"Not Patching Capitalism, But Overthrowing It"

"The Democrats are not a resistance"

A failing fuel pump thwarted my efforts to protest at General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works yesterday where the Secretary of War flew in to address shipyard workers. Sadly I missed this kickass speech at the rally organized by the Maine Greens and the Revolutionary Communists Of America.

Highlights:

Now the first deception we must destroy is this: that salvation will come from changing the faces in office. Trump is not an accident. He is a symptom. The Democrats are not a resistance. They are the other hand of the same class dictatorship..

First, we must build an independent working-class organization in the workplace, the neighborhoods, among tenants, students, and the unemployed. Disciplined, united, and prepared.

Second, we must link every immediate fight to the larger aim, not patching capitalism, but overthrowing it.

Third, we must prepare the weapon that workers possess above all others, our collective labor power.

Amen to that, and let preparations for a general strike begin!

We may not have much time. If the title of Hegseth’s tour — “Arsenal Of Freedom” — doesn’t say WW3, then I don’t know what does. The corporate media controlled the narrative in favor of warmongering, noting that hundreds protested but reporters focused on supporters of 47, including a Venezuelan recruited to say she was glad President Maduro was removed from office, and Indivisible organizers i.e. Democratic Party operatives.

At the very end the reporter did wave what looked like a kickass anti-imperialist flyer that he said he found on his windshield. I can read the headline: STOP BUILDING WARSHIPS - FUND THE COMMUNITY but I’d like a closer look at the flyer if anyone can help me with that.

One of Hegseth’s especially idiotic pronouncements on the dark art of weapons contracting shows how profoundly he misunderstands the job he rose from being a Fox News talking head to fulfill. Per WGME he said:

If you build the best, at fastest, at cost, on behalf of taxpayers, you will win.

The reference is to winning contracts to build more warships. But anyone with an ounce of management ability knows that you can generally have any two of three things: quality, speed, or low cost. You can never have all three, so pick the two you care about most and accept that the third will not be possible: cheap and fast will result in lower quality, excellent and fast will result in higher costs, and so on.

Of course what Pentagon contractors are known for is being behind schedule producing mediocre quality weapons systems with massive cost overruns.

With insider reports for years of widespread substance use at BIW during the work day, perhaps the Pentagon head many call a “DUI hire” should have addressed that significant barrier to fast, cheap excellence? It’s fairly obvious they won’t address the glaring facts that taxpayer and voter support for imperial wars is unraveling and that to be competitive with either China or Russia the U.S. would have had to start decades ago. Letting infrastructure decay, failing to secure supply lines, and exploiting workers for shareholder enrichment are not winning strategies, Pete.

And no amount of speechmaking will change that.