[Peace-discuss] A general strike for Trump?

[C. G. Estabrook]

If Donald Trump is denied the presidency by the Electoral College, the 
Congress, or the courts (all technically possible if unlikely), a 
sizable portion of the population - perhaps the one in four adults who 
voted for him - will feel substantially aggrieved.

How will their grievance be expressed? Civil rights and anti-war 
demonstrations - and even the  more recent anti-police manifestations - 
seem remote. (Perhaps Standing Rock is a better current example.) But 
the potential outrage - and the segment of the population outraged - 
suggest something more serious.

Obviously the Obama administration - Homeland Security, the military, 
police ‘fusion centers,’ etc. - have contingency plans in place. But one 
is reminded of Brendan Behan’s remark (he had some experience of popular 
uprisings and their repression in Ireland), “I have never seen a 
situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse." It’s hard 
to imagine that government attempts to repress the outrage won’t have 
deleterious effects - and prolong the problems.

As I cast around for historical examples of an ill-defined class-based 
insurrection of the sort Trump voters might present, I thought of the 
British General Strike of 1926: the parallel is not close, but no 
American examples seem quite to fit, either.

“The 1926 British general strike lasted 9 days. It was called by the 
General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in an unsuccessful 
attempt to force the British government to prevent wage reduction and 
worsening conditions for 1.2 million locked-out coal miners. Some 1.7 
million workers went out, especially in transport and heavy industry. 
The government was prepared and enlisted middle class volunteers to 
maintain services. There was little violence and the TUC gave up in 
defeat. In the long run, there was little impact on trade union activity 
or industrial relations” [wikipedia].

As with many large-scale political events, the best portrayals seem to 
be literary. I recall particularly the account of the strike in Evelyn 
Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” (1945). The protagonist, a young English 
art student in Paris, returns to London to “fight for his class”; that 
consists of driving delivery trucks in place of striking teamsters. But 
like the Events of May ’68 in France, the working-class uprising comes 
to an end with an across-the-board wage-increase.

Would that work for those outraged by the pending inauguration of 
Hillary Clinton? (Other outcomes of course are possible.) I doubt it, 
even if it could be engineered (like the 1932 Bonus) in a neoliberal 
Congress.

The possibilities are disturbing and may lead the American political 
class (in Weber’s term) to say of Trump what Kent says of Lear: “O, let 
him pass!”

But maybe not.

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.”

--CGE