for the bourgeoisie) and land owners who amass wealth via rent. Subsequent models of class structure have created additional categories such as upper middle class and lower middle class, based largely on arbitrary gradations of income, but my interest here focuses on “cross class alliances” that define our current political predicament. Therefore, I will divide US classes into four categories: 1) the corporate Class, 2) the educated, professional class, 3) the deceived portion of the working class, 4) the abandoned working class (or the “poverty class”). This is obviously reductive, but these conceptual divisions help us understand the way that social class defines the structure of the two US parties. Social classes do more than describe wage status – such categories ought to also explain our distorted and confused class consciousness. A working class person who identifies as MAGA, cannot be meaningfully described without additional narrative detail.

Social classes are mediated by many contingencies, notably race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, education and media exposure. Our two political parties have been divided along a sort of bastardized class identity in which all social classes have been coopted into one or the other version of capitalist friendly ideology. The Republican Party has been crafted from a curious quid pro quo binding the mostly white, “deceived working class” to the interests of the wealthiest corporations. The Republican Party masses trade allegiance to corporate aspirations in exchange for theatrical cruelty. There is little in the Republican policy agenda that provides a better life for working class people – quite the contrary, members of Trump’s base will lose medical care, school funding, housing options and employee benefits in exchange for the opportunity to witness mass deportations and military assaults against residents in blue cities. Working people are paid off with cheap entertainment.

The educated, professional class also engages in a similar, if inverted quid pro quo – this particular class trades support for corporate aspirations in exchange for performative kindness, the gestures of inclusivity scrubbed of any tinge of real class issues. Democratic voters, for example, enjoy a feel good sense of their party’s devotion to social justice issues so long as we do not question the ideals of capitalism. This class undergoes the most intensive brain washing of any – the legacy media, the New York Times, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, etc. all promote a particular vision of social progress without ever threatening the structures of profit. The manner in which the liberal media curates a popular narrative for the educated class assures that most members of the Democratic Party base lean toward the center.

The Atlantic, for example, will almost never publish pieces that unequivocally condemn US/Israeli militarism, but will happily post piece after piece decrying the gutting of abortion rights. Powerful lobbyists and military contractors have financial interests in shaping military narratives, but the so called prolife movement is little more than a convenience for opportunistic rightwing politicians. While antiabortion pregnancy centers may have revenues well over a billion annually, this money pales in comparison to the US trillion dollar plus military spending. If you want to understand the positions promoted for the Democratic Party base, follow the money.

While the ruling class has buried their tentacles deeply into the psychological sediments of Republican and Democratic Party faithful, there is one social class that remains nearly invisible to the ruling class – the “abandoned working class.” The very poor do not generally vote, do not typically organize, nor do they engage in political activism, and their well-being barely registers in the priorities of elected officials. Issues like low cost childcare, low income housing and the nature of the “social safety net” have little resonance in our political dialogue.

That is not to say that the poorest people exist as an island apart from other social classes – people from every social niche lose their toeholds and tumble to the bottom. As one who worked for decades as an outreach worker in decaying Western Massachusetts mill towns, I have seen children of doctors, lawyers and business executives struggling with poverty. A significant and gaining trickle, falling from above, join the floodwaters of poverty. But the very poor have not, as a political entity, formed alliances across class boundaries. The ruling class does not even attempt to coopt and confuse the very poor. Pure despair and collective depression immobilize this potentially transformative class.

The abandoned working class members often work “under the table” providing child care, cleaning services and general labor for small businesses for lower than minimum wage. These workers get no benefits, and often attempt to supplement meager SSI benefits with unreported wages. Life at the lowest levels of the US class system is essentially unsustainable without straying outside of strict legal constraints.

The “abandoned working class” has only latent power – the strength of enormous numbers that threaten the privilege of the wealthiest class if the poorest people mobilize and become politically active. The abandoned working class is a sleeping giant.

This may change in an eye-blink as Trump escalates his war against the poor. The very few remaining tatters of the US social safety net will be obliterated regardless of the government shutdown, but the end of SNAP benefits on the first of November puts 42 million US residents in immediate risk of starvation. This Great Depression reprise creates a catastrophic situation for poor victims, but also reverberates throughout the remnants of the Democratic Party aligned coalition. Do the relatively safe members of the educated, professional class respond to the sight of starving US residents with a sense of urgency or denial? We have three electoral factions, each approximately comprising a third of the population of eligible voters – Democratic voters, Republican voters and non-voters. The non-voters are disproportionately comprised of the very poor. Republicans do not want poor voters to become a factor, and the bureaucratic roadblocks to voting – voter ID and various local rules on passports and drivers licensing – specifically attack poor people’s voting rights.

However, at this moment the most urgent issue is not voter registration but mass protest and civil disobedience. Do members of the educated professional class remain faithful to the corporate Democratic Party, or do they form a new connection with the starving victims of US fascism? That is how I believe we should understand the looming end to food assistance – this is an audition for those formerly complacent, rank and file Democrats to understand their newly apparent historical role. Do the seven million No Kings Day protestors lock arms with the 42 million victims of US fascist cruelty? Hungry people will be in the streets in a few days, how do those of us who currently have been consigned to be bystanders respond?

No Kings Day was a party, but now the stakes are raised. Do those casual protestors have the inner resolve to take the next steps? When SNAP ends do the No Kings Day protestors see their unique chance to cut ties with corporate puppet masters and align their fate with the abandoned victims of corporatism? We need voices on the left to make this narrative clear.

Phil Wilson writes at Nobody’s Voice.

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Phil Wilson

Phil Wilson is a retired mental health worker and union member. His writing has been published in ZNetwork.org, Current Affairs, Counterpunch, Resilience, Mother Pelican, Common Dreams, The Hampshire Gazette, The Common Ground Review, The Future Fire and other publications. Phil’s writings are posted regularly at Nobody’s Voice (https://philmeow.substack.com/).